Sunday, April 26, 2015

About the blog, and the blogger


Your host and blog-master is a 63 YO photographer hailing from San Rafael, CA., USA.
The header image should tell you what this blog is a-gonna be about.
He first tried out photomontage in the mid '80s while shooting architecture left him with alot of time on his hands in the winter. (I mean who wants to see any buildings surrounded by snow? Nobody! If you don't have interiors to shoot? You're unemployed. He decided to *DO something*! w/ the down time... with a Beseler 45MXII at his immediate disposal (with seriously great lenses), he went wacko.)

The guy was instantly hooked, & has been so ever since.

When Photoshop finally came of age, all his photo friends thought he would abandon 'darkroom'.
Nope, no way, no how.
Yeah, he does some digital work, (which might show up here from time to time), but nuthin' beats darkroom.

He recently became aware of the fact that blogs are made to be 'mobile friendly'... and his various websites are not. Bummer! He's not going to rebuild them or pay someone big $$ to revise them, He likes the way they look, and  he doesn't really care for the formatted (=automated) looks that so many people go for.
Just take a look at his main site:
(on a real computer)
www.bobbennettphoto.net
Nothing 'cookie cutter' about it. And another thing about all the automated site building options? Yeah they have lotsa choices, but only those choices. He does the site w/ Dreamweaver, and can customize any page, anyway he wishes. He likes that.
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I do a blog about darkroom, and get into how each image is built, show the negs, talk about the technique. It's really for darkroom montage artists, however many there are of them out there. Probably damned few.
Here, I am just going to show images, that's all. The blog is a way to get around the mobile unfriendlyness of www.bobbennettphoto.net.

So I'll be dishing out an awesome image every couple of weeks, with a few words about it, kinda poetic, philsophical.


As a prelude, take this in:

"FIRST THOUGHT, BEST THOUGHT"
DOCUMENTARY, THE CAPTAIN - Captain Beefheart of course - who else?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBa8bS_vZkM

Here's the first offering:

Explorer




One of my first darkroom montage images after arriving in Ca. in 1992.
Ends up being one of my best. A circle of stones is broken - an explorer of sorts heads out into uncharted territory, symbols of power and transcendence are on the horizon.
Shall we follow him? Yes, let's do that, but at a safe distance - ya never know what kinda trouble he might get into.

And if you'd like to get a print?
Here's the place to go:

http://bob-bennett.fineartamerica.com/