jeromemartin.ca

Appreciating Kodachrome

Kodak has announced that it will no longer manufacture Kodachrome film. This is not a surprise, but it is a disappointment. It's the finest transparency ('colour slide') film ever made. Richard B. Woodward's excellent article in the Wall Street Journal traces the history of Kodachrome.

I have not been able to buy Kodachrome in Canada for the last two years, but I do have a couple of exposed films which I must send to the USA for processing.

While I use mostly black and white film I've used Kodachrome for the last four decades for colour work. While I can no longer buy unexposed Kodachrome I can continue to scan and work with the thousands of transparencies I've made since the mid-1960s. I'm pleased that I worked with the best colour film available and that I used a lot of it.

Collections of Kodachrome transparencies or other positives or negatives may be very valuable to families and to archivists. Don't let your father, your grandfather or your Aunt Maude discard them just because everybody is using digital photographs and '...well, we don't know who some of these people are.' These photographs are part of our photographic heritage.

The Colours of Saskatchewan VI

  

Saskatchewan

The Colours of Saskatchewan V

We are enjoying visiting and photographing Saskatchewan. This blog entry is the first of this year's Saskatchewan colour series.

Saskatchewan

Chiefswood, Home of E. Pauline Johnson

We visited Chiefswood, home of E. Pauline Johnson (1861-1913), one of Canada's best known poets. Chiefswood is located 13 km west of Caledonia along the Grand River between Onondaga and Middleport.

No book of poetry by a Canadian has outsold her collected verse Flint and Feather.

Chiefswood and other similar national treasures deserve our support, continuing funding, and, most of all, our respect.

History, Literature

The Grand River and Ruthven

We left Brantford, Ontario, this morning and travelled along the Grand River, stopping at several sites which are part of the story of Squire Davis and the Crazy River, including Ruthven. Ruthven Park was owned by the Thompson Family from the 1840s until 1993.

This is one of the most peaceful and beautiful areas in Canada: but its history will surprise you.

  

History, Squire Davis and the Crazy River

Learning Canadian History in Brantford, Ontario

We arrived in Brantford this afternoon and spent several hours photographing and learning about the early history of Brantford (Brant's Ford) from S. Minsos, the author of Squire Davis and the Crazy River (to be published this fall by Spotted Cow Press).

The Mohawk Chapel, was built in 1785 and given to the Mohawk people led by Chief Joseph Brant. Brant's tomb and a boulder with a plaque honouring the poet E. Pauline Johnson are located adjacent to the chapel.

   

The photography and (my) learning continues tomorrow. Please drop by: same time, same place.

History, Literature, Squire Davis and the Crazy River

Squire Davis and the Crazy River

I'm preparing for my first road trip of the year, a three day trip in and around Brantford, photographing for Squire Davis and the Crazy River, an historical novel by S. Minsos which we (Spotted Cow Press) will be publishing this fall.

I'm Canadian: I studied Canadian history in school: and yet I know very little about the history of Ontario in the mid-1800s. I've learned a lot from this novel about that history, and will learn more this coming week.

One of the our reviewers wrote: "Canadians have willful blind spots. I wonder whether we are ready to read about Ruthven and the Grand River Navigation Company boondoggle. That being said, what a story!"

I'll be writing blog entries on this trip, including photographs and more details about the book.

Spotted Cow Press

Edmonton and The Art Gallery of Alberta

I spend a lot of my business and personal travel time visiting art galleries and public art in various cities in North America and abroad. I have posted photographs and comments from these trips but have seldom focused on my home city, Edmonton, Alberta.

I was downtown for a meeting this morning and had enough time to get reasonably close to the Art Gallery of Alberta (formerly the Edmonton Art Gallery) which is being renovated and renewed. The gallery (designed by Randall Stout Architects) will be new and bold, contemporary, perhaps even startling to some. It's located in the Arts District near City Hall, The Citadel Theatre, The Francis Winspear Centre for Music ,and the Edmonton Public Library.

The photos were made with my trusty iPhone: low on pixels but very, very handy.

Walk through a model of this unique building and watch its progress on a live webcam.

Edmonton continues to grow and mature as a cultural centre. It's Festival City, a centre for theatre, music and art. Edmontonians tell their stories about their art, their work and their lives on the new website Edmonton Stories.

While I won't be able to attend all the festivals this summer I will be at The Works Art & Design Festival, the Edmonton International Jazz Festival and the Edmonton Folk Music Festival: and I plan to save some time for my own work.

Join us if you can. Edmonton is just a three hour flight from Chicago or a five hour drive from Saskatoon.

Architecture, art and art galleries, Edmonton

Scanning Vintage Prints

I'm scanning black and white photographs for a book which I'll be publishing in various formats (electronic and paper) later this year. Some of these photographs are 36 years old and are printed on some wonderful papers, such as Ilford Galerie, which are no longer available.

A high quality scanner and excellent software allow me to adjust the tonal qualities of some of the prints which I printed a bit too dark or too light. If I had the original paper I would print new photographs in the darkroom, but that's not possible. Using new papers would be the next best approach, but many of them do not have the rich, luminous character of Galerie.

I'm organizing and scanning every print I have, creating large files which will be adequate for any use. This also gives me the opportunity to work with each photograph, often seeing it in a new way. I may reprint some of them in the darkroom but I have so many new images to keep me busy there that I may never reprint images that I have worked with in the past.

Creating high quality scans from high quality photographs allows one to use the best features of film photography and the digital world. Consider it for your best images and the others as well. Then back-up your files and store the copies in at least two locations.

darkroom

Fiction Podcasts from the New Yorker

One can easily fall in love with literature as a result of hearing it read.

As a child in a small Saskatchewan town I was fortunate to have teachers who read to us. In several of my early grades teachers would read from 'supplementary reading books' which were sent to us from the Department of Education in Regina. We did not have a school library: just textbooks.

In Grade Four our teacher read to us for half an hour immediately after lunch. Some of us put our heads down on our desks and closed our eyes. It was the best part of the day and the only part that I remember clearly.

Recently I've been listening to fiction from the New Yorker, some of the best stories published by the magazine read by some of today's best writers. A.M. Homes reads Shirley Jackson's 1948 story 'The Lottery'. Richard Ford reads John Cheever's 'Reunion.' The writers also discuss the works with New Yorker fiction editors.

I can listen to these stories on my computer or my iPod. Anywhere. Anytime.

Richard Ford said in his discussion of Cheever's short story that he had read it approximately 300 times. Technology and the New Yorker have given me the opportunity of hearing it read as many times as I choose.

I can put my head down on my desk, close my eyes and put myself into the world that Cheever describes. It's just like being in Grade Four in a small prairie town.

Literature, Podcasts