Cowboy Painter Joe Beeler Statue in Sedona, Arizona

A friend gave me his 1970s Olympus OM-1 because it belongs to a different time. Few people can find film, and even fewer places would develop them.

I suppose I belong to a past time that has not yet passed for me. Working in my darkroom provides the same excitement as it did almost 50 years ago. When the picture starts taking shape in the developing tray, it is still magic.

So, I wanted to try the camera. I have 6 OM-1s in my collection and all have traveled the globe with me and carry scars from each trip. This one has been kept almost intact giving the feel of using a new camera.

On a sunny Friday, went to Sedona, Arizona to wander around the city getting ready for Christmas. Many were taking pictures of the red rock formations, the Christmas decorations, and of dogs dressed in holiday garments. Being a strictly Black & White film user, red rocks are always monochrome for me, Christmas decorations seem to be non-creative, and dogs wearing silly hats, well, kind of silly. 

So, wanted to find that street photography moment for which B&W photos give a special character.

On the main street of Sedona, there is a bronze statue of a local cowboy painter Joe Beeler. It is slightly larger than life and faces the mountain and red rock formations. It is a perfect tribute to the environment and its cowboy heritage. The statue has probably been photographed a million times, but when I was walking by there was a man in a cowboy hat sitting behind it reading a book.

I immediately saw the scene in B&W, and decided to find an angle that would make the man as “bronze-like” as the statue. In order to prove that he was a living soul, wanted to find an indicator while respecting the identity of the book reader.

At that very moment he turned around to show his white beard, and that was what I needed.

Technical details: I used a 50 mm Zuiko lens opened to f11. Since I use slow film, the speed was set to 1/125 second. With such small f-stop all corners of the frame will be in focus. So, to give the printed photo a bit of blur and movement I used a 1950’s Russian Jupiter -3 camera lens instead of an enlarger lens. My enlarger is from the 1950s as well and it has a Leica 39 mm lens mount so I can use camera lenses from that era instead of enlarger lenses. While an enlarger lens is flat-field (meaning it will not distort the photo when printed) using a camera lens provides distortions outside the center of the frame. Used as such each camera lens has its own distortion characteristics. The Jupiter lens not only distorts but also gives a swirling feel to the distorted areas. Only one other lens I have, the coveted 1948 Carl Zeiss Jenna 7,5 cm Biotar f1.5 gives such swirl to the actual photo! See the tree in the left upper quadrant for Jupiter’s effect.

Now my two “statues” were surrounded by movement!

December 9, 2017

© Vahé A. Kazandjian, 2017