Messing with the tone knob.

On our most recent roadtrip, daytrip actually, we went through Springerville, seen above, and wound up in Greer which is up in the mountains above Show Low, Pinetop, Lakeside about another 40 miles up. We're pretty enamored of Greer, how could you not be? It's a resort town.
This tells me that we like altitude in this part of the country, more than we like high desert. From what my climatology teacher told me a while back in college, altitude and longitude have something in common. I seem to find that I prefer sea level in the North, and high altitudes way down here in AZ. When we hit 700o feet we start to go, "yeah, now that's what I'm talking about." But when we were up in Washington, I'm sure I needed the climate moderating which came from being coastal-- too cold in the mountains there. My friend, Francie, went nuts over the picture above when I posted it to Facebook.


I just re-edited this one from our previous trip to Sedona, back In January I think that was.

Had a look recently at the photographer Sally Mann and her work. She did some really amazing large-format black and white photos of her family back in the 90's. Controversial because her kids ran around naked a lot. Later on she did a photo essay on dead bodies, and on civil war battlefields, using a very antiquated "wet-plate" technique. I think that the photos of her family are absolutely stunning. Later she got more into the "flawed on purpose" techniques to the point where she almost seems more enamored of the screw-ups than the work itself. If she had not taken the knock out portraits of her kids, I don't think she'd get the same kind of attention for dog-bones and decomposing bodies, incredibly under-exposed landscapes full of blur and dust spots, streaks and light leaks, but so it goes. She has however recognized that "picture perfect" somehow does not sell.

I'm trying to better understand fine art photography as recognized by the "experts" but so far, can't really. That stuff is all over the map. There does seem to be some prejudice towards large format film cameras and definite bias against digital photography. Other than that, I don't know but I will probably be looking into it a bit more.