Pushing Through Addendum

When I wrote the last two Pushing Through articles, I used a couple of photos from one of my favorite cameras; my 1939 Voigtländer Bessa 6x9. I love using that camera and am always wonderfully surprised when I see the results. There is a lot of fuss made about lenses these days. How many elements in how many groups, what kind of coating, rotating or fixed front element, etc. Here's what I have to say about that. Photography is art (unless you are doing scientific or some other kind of strictly documentary photography). The artist needs to use the tools that will give him or her the results that are pleasing to them. If you like tack sharp perfection of contrast and color, then you should stick with modern lenses, preferably high-end ones. I have gone that route and even got caught up in 'pixel peeping' to make sure that my images were just as sharp as they possibly could be with the equipment I had. Then I rediscovered film via the Holga. This 'opened my eyes' to a world of color and shapes and blur and haze that I sort of knew existed, but never thought much about. That little plastic meniscus lens opened doors into creative spaces in my brain that I didn't know were there. Then I started buying old cameras and old film to see where that would lead and it took me deeper into those places. These days, I don't mind taking a shot or two with my DSLR or even on my phone (if required), but when I want to really be creative, I get out an old camera. Maybe it has a really nice lens (for its day), maybe it doesn't. In the case of these photos taken with my Bessa, the lens is a decent 'triplet' type without any coatings. The focus is done by estimation of the distance to the subject and exposure is measured either with a hand-held meter or by 'sunny sixteen'. These are not the sharpest, most contrasty, color accurate photos I could make, but I love the way this camera 'interprets' the light. It fits well with my artistic vision.

These were taken on Kodak Ektar 100 film. I don't shoot this film very often, but it does a very nice job rendering color in a vivid but accurate way. Compare these to the shots done with the same camera on expired Tri-X. Leave a comment if you have an opinion about which are better.

Pushing Through XV - The Final Entry

I have really enjoyed putting this series together. Looking for examples when I was out walking around my suburban environment turned out to be easy. Finding somewhat unique examples at a time of day that rendered them aesthetically pleasing was a bit more of a challenge. I always had in mind the photo I wanted to end the series with and so when I saw it while hiking around Lake Morena, I took a couple of shots with my '39 Voigtländer Bessa on some expired Tri-X I had loaded. It was mid-day, so the light is less than desirable, but I took the photos anyway and now I think it is time to bring this to an end and move on to another photo project. I hope you have enjoyed the series and look forward to any comments you would care to contribute.

Pushing Through XIV

This entry into the series is a little different. The theme of these photos is nature "pushing through" the obstacles set up by mankind. However in this case I found nature pushing through its own obstacle. We recently took a long weekend holiday out to the east of San Diego near Campo, CA at a place called Lake Morena. It is an old reservoir intended to store water for the city of San Diego. It was also a fishing lake that was stocked with various types of fish for sportsmen to catch. Recently, the decision was made to drain teh water down to other storage reservoirs closer to the city. This left Lake Morena at just 4% of it capacity. Really it is now a very small body of water and from our camp site, we could not see the lake, but we had a nice view of a meadow where the lake used to be. Right between our cabin and the meadow was a very big, very old California Live Oak. That is not very interesting, but what was interesting was that it was growing out of a crack in a huge outcrop of solid granite.

I can imagine a bird or squirrel dropping an acorn there in a small crack and maybe there were a few wet winters and mild summers that allowed the little sprout to get some roots down. Over the decades this tree has grown and actually pushed against the sides of the crack to expand it, sending roots deeper and growing bigger. Today it is truly beautiful and its branches spread out over the granite making a nice cool spot for animals and people to escape the summer heat.

This tree won't live forever, but it will live for a few hundred years, after which there will be a bright spot over a roomy crack in a big granite boulder... a perfect place to put an acorn for safe keeping.

Pushing Through XIII

Here is another in my series where I am capturing plants that are defying man's attempts to control them. You can see the rest of the series HERE.

This shot was taken in the waning light of late twilight. You can see the sodium lamps in the distance. The sky looks brighter than it was because I made a 5sec exposure on Portra 160 film. It was even too dark to get the focus right. You can see that it is about a foot or so in front of the particular bushy plant that I was 'aiming' at. This plant is growing up between the ties of an abandoned railroad track. The trees overhead are dropping debris on the rails as well. If this keeps up for another 10 or 20 years, the tracks will be lost to the mini urban jungle that is growing up around them.

Pushing Through XII

Wow, it's been a while since I've done one of these. This one is a root of a Ficus benjamina tree. If you live somewhere that these trees grow then you know what the roots do. They creep along the ground just under the surface and then they start to grow so that they break the surface and anything that has been built on it. That means that concrete sidewalks, barriers, foundations, etc. are all going to break. These are the trees that are going to be the rock smashers that level the cities after humanity has extinguished itself. For now though, they are an inconvenient beauty that decorates our landscape.

Pushing Through XI

When this tree was planted, they installed a steel grating around it. The idea being that the steel, being stronger than wood, would contain the tree within its provided circle. The tree didn't get the memo and had different ideas for its future. It has grown up and over the steel grate and will continue this growth until it consumes the steel. I'm sure that at some point the city workers will come along and cut down this tree and replace it with one they hope will be better behaved.

Pushing Through X

I found this photo on a roll that had been sitting in the refrigerator for a few weeks. I took it with my 1939 Voigtländer Bessa. I had the accessory mask inserted so instead of taking eight 6x9 photos, I got sixteen 6x4.5 photos. It is interesting to have these two options with this camera. Not only do you double the number of exposures on a 120 roll (at the expense of image size), but you get a different aspect ratio. The 6x9 aspect ratio is 2:3 and the 6x4.5 (commonly "645") ratio is 3:4. Of course the closer the ratio gets to 1, the more 'square-ish' the image. So something like 6x12 or 6x17 are really panoramic images while large format 4x5 (8x10) look quite square in comparison. Of course the standard 120 format is 6x6 which is a perfect square, but the 6x7 cameras are very popular too.
But I digress...

This plant isn't so much "Pushing Through" as much as "Taking Over". If you have ever tried to clear ivy, you will know that it can penetrate masonry and concrete easily with its little rootlets. This makes it quite invasive and difficult to control. One might even think of it as a pest, but not me. I find it beautiful in both appearance as well as principle. It does not 'care' what barriers man erects. Even the most permanent of monuments are merely a stairway to brighter sunlight for this survivor. Next time you walk by a building with ivy growing up the sides, stop and take a moment to appreciate the ingenuity of this plant which uses the barriers raised against it to mount up to the heavens and thrive all the more. I think there is a lesson in there for all of us.

Pushing Through IX

This is a little bit of a departure from the theme of the first 8 in this series, but I think that it is well within the overall theme of plants defying man's attempts to control them. In this case, the landscapers have pruned back a branch on a tree. The tree's response? Re-grow that branch of course (sprouting from the lower left of the scar). After all it was there for a reason.
I took this photo with my '39 Voigtländer Bessa 6x9. I had it loaded with one of my favorite films, Fuji Neopan Acros 100. I also was holding a deep yellow filter in front of the lens (there is no way to mount a filter on the front of this lens). I think the filter helped with contrast and with distinguishing the sky and clouds in the background.
See the rest of this series HERE.

Pushing Through VIII

A drainage ditch is something I had never see until I moved to San Diego. I lived in Pacific Beach for the first year and there is a large drainage ditch running through that neighborhood. In fact I drove over it every time I went to or from work. It was like a bog with very tall grasses growing there. The problem with that is that it also smells like a bog and in the summer I would drive through there with my windows open and I would pass through this massive stinking cloud of choking sulfurous stench. It was (and probably still is) a nasty little feature of the city landscape. Once we moved 5 miles east to Mira Mesa, it was quite a bit dryer. The drainage ditches here are much smaller, but they do collect debris which eventually makes a deep enough bed of substrate for something to grow it. It is another example of nature finding a way around man's design. In this case a big clump of grass has found a home.
Check out the rest of the series if you have a minute.

Pushing Through VII

See Pushing Through for an explanation of the series.

Pushing Through VI

See Pushing Through for an explanation of the series.

Pushing Through V

See Pushing Through for an explanation of the series.

Pushing Through IV

See Pushing Through for an explanation of the series.

Pushing Through III

At first glance, this looks pretty common. It's just a plant growing up through a gap in the sidewalk. But if you look a little closer, you'll see what attracted me to this particular one. First, behind the plant you can see that "they" have tried to seal up the gap with asphalt. This plant is growing in defiance of not only the sidewalk itself, but the added effort to keep nature at bay. The next thing to notice is that in fact the entire section of the concrete sidewalk is being pushed up from beneath. This is probably caused by a tree root. The roots push up and crack the concrete, then seeds get blown in and there they start to grow. I often try to imagine what things will look like in 200 years. Will man have truly mastered his environment so that his walkways are no longer damaged and 'littered' with these interlopers? Or will the plants continue to struggle and push through the concrete, reminding us that we are the intruders here? We are the ones struggling against nature. We are fighting on the side destined for failure. I want to think that we can come to some form of a 'truce' where man can allow more nature into his urban environment.


I took this photo with my Yashica Mat 124G, using Kodak T-Max 100 film. Development was in Caffenol-CL with 70min stand development. Scanned with an Epson Perfection V600. See Pushing Through for an explanation of the series.

Pushing Through II

This photo was taken nearby where I work along the street. You can see the fence in the background. On the other side of that fence there are trees and shrubberies, but it is a hillside, so it is not groomed or manicured in any way. This sort of 'wild' growth tends to send out root runners just under the surface of the ground and in this case under the pavement of the sidewalk. Then it finds a crack where moisture and light come through and it pushes up. You can see in this photo that the larger underground root has pushed the cement block up and away from the sidewalk, creating the 'crack'. I often wonder, "What will this place look like in 100 years, in 500 years?". I wonder if man will perfect the supression of these 'invasive' plants and have perfectly paved walkways with perfect 90-degree angles and none of this messiness. Or will man come to grips with his place in the world and welcome the wild back into his path. Will our cities become more natural or more manufactured? Time will tell I guess. Until it does, I will enjoy the struggle of these little ones pushing through.
Pushing Through I

Pushing Through

I have had this idea for a photo essay or series for a while. This photo is the first in the series. It is called Pushing Through I. The subjects of the series are plants that push through the holes and cracks in humanity's infrastructure. It is a metaphor for many things. A couple that come to my mind when I think about this photo are the persistence of life in general. There have been mass extinctions in the history of our planet, yet there is always some scrap of life that manages to survive. Recently, I saw a short film about the Nazi concentration camps and the genocide that happened there. Yet even in the face of that evil, horrific holocaust, there was a remnant of Jews who stayed alive, both in the camps and outside, hiding in attics and cellars. The life of an entire race squeezed through the cracks of hatred and violence. It is really about hope. I think I will work on this series with all of my cameras and see what sort of eclectic mix I can come up with. I hope you enjoy seeing it develop as much as I do.

Taken with Yashica Mat 124G on Lomography X-pro 200 film. Shot at 100 and developed in Unicolor C-41 chemistry using standard times and agitation.