Earlyriser's photos

[jstraw]

Brian, could you please turn your head and cough?

 

[Early Riser]

As was mentioned above, you seem to have some pretty developed techniques for achieving a sort of glowing, soft focus. I'd be interested in hearing about what equipment and processes you use for that.

Also, when you first saw the tv commercial where the stymied composer gets the answer to his problem by seeing the musical phrase formed by birds on a set of wires, did you wonder if someone had seen your website?

JStraw, I usually reserve my soft focus affects for the darkroom although sometimes I will shoot with an Imagon. I'll most often use various diffusers under the enlarger, sometimes for the whole exposure, sometimes for a part, or sometimes for just the high or low contrast split filtering. The hard part is controlling the amount of bleed that comes from the blacks when you diffuse in the darkroom, as well as the need to work higher contrast to compensate for the lowering of the image contrast due to the diffusion affect. Most of the prints that you see of mine with that affect are printed on grades 4 or 5. And eventhough I will often project my image through a cheap diffusion type filter, I test my camera lenses and enlarger lenses very thoroughly for optimum sharpness and contrast.

As for "Twelve Birds", the odds are that the people who did the PBS commercial did not see my web site, I don't get THAT many visitors. Granted the image existed before the commercial, but the observation that birds on telephone wires resemble musical notes is not that new. At least I can not imagine it not having been observed before. The hard part though is getting a scene that actually works. In fact I did a similar photo with sneakers 32 years ago. See below. I may put this in the gallery just to see if people like my teenage work better than my "mature" work. I've been looking to do a new and better version of this shot for a few years now, but they cut them down too fast nowadays. There is a tree in Nevada that has thousands of sneakers on it though. Maybe I'll post a photo of it,

I was a bit bummed seeing the commercial though because I felt that now people would think the commercial came first and I was copying it. What can you do.

I am curious though when I come across long established scenes and I see compositions or juxtapositions that seem perfect and yet no one has ever quite used them. The image "Death Valley Dunes" has those pyramid buttes, the New York Buttes I think they're called, and no one as far as any DV sand dune photos that i have ever seen has bothered to really pair them prominently with the dunes. Maybe sometimes you think that you're shooting something shot before, but it's never been shot like that before, because everyone assumed that it has been done before. But it only goes to show that even in highly photographed scenes, there's still room for differing styles or POV's, except of course slot canyons, they all look the same....

 

[jstraw]

Thanks Brian.

 

[Old Salian]

All that was written in 2006 and it's just as true today. Brian is a real professional. I admire his work greatly.

Gary Rowlands

 

[pbromaghin]

But what happened to all the really wonderful old stuff that caused this outpouring of praise? At least I can't find any of it.

 

[jtk]

But what happened to all the really wonderful old stuff that caused this outpouring of praise? At least I can't find any of it.

Don't know what you rember but it's easy to find a bunch of earlyriser's images in Photrio Media. Mostly Nikon D850 but also a few relatively modern film cameras.

 

[Old Salian]

Don't know what you rember but it's easy to find a bunch of earlyriser's images in Photrio Media. Mostly Nikon D850 but also a few relatively modern film cameras.

Not sure if it's my memory, or not, but I don't recall any digital 35mm from Brian. I do have a have a habit of blanking digital work.

I've followed him since he first addressed landscape. Top performer, imho.

gary rowlands

 

[pbromaghin]

All I find is his digital work going back only to about 2018, less than a full page of thumbnails in the gallery display. Looking through his posting history back to 2007 or so only reveals only a couple more. He had a LOT of really inspiring work besides this.

 

[reddesert]

Look at
https://www.photrio.com/forum/members/early-riser.5216/#xfmgMedia
and his website
https://www.kosoff.com/
use the Menu pop-out on the left side to navigate.

 

[Old Salian]

All I find is his digital work going back only to about 2018, less than a full page of thumbnails in the gallery display. Looking through his posting history back to 2007 or so only reveals only a couple more. He had a LOT of really inspiring work besides this.

Hi, where are you seeing the digital work ? In the gallery here, I see only film.

 

[pbromaghin]

The 16 photos at the link reddesert posted are what I was talking about. I stand semi-corrected in that about 1/3 of them are digital. But they are still only a very small part of what Early Riser posted over the years and the earliest was posted 12 YEARS AFTER this thread was started.

 

[Old Salian]

The 16 photos at the link reddesert posted are what I was talking about. I stand semi-corrected in that about 1/3 of them are digital. But they are still only a very small part of what Early Riser posted over the years and the earliest was posted 12 YEARS AFTER this thread was started.

Brian offers some as digital prints, but they're all from film, I believe. Mamiya 7, Hasselblad and panoramic according to the notes on each one. His Road Sign photos are not detailed and they may be digital capture, but maybe not.

 

[RBuser]

I read he only shoots digital now, like his mentor Bill Shwab.

 

[Old Salian]

I read he only shoots digital now, like his mentor Bill Shwab.

I take it all back, Brian uses digital capture extensively. Nikon 850 and the odd Fuji gfx 50 files in his Facebook portfolio. Quite a surprise to me. Be interesting to know what's happened ?

 

[jtk]

I take it all back, Brian uses digital capture extensively. Nikon 850 and the odd Fuji gfx 50 files in his Facebook portfolio. Quite a surprise to me. Be interesting to know what's happened ?

a) have you asked him?

b) my guess is that he likes his work better the way he's been doing it for quite a while now.