Agua – Water Infrastructure
photographs by
Michael Strain
These images are abstracts from our built environment “infrastructure” highlighting the means of water distribution in places where I’ve travelled including Oaxaca, Chiapas, Guanajuato, and the Yucatan in Mexico, and the Sololá (Lake Atitlan) Department of Guatemala.
The viewer is invited to consider the objects in the photograph as compositional elements… rather than being the subject of the photograph per se. In this approach the intended subject is the composition itself, comprised of the geometrical, texture, color relationships, and cultural associations of the various objects. The photograph is an “abstract” or sample seen from a particular point of view.
However, implicit in the series is recognition of the global challenges and equity of obtaining safe drinking water and the illustration of some of the means by which people have adapted.
These photographs in this group were all taken with an iPhone
Growing up in Montana, Michael Strain was first introduced to photography and darkroom work by his grandmother at about age eight. In college he managed the darkroom in his dorm while narrowly missing the popular photography courses taught at MIT by Minor White. In the mid-1970’s he began working with large format cameras and produced a series of one-of-a-kind 8x10 color Polaroid images taken with a home-built view camera. Recently retired as an instrumentation scientist at the University of Oregon, Strain has renewed his photographic efforts, but now using an iPhone as a primary tool. The phone is kind of like a miniature view camera with a wide-angle lens. It is appealing because of its small, inconspicuous size making it perfect for international travel and spontaneity. Modern ink-jet printers capture the crisp, brilliant colors that drew him to the color Polaroid medium of days gone by.
framed 8x8 limited edition prints
These images were shot in August 2022. The wheat harvest was for the most part finished. What remained were empty fields and the tracks of the harvesting machinery. The area is rolling hills with the harvest machine tracks as level as possible. These tracks leave a wonderful pattern of curves.
I shot planning for black and white images, and toned them in processing. I visualize my photographs with an eye for graphic composition, impact, and interest. My intent is to let the viewer smile, think, and appreciate a vision of the world that may be unique to them.
This series of images is a collection of toned Black & White landscape photographs. I shoot “real world” images and process them to manage perspective, color, tone, composition, and the final feel of the print.
"When I first started as a serious photographer more than fifty years ago it was black and white darkroom photography and the Zone system of black blacks and white whites with steps of grays in-between.
Through many twists and turns over the years I have done many different types of photography. Today, I find myself mostly a digital color nature and wildlife photographer with an occasional black and white photo in a show.
Though this is a digital photography exhibit it takes me back to my beginnings with an all-black and white show. It also includes much more wide-angle landscapes and macro work than my usual large telephoto work with 400mm to 1000mm lenses of the past ten years.
These images were shot on film with large format pinhole cameras (either 4x5 or 8x10), then scanned and printed archivally on an inkjet printer. To retain the “feel” of the analog source, only traditional darkroom adjustments have been made to the digital image, such as spotting, cropping and toning.
Gene Tonry is a long-time member of the PhotoZone Gallery group in Eugene. His interest in photography goes back to the late 1970s when he took classes with master printer George Tice and fashion photographer Victor Steinhart in New York City. Having made the switch from film to digital in the early 2000’s, he now finds it both interesting and ironic to be shooting with film again:
“I have long admired the elemental, dreamy quality of fine pinhole prints, and truth be told, I think there’s something about the anticipation, guesswork, and surprise that’s part of shooting with film that I missed after switching to digital.”
Gene Tonry
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(Life Aware of Itself)
Have you ever seen a Cooper’s Hawk having lunch, a Green Heron catch a frog, an Otter sitting on a log eating a fish, an immature Bald Eagle sunning itself on an old snag, a Great Blue Heron nest building, or a Marsh Wren that seldom appears from the thicket singing to you in the wetlands. These are the sights Greg sees and photographs on his walks and he will share all these wonderful things with you in his new exhibit.
Most people assume that a photographer waits for something to happen with all the patience in the world and there are nature photographers that do, but Greg wanders always looking for the tree, the insect, the mushroom, the bird, the flower that he thinks will take a great photograph.
Greg, an award-winning nature and wildlife photographer, may argue over the word, accidental, if you are out looking for photo options is it an accident that you find good photo opportunities? He would probably say it was the gift to find surprises that can turn into amazing pictures.
The best example this year of an amazing surprise was being on the pedestrian & bike bridge over the Willamette River at Valley River and seeing the diving waterfowl, Common Mergansers, swimming towards the bridge. Female and immature Common Mergansers have a burnt orange head with feathers flaring out behind and a long thin orange beak. An interesting bird to look at but these diving birds arch their back and are gone under the water. This time though Greg was in the right place on a sunny day with clear water so that he could see and photograph down through the water as the Mergansers swam acrobatically under the water to catch fish.
Website: https://greggiesy.zenfolio.com
Ben Birkey, Danger Adams, Sandy Brown Jensen, Adrienne Turner, Jon Sims, Lisa Ertmer, Brian Maneely, Chris Moody, Bee Beins, Karen Landey, Elija McFarlane, Brenna Hansen, Koa A Tom, Bailey Hoover, Kiliisa Alama Conlon, Seth Warhol-Streeter, and Jen Blue
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