Been getting a lot of love lately from Ilford - the wonderful folks across the pond in England. Even though I was born and raised in Kodak's back yard, I was hooked on Ilford's films and papers the first time I used them, in 1997. Straight up.
Anyway, they were drawn to the making of this particular photograph, HUNTING ISLAND XVI, so asked me a few questions about it. You can read about it HERE!
Friday, June 1st, we had an AWESOME opening for REVERENCE at Ella Richardson Fine Art in Charleston, SC. Coinciding with Charleston's monthly art walk and annual Spoleto Festival.
Hundreds showed up throughout the evening, red dots went up, and I received such a warm welcome from Charleston.
HUGE thanks to Ella, Christine and Tristan from the gallery, who wrangled everything leading up to and during the show!
I grew up in New York State, not far from Kodak HQ in Rochester, NY. My grandfather bought his first camera from George Eastman himself. I'm not from a long line of photographers by any means, but even given my geographic upbringing, I've always been an ilford guy. I don't know what initially turned me on to them, but the British film and paper brand has never done me wrong.
So, when I reached out to them a bit back, and nervously offered to write a little something for their site, and they said "yes", the pressure was on. I'll be straight up honest that this piece took way too long for me to finalize. Concepted forever ago. Written half of forever ago, and the selected photographs made 8 months ago. Submitted to them two days ago.
Why? For the same reason I'm critical about my own photography enough to write a piece pertaining to quality over quantity in photography which I feel is nearly impossible to achieve unless you're working with film, the same standard should be held in talking about it. In my mind, anyway.
So...that said, here's a link to the feature on Ilford's site. I hope you enjoy!
Took the big boys for an after school cruise in the RV (Research Vessel) on my birthday two weeks ago. We checked out a range marker that I've had my eye on for a while now, since the sun was in the right spot, and it was low tide. The camera and I were still in about four feet of water...
Then...an island hopping mission ensued. Enjoy the tour of a few waterways and islands in the Beaufort, NC area!!!
March was a challenging month, in that everywhere I was, it was relentlessly windy. Every day. That's the way it goes, I guess.
In the middle of the month, I drove to Charleston to drop off several pieces that Ella Richardson Fine Art had sold, and while I was there, I decided to check out a nearby island which has been slipping away into the sea. It's really an incredible sight, as you emerge from the tranquil woods, into this beach that is just littered with trees–live oaks, pines, and palm trees, all of which have been tackled by the unforgiving ocean.
Photographing this area proved to be quite a challenge, as trees are strewn about everywhere, and finding a pleasing composition never came easy. To top it off, the wind was whipping up the beach all day.
I was forced to wade across waist-deep lagoons to access a few areas, which got a bit hairy, because of the incoming tide, but luckily I wasn't stranded.
Enjoy the photographs, and the behind the scenes views of this vanishing landscape...
Yeah, I VLOG now.
Not really, but I'm doing my best to do a little peering into what exactly it is I'm doing each month. Some months, it's a lot. Others, not so much so.
Anyway, this is like a feature-length movie for me...behind the scenes in the making of CYPRESS STUDIES.
I was originally intrigued by bald cypress, mainly because of their environment. They thrive under the perfect, but specific conditions; alongside the muddy waters of southern rivers and lakes. They almost stand guard over the shoreline, some of the lucky ones living for thousands of years. Each is unique, from its fluted trunk up to its often windswept branches.
Working with large format camera systems is a tedious, but methodical process on dry land. Add a boat, wind, water depths, and some general unknowns (SNAKES) into the equation, and things turn into a real, but fun challenge.
Anyway...I hope you enjoy this walk and boat ride through some beautiful cypress forests I've been exploring.
Jetlagged AF. Rob and I, day one, scene one, take one.
I'm here to tell you about a little place called Iceland. If you've spent any time at all on Instagram, you've likely seen all sorts of scenes from Iceland. Like-fetching, follower-getting, cliché wanderlusty pics of people out there, living their best life ever (hopefully better than yours). Well, this is my turn at that same story...
STAFAFELL RIVER STUDY
SPIRE AT REYNISFJARA
BTS (that's Behind The Scenes).
All those people came to watch me take photos...and look at rocks.
ROB IN RAINSUIT STUDY IV, Reyinsfjara.
Anyway...
Late last August, my buddy Rob Larson, who I attended art school with in Pittsburgh, and I found some wickedly cheap flights to Reykjavik, which we couldn't pass up. We'd been talking about Iceland for like a decade, but it was always unrealistically expensive to get there. So, we booked these cheapo flights, which even included a seat to sit in, found a sweet car, charted our course, reserved a few spots along the route to sleep (which cost almost as much as my flight), and hoped for the best.
A few weeks later, we were aboard the plane, headed northeast...FAR northeast.
I had ordered up 100 sheets of film for this three and a half day whirlwind trip. To put that into perspective, I usually shoot about 100 sheets of film a year. But, I wanted to be safe, and a few extra sheets of film doesn't really take up a lot of room. This was a trip I've dreamed about for 20 years, after all...
SKAFTAFELL GLACIER DETAIL
The end of the first day, we took a dirt road to this one little lagoon that a glacier feeds in to, and I made one of my favorite images of the trip, SKAFTAFELL GLACIER DETAIL. This was a hike to a spot where I felt good about a composition. Set up the camera, with literally one sheet of film left loaded for that day. One chance, so make it count. It was so dark out, the exposure ended up running four minutes on 400 speed film, and I kept arbitrarily adding time to the exposure, as it kept getting darker.
I didn't really know what to expect from Iceland. I mean...it was August, and like a million degrees at home. Would it rain? Would it snow? Would it be super windy? Wind and large format photography DO NOT mix. Would I be able to get photographs because of all of the above? In case you're unfamiliar with how working with large format cameras works, it's like the old adage of walking uphill to school both ways, but instead of snow, it's deep mud. Your book bag weighs as much as your little brother, and when you FINALLY get to school, instead of getting to use a calculator on your math problems, you're forced to use a slide rule (we got to the Moon with a slide rule, by the way). I guess the usage of the word "forced" there might be a bit harsh, as truthfully, I love working with my slide rule of a camera, and find I work much, much more diligently as a photographer with it over having a digital camera in my hand.
So...there we were; Iceland...and all I had brought was a box camera and a few sheets of film.
Deep in the bowels of Seljalandsfoss. It was a surreal experience to stand behind this waterfall. Very primal. Recommended. SELJALANDSFOSS DETAIL II was made of the water cascading in the far right of this panoramic. Yes, the camera and I got soaked.
SELJALANDSFOSS DETAIL II
If you look behind me, you'll notice a LOT of wet tourists. I was a dry tourist, but I used the hill in the foreground to hide those tourists, and balance my composition of the falls.
SELJALANDSFOSS DETAIL I
Upon landing in Reykjavik at 5:00am, after sleeping maybe three minutes on the plane (no matter how hard I try, I cannot sleep on planes), we grabbed our 2017 Hyundai Sadness, and hit the road for what would be the most sleep-deprived trip of my life (this, coming from a father of three).
After doing some research online, and looking at satellite imagery, which I actually do a lot of my location scouting from, Rob and I had charted a course, which would take us from the airport in the south west corner of the island, along the southern coast, and out to the fjords on the south eastern corner of the island. We would back track our way back, giving us the opportunity to visit a few spots twice, and ad different times of the day. It was going to be a haul, though. In the three and a half days we spent there, we covered nearly a thousand miles, shooting from dawn until into the night, then driving to the next bed we had booked for a few short hours of sleep.
Night one, we stayed in this little cabin. We had half of it, and shared a bathroom with a French couple. Almost enough room for our two camera bags and bag of clothes. $240.
Night two, Rob modeling our lovely barrel of laughs. These little abodes were pretty cool...literally. We couldn't get the heater to warm it up much. $190.
I've always kind of considered myself a bit of a geology nut. I don't know anything about it, really, but I'm fascinated by different layers of things. Maybe that's why I like cake. The landscape in Iceland is different around every corner. Always something new and different. It's pretty wild, actually. I wish I knew more about rocks than I do, but maybe I'll start taking night classes, or something.
BUTTE, KÁLFAFELL. Some kid was flying his drone above this butte, out in the middle of nowhere. Nothing is sacred...
SPIRE AT LAEKJAVIK
Black sand, beachez!
Waiting for those pesky contrails to blow out of my way...
JÖKULSÁRLÓN SHORE STUDY I
BTS of JÖKULSÁRLÓN SHORE STUDY I. My tripods go through Hell. They spend a good deal of their lives in salt water, and for this one, I dug pits for each leg to sit in, so I could get the camera as low as possible.
Where can a guy get an ice cube around here?!?!
JÖKULSÁRLÓN SHORE STUDY III
Speaking of ice cubes, this photo of a piece of ice that looks like a chicken is the only good iPhone photo I've ever taken. True story. #nofilter
So...I don't know where this story ends, but I'm running out of words, and the photographs have all been made. You can click on that tab top left there that says ICELAND to see the whole collection of photographs from the trip. Thanks for stopping by!
Somewhere in the midwest...
The world's coolest outhouse.
ZISSOU. OUT.
Working with film, there’s a lot of forethought that has to go into what you’re doing while out in the field. Hopefully, this involved process is felt in the final photograph, but often goes unnoticed in the making of...
Here’s a piece from a new series I’ve started, which I photographed on Saturday. Was in the RV (Research Vessel) for five hours, and traveled nearly seven miles, a good deal of which was wading across expansive sand flats, only a few inches deep, pulling the RV by rope behind me. In the rain.
Anyway...that entire day, I composed and made two photographs.
You can scroll through to see the actual film from one of them, to get an idea of what’s involved in getting things right in-camera. The photo of the 4x5 inch negative is just a straight iPhone shot against my light table. No filters added no cropping, etc...
The composition I decided on was done after moving the tripod several times, to where things felt balanced, and had to correct to keep the pilings vertical, so they wouldn’t visually converge toward the top.
As equally important as all of that, came the exposure and processing of the film, which I treat different ways for different projects and subject matter.
Anyway...I hope you enjoy!
Ella Richardson and I just put together an exhibition of my work at her lovely Charleston gallery, which will be hanging through the month of January. If you're in the area, drop in and check it out! Map below...
BADLANDS X, 2014. Death Valley National Park, CA
Here's a snippet about the show, titled Shadow Aspect: "Most people think that shadows follow, precede, surround beings or objects. The truth is that they also surround words, ideas, desires, deeds, impulses and memories.’ – Elie Wiesel. Praxis Gallery seeks the submission of photographic art that explores the formal, conceptual and metaphoric implications of the shadow. Submissions may focus on the shadow as pure visual form expressed through the creation of line, shape, pattern and texture. They may also examine the cultural and psychological implications of the shadow - exploring ideas of foreboding, internal conflict, passages into the unconsciousness, or other ephemeral interpretations.
Specto Art Space, literally a brand new gallery in Bridgewater, VA, is having their inaugural show, and POUND NET IX has been juried in! The exhibit will open February 10th, and run through March 9th. Super pumped to have my work alongside some amazing photography!
Check it all out HERE.
All photos © Ella Richardson
OAK STUDY II, 2017
Few trees compare to the mighty oak. Their massive canopies create a shady oasis beneath them, as they stretch for the sky. They've intrigued me for years, and I have been spending some time getting to know, and photograph them.
These are a series of ongoing studies of the mighty oak. Enjoy.
OAK STUDY IX, 2017
OAK STUDY I, 2015
OAK STUDY IV, 2017
OAK STUDY III, 2017
OAK STUDY VI, 2017
OAK STUDY VI, 2017
OAK STUDY VIII, 2017
Here's a recent Artist Feature on artGuide's site:
Mike Basher. Beaufort, North Carolina. Mike Basher's tranquil work evokes a powerful sense of solitude. His photographic approach leaves the viewer with just enough sense of place to experience these environments, without overwhelming with excess information. Working exclusively with large format black and white film, his compositions are carefully chosen, delicately exposed, and printed in highly limited editions. www.bashergallery.com
POUND NET VI has been selected to be part of the Center for Photographic Art's 2017 International Juried Exhibition, in Carmel, California!!! The CPA was started 50 years ago by Ansel Adams, Wynn Bullock and Brett Weston, and is like THE epicenter for fine art photography, so...I'm feeling pretty proud right about now.
The juror, Philip Brookman, Consulting Curator in the Department of Photographs at the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. selected ninety photographs for the exhibit, out of over twelve hundred.
For more information, check out www.photography.org
About the Juror:
Philip Brookman is currently organizing Gordon Parks: The New Tide, 1940–1950, an exhibition of early work by the photographer and filmmaker and, in 2016, curated Intersections: Photographs and Videos from the National Gallery of Art and the Corcoran Gallery of Art.
Brookman was Chief Curator and Head of Research and Senior Curator of Photography and Media Arts at the Corcoran Gallery of Art from 1993 to 2014. There he organized exhibitions by celebrated artists such as Richard Diebenkorn, Eadweard Muybridge, Sally Mann, Emmet Gowin, Robert Frank, Arnold Newman, Larry Sultan, and Danny Lyon. He also oversaw development of the Corcoran’s photography and media arts collection and curated the Corcoran Biennial exhibition in 2000.
Brookman is also a photographer, filmmaker, writer, and editor. His book, Redlands, a work of fiction with photographs, was published by Steidl in 2015. He holds degrees in 20th Century Art History and Fine Arts from the University of California, Santa Cruz, and brings a deep and broad understanding and appreciation of diverse genres, styles and mediums to CPA’s 2017 IJE.
CYPRESS STUDY I and CYPRESS STUDY II, 2017
EXCITING STUFF!!! I just received some great news. More info to come, when APA releases more information...
This years contest features high profile judges that represent an excellent cross section of the photography buying community.