Below the Firmament and the Heavens

What is meant by that?  Basically, the "firmament" is the sky with its weather, and the "heavens" is the space above the earth - or "outer space."  Thus, this latest photography book about Floyd County is beneath the sky and space, but the old biblical "Firmament and Heavens" sure sounds more prosaic.  Given the number of churches in Floyd County, the title is definitely appropriate.

Brethren Church, July 2024. Nikon F3, Ilford HP-5

This latest issue of Monochrome Mania is the result of my collaboration with Russell Young, a long-time photographer, teacher, and polymath who resides in Floyd County, Virginia.  I first met Russ in person in 2024, after having seen an online presence in 2023 of the Appalachian Center of Photography, located in Floyd.  After our first meeting, we both felt like we should have known each other for years.  Russ has been all over the world, held many different jobs, has taught photography, and is an expert in a multitude of subjects.  He received a PhD from the University of St. Andrews in Scotland late in life (2008), with his thesis title being on The Soft-Focus Lens and Anglo-American Pictorialism. His photography often includes the use of soft-focus lenses, and because of that I would call a lot of his work "Neopictorialism."  Russ has lived on his 75-acre farm in Floyd for about 15 years.  

Holga Panoramic 35, July 2024

I've visited Russ several times per year to go out and photograph along the back roads of Floyd County, which has more gravel roads than any other county in Virginia.  The rolling foothills of the Appalachians in Floyd County have been wonderful places to explore with abandoned farms and derelict buildings set in a lovely bucolic landscape.  Another turn on a different road, and you might see a million-dollar home or a horse farm owned by wealthy "outsiders."    Beef cattle and timber are the major agricultural endeavors in the area.  

Russ owns many different cameras.  You never know which one will be on the dash.

Riding around the back roads with Russ has been a great experience - we have become good friends, and being able to stay in the guest cottage at his farm has been a great convenience.  No streetlights, just the wonderful night sky and the sounds of nature. Last year, I thought that we should collaborate on a book of photos from Floyd County, and thankfully, Russ agreed.  He already had a large repertoire of Floyd photos taken in the previous 15 years, and unlike me, was able to photograph in the winter months, and of course, whenever he pleased.  I felt like an interloper, but to me, these were all new sights, and as is often the case, I was inspired by what I saw.  My last photo trip there was in March of this year, and I felt that there was finally enough material to finish the book.

Overalls are the camo that Russ uses to blend in with the locals.

Choosing my images for the book was a lengthy process of "yes" or "no" or "maybe" as I went through my scans from my negatives.  It would have been easy to make this an even larger body of work. However, picking images from the photographs by Russ was much easier.  His luscious images are much different from mine.

So, here we have it: Below the Firmament and the Heavens - An Exploration of Floyd County, Virginia, by Mark O'Brien and Russ Young.  It's 72 pages of black and white photographs of scenes in Floyd Co., Virginia.  The first half of the book are photos from Russ, and the second half are photos by me.  It's the 16th issue of Monochrome Mania, and it's no longer a "zine." but a book.   Because of its size, it's going to cost more than the typical 36-page zine.  I'm pricing it at $17.50, which is fairly inexpensive as photography books go.

May, 2025. Minolta XG-M, Eastman 5222.

It's perfect-bound, 8.5 x 11 inches, in landscape format.  I believe that you will be entranced by the photographs contained within the covers.  You can purchase it from my Etsy store while supplies last. 

Some sample pages:

As I write this, Russ is moving from his farm to a house in Roanoke, Virginia.  It too, has a guest cottage, and I look forward to some new photo adventures with my friend.

Producing Home and Farm News

8.5 x 11, 64 pages + covers.

My latest issue of Monochrome Mania, No. 13, is titled Home and Farm News.  Since I started Monochrome Mania, I have been producing three issues a year, until 2024.  I started working on the idea for the issue a few years ago, and kept photographing, and could not come up with a narrative I was happy with until this spring.  Home and Farm News is about my mother-in-law’s farmhouse and the farm, and stories from her about growing up and raising a family.   At first I envisioned a sort of impersonal story where the farm and farmhouse was the “universal” story about sold farms and the farmhouse.  But my initial approach was flawed.  It needed to be relatable and personal.  So, I interviewed Charlotte (my MIL) last year, and finally found a program that would convert the audio interview (90 minutes) into text. Believe me, that was a huge time-saver, and I was able to come up with text that I could weave into a narrative.  The interesting aspect of the program was that it also generated an AI summary of the interview, which was this:

The interview covers the life stories and memories of Charlotte Murphy and her family. Key topics discussed include her father's dairy farming background in New York, her parents' courtship and marriage, her childhood experiences like having pneumonia and visiting Florida, her college years at Middlebury as an English major, her work at the local bank, her marriage to Jim, the family's involvement in dairy farming, the tragic barn fire that impacted their business, her children's careers in nursing and horticulture, her fondness for baseball stemming from listening to Brooklyn Dodgers games with her father, and reflections on life lessons like financial prudence and maintaining good health.

I was actually quite impressed with that!  But worry not, no AI was used in MY writing, nor the images.  The impetus for the Home and Farm News was this, as explained in an excerpt from this issue:

“Over my many years of photography, I regret not making photos of the Murphy farmhouse back in the late 1970s and early 1980s.  At that time, being a young man, I didn’t really have the conceptual framework to do documentary photography, let alone photographing to record what might someday be lost.  It wasn’t until 2000 that I started taking photography seriously as a means of expression, exploration, and self-discovery. By that time, any trips back to New York State were infrequent, and hence, more meaningful in terms of documentary work. It wasn’t until 2020 when COVID disrupted our normal ways that an awareness took hold that I SHOULD put something together to at least memorialize the farmhouse.  It’s easiest to do absolutely nothing, but then to regret that nothing was done.  So, while the effort to bring all the photos together is one aspect, so too, is the task to create some sort of narrative. I do believe that while a good photograph does not necessarily need to have any explanation, photographs do not exist in a vacuum, and removing the context from a photograph may reduce or obfuscate its intended purpose. So, creating a narrative for this work is essential in making the images speak with more clarity, even when the image itself may not be sharp or defined.”

 Of course, aside from the text, there have to be many photographs, and choosing the ones to include from the hundreds of images was certainly a task. However, it was made easier by the decision to have the images follow the text, and even when there was no caption for the image, it was obvious in what sequence it belonged.  

This was a personal project for me, as my long-time association with the family and the farm gave me a different viewpoint from the family members that grew up there.  I wanted to be able to tell Charlotte’s story, as well as how I perceived the farm.  Another impetus was wanting to finish the issue and have it printed and available in time for Charlotte’s 98th birthday - which I did.  

My instincts were correct, as I have received many heartfelt responses from the readers who are not family members. Most importantly, Charlotte loved the result.  While I didn’t cover every aspect of her life in the 64 pages — who could?— I believe that readers come away with a better appreciation of farm life, and how a house becomes the container of many memories.  Once the family no longer lives in that house, there will be little to connect it with the past, and I wanted to impart how those memories are intertwined with the physical objects.  

apologies to Wright Morris.

I used a variety of cameras, both film and digital, to make the b&w images used in the issue.  The last photos taken were done with my friend Bill Pivetta’s Hasselblad 503CX that he loaned me in 2023.  My suggestion for anyone doing a project such as this is to use every available tool that you have, as it’s the image that is important, not the camera or film that you used, or type of imaging sensor.  You can tell a story with a 6 megapixel 20 year old digicam, or with large format cameras, and everything in between.  The important thing is to document what you see.  I loved photographing the inside of the farm house early in the morning, before anyone else was up.  The peacefulness and the incoming light was always inspirational.  Also, I often used a tripod, as some exposures were around a second or two.  I never used flash, just ambient light.  

Here are some of my favorite images from the issue, and if you are interested in buying a copy, I am selling them in my Etsy store at $16 + shipping (US only).  

Twenty Years of Holgas

 

Yes, this is a pitch for my latest issue of Monochrome Mania!  First of all, when I started Monochrome Mania in 2020, I had no idea that I would be publishing a 12th issue just a few years later.  Yes, for me, it's my creative outlet, and more importantly, I'm able to reach many more people with a zine than with a gallery showing.  

Twenty Years of Holgas actually started in about 2001, when I got my first Holga.  But, it really was not until 2003 that I was using one to create memorable images.  I don't care what camera that you use, but it takes some time before you are really proficient with it. With a Holga, that means accepting its limitations, but also knowing when you can push it beyond the "snapshot" with technique, choice of film, and subject choice.

In preparing this issue, I reviewed many hundreds of negatives from my Holgas. Luckily, I had almost all of them scanned in previously when I was working on the medium format toy cameras for MM No. 3, which is now out of print.  Still, reducing 20+ years of photos down to less than 50 images is a feat.   It's not like I have shot with a Holga every day every year, either. I was most prolific with the Holga between 2007-2010, and there are a few years that I hardly shot with it.  Nevertheless, the Holga  is still a camera that gives me wonderful results in certain situations, and I continue to use it.   Could this be a prelude to a larger work?  Maybe.  I still have many stories to tell with toy cameras, and the Holga hasn't been the only instrument for that.

Here are a few samples from this latest issue.

Twenty Years of  Holgas is 48 pages, including the covers, and measures 8,5 x 8.5 inches. It's a quality print publication, done by Mixam.  

I have changed my shipping to USA-only.  International shipping now costs almost as much as the zine, and to be honest, it's a pain in the butt to ship internationally, as Etsy does not handle that aspect very well.  

  Here are a few images that did not make the zine issue.

  

PANOZINE - for Panoramas

I’ve been thinking for a long time about publishing a zine dedicated solely to panoramic film images.  The first iteration in a way, was the Monochrome Mania issue No. 9 featuring the works of 4 photographers using the Ansco Pix Panorama camera.  Instead of being a typical portrait 8.5 x 11” format, I switched the layout to landscape format, so that the page was 11” long and 8.5” high.  It worked well, but there was a lot of white space, which in the presentation of Monochrome Mania, is quite okay.  However, I didn’t feel that it was the best way to convey the panoramic idea on the page.  It would have been even better to have a page 11 or 14” long and about half the height.  I started looking at the page layout offerings of my printer (Mixam) and found that they have a 4 1/4 by 11” print size.  That could work.  So, after developing the negatives from my Sprocket Rocket from my mid-September trip to Michigan, I immediately started working on the first issue in the new format, and PANOZINE was born.

I feel pretty lucky to be able to afford to have a zine printed and then be able to sell it, and with Monochrome Mania already established as a three-issues/year zine, I have a ready audience for any new venture.  At least I hope so. My plan is to sporadically publish PANOZINE, with each issue featuring the results from a particular camera.  I also would like to be able to print in color, as well as feature other photographers.  I’m not yet sure how I’ll do that, as I don’t want a situation where I get a hundred submissions from random people for a single issue.  Given that panos are not something that everyone does, and fewer do well, I think the opportunity to present other photographers’ work could be quite interesting.  I can envision issues either featuring a certain camera or a theme as being something that could work.   I will probably do what I did for the Ansco Pix MM issue, and invite photographers that have already produced quality panoramic images.

This first issue of PANOZINE features images from my Lomography Sprocket Rocket, a camera that certainly has a distinct look, and provides pretty good results within in its capabilities.   My camera has a bit of history, as I bought it from Trish Korous in Chicago, back in early 2017.  I have been using the camera every so often, and when I see my negatives, I usually wonder why I don’t shoot with it more than I do.  Anyhow, after my September Michigan trip, I realized that I had enough shots with it to put together at least a proof-of-concept zine with the name I had stored away in my head - PANOZINE, which of course, sounds a bit like some Italian dish.  

My run of this initial issue is 60 copies, as I am not quite sure how the sales will be. If you are interested in a copy, it’s 32 pages with covers, in b&w, and the cost is $7.00 + your state tax and $1.50 for shipping via first class mail.  I am selling only in the USA at this point. You can order it from my Etsy store.

So, perhaps you’ll see color and more pages in future issues, but I guess that depends on how well this first attempt sells.  I do have high hopes for this venture, though. It’s certainly been a really fun zine to put together, with minimal text and one photograph/page.  If you have purchased a copy and are reading this, I would definitely appreciate any feedback.

The Simple Plastic Camera

 Over the course of a couple of decades of photography, I’ve often extolled the virtues of simple plastic cameras, and with two issues of Monochrome Mania that dealt with medium-format and 35mm simple cameras, I guess I have promoted them as much as anyone can. That doesn’t mean that they are the best cameras, by any stretch of the imagination. But what they do well, is to offer a different image than something from a much better set of optics that are found in your "real cameras."  I’ll never forgo using my Nikons or Spotmatics, Leica M2, or my Yashicamat, Pentax 6x7, etc. in favor of a simple plastic camera. However, that does not mean that I won’t carry one in a camera bag along with the pro gear. Michael Kenna, a fantastic photographer that has mostly used Hasselblads, published a wonderful book of Holga-based photographs which I wrote about several years ago.  It’s often dependent on a situation where one can use a simple plastic camera (toy camera, crappy camera, etc.) in a way that complements your other cameras. In fact, there have been times when a Holga image from my travels captured a place and time far better than any more complex camera could have. Part of that is knowing the best situation for simple cameras, and knowing that the exposure falls within the capabilities of the camera. 

In the past few years, we have been inundated with new plastic 35mm cameras that are reusable, and generally have the same specifications - a 35 mm focal length lens with an aperture of f/8 or f/11, and a single shutter speed of about 1/100 sec.  All have a flash, and that’s pretty much it for control.  We all know that those small acrylic lenses are actually pretty good, because the single-use cameras have been using them for years. I’m not saying they are better than my 35mm f/2 Nikkor, which they are not.  But they have a specific character that I find endearing - sharp at the center, but no so much at the edges.  These cameras also weigh nearly nothing and are compact.  So, adding one of them into your camera bag or jacket pocket isn’t a big deal. 

I recently finished up a roll of film in my Dubble SHOW camera.  It had been bouncing around from bag to bag for over a year, and it had a roll of Fujifilm Superia 200 loaded the whole time.  It’s obvious that I didn’t shoot with it a lot, but when I had the film developed I was surprised at how long it had been loaded with the same roll of film. I had shot the last half of the roll when I was in downtown Asheville, and had already shot the film that was in my Leica M2 and Spotmatic, and rather than reload them, I just shot with the Dubble camera on my way back to my car.  I’d forgotten even what film stock was in it.  I was quite pleased to see the negatives, and the Superia 200 has a very good latitude of exposure.  What pleased me the most though, was that the scanned images had saturated tones and just enough loss of detail, that they demonstrated that sharpness does not matter nearly as much as composition and subject matter.

It’s certainly possible that one could use one of these little plastic cameras for a lot pf photographic projects and come away with some memorable images. Yeah, I know it’s not the camera, but the photographer, but if you work within the parameters of the camera’s best scenario of exposure, you will come away with better images.  A lot of people trying film for the first time will pick one of these simple cameras and then wonder why their photos look like crap.  Most of the time, it’s because they don’t understand exposure or understand light.  These cameras will do fine if in perfect (for them) conditions, and loaded with any film of ISO 200-400.  After all, they are basically nothing more than 35mm box cameras.

But whoa, if these cameras are just cheap little plastic box cameras, why am I recommending one?  As I said in the beginning, put one in your bag with your better gear.  You may find that perfect moment when using one makes sense.  It’s not about the megapixels, it’s not about perfect sharpness and great detail - it’s about emotion, sense of place, and the unsharpness of memory. I’ve used toy cameras for 20+ years, and whether it’s a 35mm Holga, a Vivitar T101, a Reto Ultrawide and Slim, or the latest Kodak/Harman/Ansco/Reto /Dubble 35mm camera, you’ll find that having one (or even two)  in your camera bag will afford you the opportunity to exercise some creativity and even freedom to try something different. If you are curious about what 35mm simple plastic cameras are available, get a copy of Monochrome Mania Number 7 - The Magic and Allure of Toy Cameras, Vol. 2 - 35mm. It’s a steal at $10.

Someone’s going to ask - "How do I know what are the right conditions?"  Learn about exposure as it relates to ISO - film sensitivity to light, aperture, and shutter speed.  If your plastic camera is the Harman simple use camera or the Dubblefilm SHOW - it has a 32mm f/8 lens with a 1/100 sec shutter speed. On a day in full sun with ISO 100 film, it will slightly overexpose the film (should be f/11 or f/16) with that combination.  Overexposing a bit is not a problem with b&w and color negative films.  On on cloudy bright day, it should still be good.  Not so good in shade or overcast conditions, though.  Under overcast conditions, ISO 400 film would be a better choice.  Indoors, you’d need to use the built-in flash for subjects no farther than 12 feet away.   The specifications for the other cameras introduced in the past few years are going to be similar.  In most cases, if you use a 200 ISO black and white or color film, you will be pleased with the results with outdoor photographs on sunny to partly cloudy days.  

I highly recommend David Mihaly’s "The Old Camera Guy" YouTube videos where he uses simple plastic cameras.  They’ll give you a good idea of the type of results you can expect.  Unless your camera has a Bulb mode for long exposures, stay away from any film that has an ISO lower than 100. ISO 200 film is the sweet spot for most of these cameras.

Photography should be fun, and while one should be attentive to the proper techniques for the best results, sometimes it doesn’t hurt to take a chance and let that imprecise 35mm plastic camera do its magic.