Friday morning, September 3. I’m checking my personal e-mail account for updates on various things. Hmm… someone I wrote an article about for Goldmine years ago is traveling in Europe and lost all his money, and needs to borrow some from me to get back home. Nice try.
Oh, I got a response from Film Rescue International – the film roll that I found in the Ansco Cadet was so poorly deteriorated, there was no way to recover anything from the vintage roll of film – except for one picture. Unfortunately, that picture was one that I took to finish up the roll. Hey, I tried – and if nothing else, I got a decent 127-film camera out of the process.
Hey, here’s an e-mail from Kelly Ann Grimaldi of St. Agnes Cemetery. All the pictures that were entered in the St. Agnes Cemetery photo contest – including the one I took – are now on display on the second floor of the Colonie Memorial Town Hall at 534 Loudon Road, Newtonville, New York 12128. Winners will be announced on Sept. 22nd sometime between 4 – 5 PM. I lam so looking forward to attending the event.
Hmm… this is interesting. A few weeks ago, Times Union blog boss Michael Huber passed along a press release from the New York State Museum, in which they were looking for landscape photos for a new exhibit called “Wish You Were Here.” I submitted two of my landscape photographs – Star Trails of Thacher Park and General Electric at Night – and blogged about the exhibit.
You might remember the two photos – the Star Trails of Thacher Park was taken off the Helderberg Escarpment in June 2010; I took the General Electric sign photo last year, only to discover it found a new life as part of a website for an engaged couple. Aww….
So this morning, I received an e-mail from Mehna Harders Reach, the Senior Museum Exhibit Planner of the New York State Museum.
I just wanted to let you know that both of your photographs were chosen for the bricks-and-mortar exhibit. That being said, we are still in the process of installing and I can not promise that both of the photographs will be up for this weekend. We are going to continue to add photographs for the duration of the exhibit and the collage of photographs will grow organically as we receive, select and print more photographs. I do know that your photographs have been printed, but I am not sure if they are up on the wall yet. It will definitely be there by next week.
Thank you for your interest and your submissions! Have a great weekend.
Sincerely, Mehna
Wow… my first photos to ever get included in a museum exhibit! Amazing!
Much thanks to Mehna and to the New York State Museum; and if you have any landscape photos from the great Empire State that you would like to have included in this exhibit (apparently there will be new images added through the exhibit’s run), visit this link for more information.
Of course, the last time I really “visited” the New York State Museum, they were still showing that “Chronicles of Change” film in one of their auditoriums.
So Saturday I drove over to the Museum to see what they did.
The wall itself is covered with beautiful photographs of New York State landscapes – I could see the Empire State Plaza and Niagara Falls and the New York City skyline. Didn’t see my photos, but then again Mehna did say that not all the pictures have been printed.
But it’s another step. And in the end, that’s all that matters.
Chuck The Writer 
Nice job. I was a little apprehensive because they’re printing… I have enough trouble getting my own prints looking how I would like, not being able to see them before they go on the wall…! I’ve since heard good thinsg though, so if they’re still taking submissions maybe I’ll try a few.
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The prints look actually really nice on the wall, outside the main exhibit. Yes, you can still submit, there were almost 150 photos on the wall Saturday, pretty much 1 out of 6 or 7 submissions had been accepted (estimates my source). It’s anonymous. No name, no ribbons 🙂 There is some great stuff. There were only 3 or 4 HDR photos, and 0 infrared, I’m glad they curated “straight up” shots IMHO. There is 1 or 2 “into the sun” shots, so your recent one could work, and *a lot* of waterfalls photos with ND filters, I hope they are all set with that 🙂 I would definitely suggest you submit the ones you had printed for the Audubon charity.
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I like that it’s anonymous, that makes it a fun game…
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Here is the online gallery:
http://www.nysm.nysed.gov/wishyouwerehere/
and the corresponding Flickr group:
and the photoset:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/nysmuseum/sets/72157624901213256/
Already 261 photos in the group. Not all of them seems to be there, I hear somebody saw one of my photo on the wall, but I don’t see it in the Flickr group.
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Hello Chuck…Sorry but I need to correct you…The film you sent didn’t work out very well because what had been shot on it was grossly underexposed and improperly exposed – not due to the condition of the film.
It looks like someone was fiddling with the camera shooting off random shots of nothing paying no attention whatsoever to composition or exposure. The picture of the lampshade on the ceiling is good evidence of this. If I had a dollar for every one of this type of picture that we develop…well I wouldn’t be a rich man but I could buy myself a coffee or two a week. One of my favorites of the camera fiddler shots is the confused looking person looking into the lens as they fire off pictures trying to figure out if the camera is working or not. Unfortunately you weren’t graced with one of these.
Your one exposure is the one that worked out because it was properly exposed. The film was in a little bit below average condition for this type of film. Had the photographer who was in possession of the film and camera before you, been as capable as you, you would have had 12 fair quality images in slightly better condition then the one that you shot. Our consistent experience with these long expired films is contrary to conventional wisdom. The exposures shot when the film was new almost always work out a good deal better then freshly shot exposures on very old film. The most extreme case of this is with K-11 process Kodachrome film that is often completely blind to new light while still retaining very poor to fair quality images shot a half a century earlier.
Thanks again for your order!
Cheers
Greg
Film Rescue International
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Here is the wall, as of a couple of weeks ago:
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Umm… did you guys happen to notice that both your photoblog websites are on the blog roll at right? 🙂
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