Photographs from the Girdner Gallery Show

I'm in a group that goes by the name, F8 Photo Salon. We meet weekly to discuss photography and show our work in print or on screen, and that of other photographers as guests or in review on screen.

 In December 2018,  I was one of 6 photographers from f8, showing 6 photographs each in the, Girdner Photo Gallery in Pasadena, CA. The opening was a perfect opportunity for me to express what went into making the images, and what I was attempting to convey with the aesthetics of the photographs.

Thanks for stopping by!

Jim   

Revisions/Reconsidered

I'm showing a pair of sample images that I have reconsidered in this era of the pixel. What began as a series of objects photographed on a lightbox in the 1990s, with a 4x5"view camera using film,  I am now finding has an alternate existence in the digital realm.  The new images were always there, it just required new means through the tools of technology to find them.  Jim Staub_November, 2018

             

Chalk on the Walk - The Artist and the Spectator

Pasadena, California has a great number of arts related events, in addition to many galleries and museums found within the city.  One of the more popular art events is the Spring, once known as Chalk on the Walk and now, The Pasadena Chalk Festival. It has been going for over 20 years and grows in size each year with participants and spectators. I went to one of the first modest chalk events, so I can vouch for the event's thriving success of the present.

With the volume of people at the Chalk Festival it is always a good chance for the street photographer in me to exercise capturing the interactions and elements that come together to make a well timed image. The artists are caught up in their open air concrete 'canvas' chalk works. The observers are there to see the artists in their focused passion of creativity. The photographer is there attempting to catch the interplay between the forces chalk brings together... in approx. 90 min. of meandering.

Jim Staub, 11-2-18

The People's Provisional Property

My experience with the Pasadena Rose Parade goes back to 1967 when my father parked my brother and I at a busy corner of the parade, and went to work policing the parade. It was a long stay standing in one spot that day. We had a Kodak Brownie camera and maybe snapped 3 pictures.

In 1972 I took a 35mm camera to the parade, while in a college photography program,  and began a  annual study of the Tournament of Roses that has continued to the present. No longer stationed in one location, I roamed the parade route, new areas at each parade.

Documenting this annual event has provided me a chance to observe the habits of people who assemble for that brief time along the parade route. I have been intrigued about the means the public arranges themselves for optimum viewing prior to the advancing parade.  It could be atop ladders, cars,  motorhomes... or, arriving early and marking off a sector of the sidewalk with chalk or tape. The city of Pasadena paints a blue line on the street to give the public a boundary line not to cross during the festivities.

Below are a number of examples from several recent parades of what I have come to term, The People's Provisional Property. Hmm... that's a bit stuffy.

Thanks for looking. Jim Staub, May - 2018

My Photo Postcard Era: 1990-2005

The picture postcard has been around since 1897 in America. I collected my first cards on a family vacation to the MidWest during the summer of 1966.  Some time in the latter part of the 1970s my twin brother introduced me to antique postcards via a visit to a postcard show at an old hotel in Pasadena. I bought one old card,  which I still have.  A decade later I was attending local postcard and vintage paper shows on a semi regular schedule. Being a photographer I had made black and white postcards beginning about 1974 using Kodak postcard paper which had a divided back and the word P O S T C A R D  printed across the top portion of the card.  But in 1990 I had the bright idea that I could make cards in the darkroom without the Kodak paper cutting my own double weight paper to size and stamping the reverse side with a custom made stamp. I also employed a method to print captions on to the sensitized side of the card using lithographic film.  It was fun while it lasted. The last cards I printed in the darkroom were done about 2005, or when digital photographer finally persuaded me to leave the chemical behind.

Here is a very random sampling. Part 1 :

Thanks for visiting!  Jim Staub