The Corvallis Arts Center has an auction fund raiser each year to support the activites of the center. This is a big event and area artists often donate some of there best works for the Auction and this worthwhile organization. The auction will be on Saturday, February 27th at 6pm, at the Club Level, Reser Stadium on the OSU campus. Tickets will be available after the first of the year at the Corvallis Arts Center for $45 each. The event last year attracted 600 guests and offers great food and live music in addition to all of the art work.

• Live music by Mood Area 52 (fusion, tango, gypsy, americana)
• 10 Chocolatiers providing samples
• Live & silent auction. Among the live auction items will be art by some of the best Northwest artists and a week in a french cottage in the Dordogne region.

The Corvallis Arts Center runs the following programs,

Gallery Exhibits, kid’s Globetrotters summer camp, after-school and no-school-days programs, sales opportunities for artists in the Art Shop, and ArtsCare bedside/workshop sessions for patients in area hospitals.

as quoted from their artists invitation letter. I know from personal experience, that the Art Center runs worthwhile programs. My daughter enjoyed her week art camp this past summer at the Art’s Center and came home enthused everyday about her daily art project.

My Donation

Most artists living in Corvallis will want to showcase their best work, and I’m no different. I’m donating a 16″x20″ silver gelatin print of a high-key coastal landscape near Bandon Oregon. It’s a favorite of mine. The print captures the unique atmospherics of a bright foggy day on the southern oregon coast, and retains the minimalistic nature of the coast: sky, water, rocks.

Trailing Rocks, Bandon Oregon

I hope to see you there!

While planning for a recent trip to Andalucia (southern Spain) and Paris, and I decided to go light and try out a G11. I’m an analog photographer and currently I only print digitally when making test prints or cards. However a friend of mine has been showing me some good prints made from a G10, so I decided to buy a G11 for the trip. The photographic goal was simply to return from the trip with some photographs that stand up to printing as a 35mm slide would.

The Cannon G11

I have a drawer full of old Cannon powershots, and if you are in this boat too, you’ll already be familiar with the layout of the G11. It has many of the same controls and iconographics as earlier powershots, along with the usual, aperature/shutter modes, “flower mode” , “mountain mode”, et cetera. In my mind the G11 separates itself from these earlier Cannon models, and most other sub $500 compact cameras, with the following features.

• Raw image storage. This is essential, as in-camera JPEG compression will destroy your work before it exits the camera. With memory as cheap as it is now, raw mode should just be the standard output of all cameras. All photographers would be better off.
• Custom modes, switchable with a turn of a well registered nob. The G11 offers two custom modes, C1 and C2. I found this essential when I needed to quickly switch between operating modes of the camera.
• Fast shutter release. Its fast, not super fast, but generally fast enough.
• Low noise sensor. This is finally approaching film noise for low light situations. Images made at ISO 800 do look good. This was the pixel count / noise tradeoff cannon made.
• Solid metal construction. Besides the fragile twisting screen, the camera is built to last.

The downsides of the camera include:

• The view finder is only a wild approximation of what actually ends up on the sensor. This is very unfortunate; The Contax G2 did a much better job of this.
• The view finder conveys no information to the photographer whatsoever. It’s a dead viewfinder.
• If the articulating screen fails, the camera is junk.
• Focus can be confused and hop around a bit. However it is sharp once it locks correctly on the subject.
• Non-standard batteries. This is really a big oversight for a travel/backup camera. Fortunately the camera is light on the batteries if the “viewfinder” is used instead of the screen.

After using the G11 for three weeks, shooting everyday, I’d say it meets the bar of a good travel camera that can almost match the quality of a 35 mm camera shooting slide film. It’s clear where the roots of this camera are – firmly planted in the consumer camera market. Hopefully, we’ll see a continue evolution of this camera, dumping the silly twisting screen (complicated things break), standardizing the batteries, and making an active viewfinder.

Here are four images from this trip, made with the Cannon G11. I’ll but posting a more complete galleries from this trip in the near future. Three are from Paris and the other is from Andalucia, Spain.

[Click any image for a slide show.]

-Paul

Footnote

With the low price of memory, I no longer delete anything from my memory cards. I just go out and buy more digital film for $15 bucks and load it up with a few hundred more shots. The cards now serve as one of my backups.

Things are starting to fall into a better rhythm regarding my art work after a busy summer.  My friend Jeff and I got out on a three day photography trip that we had planned for a year.  The destination was the very small, defunked, and virtually unknown town, Kent Oregon. The town officially has 9 27 residents, residing in a mishmash of modern country structures – an old but well kept shingled 2-room house, a rambling acre of land with structures from two different centuries, with the residents residing in a permanently stationary mobile home around back (with some great Jack Johnson drifting out to us), and the well fenced-in (out?) loony patriot with dozens of america flags painted and draped across the compound.  It’s a slightly uncomfortable place to work with a camera since we always had the feeling that we were well watched (a resident walked over to us to notified us that she’d written down our license plate number – welcome to Kent!).

We made the trip to Kent to photograph one of the most remarkable and unknown buildings in Oregon – the Kent Granary.  It was probably build around 1920 out of lumber hauled in on the old train line that passed through Kent on the way to Shaniko.  This train line was washed away in the 1964 columbus day storm and was never rebuilt.  The Kent Granary is roughly three to four stories high, build out of flat stacked lumber.  The enormous walls are just dimensional lumber laid flat & spike nailed together.  This build contains an enormous amount of lumber, weathered beautifully for nearly 100 years and is a fantastic photographic subject on all scales.

Kent Oregon Granary

This phone snap shows an incredible structure built for a single purpose – to store and protect the local oats and wheat harvest.  The odd tall narrow proportions and the remarkable stacked construction make for a very unique and rare structure.  The tall dark thin lines on the end of the building are the ends of two interior walls.  A long metal ladder hangs curved down the face.  A local told us it was in use up until just a few years ago, and this building sits next to the still very much in use concrete Kent granary (which has it’s own fantastic architecture and forms – but is much less rare).

I’ve been photographing forgotten buildings around Oregon for quite a few years now and I used to be shocked when I returned to a building and found that it had vanished.  [On this note, the Thompson Flouring Mill building in Shed, Oregon is now gone; however the  state bought

and preserved the mill proper about a mile east of town.  I photographed the Thompson storage building just after the state bought the Mill, but before it was open to the public.]  But now I know that is the pattern.  And unfortunately it is no different with this absolutely unique structure – it too is slated for destruction.  A local suggested we buy it and put a bar in the bottom and a brothel upstairs – we thought perhaps a microbrewery in the bottom with arts workshop space and artist-in-residence apartments upstairs.   Both just dreams.

I made a small hand-held video of the town panning around in a circle with a bit of commentary.  I will post this as soon as I figure out a way to do so that I like.

Below are a few more photographs from Kent.

Silo #42, Kent Oregon

Broken man, Kent Oregon

Modern silos, Kent Oregon

Dove and horse, Kent Oregon

Location

Kent Oregon is located about 8 miles north of the nearby town of Shaniko (which by-the-way, it’s “downtown” is for sale practically in it’s entirety for $380K – you get the very nice old 2-story brick hotel and everything else on that block including the restaurant and “RV park”.).  Shaniko is on Hwy 97, but Kent is just a stones throw east of Hwy 97.  The Kent Granary is the dark looming building, obvious from the highway.

Prints

I’ll be posting some prints from this trip in my architecture gallery in the coming months.

I enjoyed a week long printing workshop with John a few years ago where I learned many darkroom techniques that I continue to use today. He is a great printer and image maker and this show will be inspiring to all visual artists.

EXHIBITION, LECTURE, AND RECEPTION AT OSU
CORVALLIS, APRIL 6-29 – RECEPTION AND LECTURE APRIL 6

I am very pleased to announce that I will be having a retrospective exhibition of my photographs at Oregon State University in Corvallis, Oregon. This will be the “premier” installation of my traveling exhibition John Sexton: Thirty-Five Years of Photographs. The exhibition will run from April 6 through 29 in the beautiful Fairbanks Gallery at OSU. We are currently putting the finishing touches on this exhibition. I’m doing last minute work in the darkroom, and Anne and I are busy matting, framing, and crating the exhibition. There will be images from as early as 1973, along with some recently printed images from new negatives.

I will be presenting a lecture on Monday evening, April 6, at the LaSells Stewart Center at OSU, as part of the Visiting Artists and Scholars Lecture Program. The lecture will be at 7:00 pm. There will be an opening reception at 6:00 pm, prior to the lecture, and a book signing will follow the conclusion of the lecture. The reception and lecture are open to the public and the admission is free. Seating for the lecture is on a first come basis. Fairbanks Gallery and the Visiting Artists & Scholars Lecture Program are sponsored by the OSU Department of Art.

I look forward to seeing a number of friends and past workshop participants from the area on Monday, April 6. During my time on campus I will be visiting with OSU photography students.

A Hassebald 501CM dropping from the sky

I had actually previously ordered a 501CM from KEH in EX condition, however the film advance knob had clearly been over torqued (it was very loose) and there was a big gouge on the bottom on the camera body.  So I sent it back and traded up (for $50) for another 501CM in EX+ condition.  This camera body was very clean and obviously had hardly been used.  It was well worth the $50.  I also bought two very clean A12 camera backs and a beautiful 120mm T* CF Makro-Planar lens from KEH.

I have been lugging around a massive Manfrotto tripod for years to use with my LF equipment.  I finally decided to shed the beast and upgrade to a modern carbon fiber tripod.  After borrowing a friend’s FEISOL, I ordered a FEISOL Tournament CT-3342 tripod with their CB-50D ballhead.  This tripod tips the scale right at 1kg, and can easily support a 4×5 field camera or any ‘blad that might drop your way.

FEISOL Tripod inverted around the FEISOL CB-50D ballhead

This head and tripod were designed together so that the tripods legs can invert safely around the head without damaging the carbon fiber legs.  In this configuration the head and tripod (with 3 sections) is just under 2′ long.  The tripod construction looks first rate and the leg clamps are rubberize and very fast to release or tighten.  I tend to be very hard on equipment in the field so we’ll see how it holds up.  The tripod also came with a nice padded case, useful for traveling.

The new outfit!

I’m really looking forward to trying out this new equipment in some Hawaiian botantical gardens.

We settled on a making panels 3 feet wide by 8 feet high framed out with 2′ x 2’s in a truss design.  We then stretched thin gray outdoor carpet over the frames, stapling it in place.  The panels can then be connected together on site to make a longer wall using bolts, washers, and butterfly wing nuts.  This design worked very well in practice, was portable (the individual panels can easily fit in a small truck),  light weight, and cost far less that commercial booth systems – though it’s likely not as durable as metal framed display walls.

Booth wall frames mocked up without the carpet. The L-shaped wall on the right is made up of four panel frames bolted together.

Here Jon and Andrew are working to stretch the gray outdoor carpet tightly over one of the panels.  We found that numerous staples (about 2″ centers) were necessary to keep the carpet from sagging.  We also put a few staples into the front face of each panel to hold the carpet tighter to the frames.  If the staples are carefully placed in the grooves of the carpet they minimally mar the display surface.

Andrew and Jon are stretching and stapling the carpet on a panel.

Andrew and Jeff are finishing up a few last minute touches to the booth before show time.

A bad phone snap of some beautiful prints in our booth.

Two wonderful customers browsing our card wall

Because this was our first outdoor art festival show, this took a lot of effort to pull together.  However now that we have our lightweight portable booth ready to go, we may show up at another festival somewhere on the west coast (especially after the economy has recovered a bit).  If you stopped by our booth during the festival – thank you!

]]> http://www.paulshirkey.com/wp/2009/01/corvallis-fall-festival/feed/ 8 http://www.paulshirkey.com/wp/2008/05/photography-by-paul-shirkey/ http://www.paulshirkey.com/wp/2008/05/photography-by-paul-shirkey/#comments Sun, 04 May 2008 00:33:05 +0000 Paul http://www.paulshirkey.com/wp/?p=3 This is my new skeletal website which will primarily serve as a public container for my photographic galleries. I’m doing the development myself and the galleries will come on-line in fits and starts. Check back again, thanks! -Paul