Big Bend National Park offers some spectacular landscapes, but just across the Rio Grande in Mexico, the Sierra Maderas del Carmen towers over the rive valley like a fortress. The range is part of a protected natural preserve, but far less developed and far less accessible than what we have on the U.S. side.
The first two images were made with the Leica M4-P and Summicron 35 on Cinestill BWXX, a film stock I love for its rich blacks and strong contrast.
The next two were shot on the Voigtlander Perkeo II 6×6 medium format camera, again on Cinestill BWXX. I messed up in developing this roll leaving a bit of staining on the negative.
Being a huge fan of onsen hot springs in Japan, I couldn’t pass up the chance to visit the one in Big Bend. We stopped at the trailhead that leads to the Boquillas Hot Springs to cook dinner, then visited a few other sites before sundown before heading back to take a dip in the warm waters after dark.
At one time, these springs right on the banks of the Rio Grand were a huge attraction. There’s an old post office that’s been converted into a visitors center and the remains of a ‘motor court’ that housed visitors.
Today, they’re just the empty buildings.
Shot on Cinewtill BWXX with the Leica M4-P.
The dramatic cliffs seem to hand over the motor court but are actually a way down the trail toward the hot springs.
The post office looks like a movie set.
And a medium format shot taken on the Perkeo II, which looks even more like a still from an old-time movie.
There was no way our little rental faux SUV was going to make it down even the first steep slope onto the Black Gap Trail, a high-clearance, 4×4 only trail – marked ‘primitive’ on the maps – off of the Glenn Spring Road.
Our car (a more accurate description than the subcompact SUV label the manufacturer likes to use) was already taking a beating on the relatively tame Glenn Spring Road. I was worried enough about what the rental agency would say when I turned it in at the end of the trip.
So we parked the vehicle and walked down the trail to see the actual Glenn Spring, which was flowing nicely but petered out onto a mostly dry creek bed. I decided to make my way down the creek embankment and follow the creek for a bit and came upon this:
This was taken on my Leica M4-P with the Summicron 35. I also made an image with my Voigtlander Perkeo II, a favorite travel medium format camera because it’s so compact. I think I like the square framing better. Here’s the shot:
I’m told it’s a deer skull. I figure someone place the skull on the rock. It was just too perfectly set and there were no other signs of where the rest of the body may be. Then again, maybe it was the work of some scavenging desert critter.
If I stood up, you could see anyone walking along the Black Gap Trail, but the creek bed was invisible from the road. Than and the fact that the National Park folks stress that it’s illegal to carry out just about anything you might find in the park probably explains why the skull was sitting there.
I’ve posted a lot color images these past few weeks, but the majority of my work is in black and white. If I go out with one camera, it’ll be loaded with black and white film. If I have more than one camera on me, at least one will be loaded with black and white.
That was the case on my trip to see the Bread and Puppet Theatre this past August up in Glover. These shots were made in the group’s museum where they house puppets – many of them towering – and props from past shows. It’s pretty creepy and at the same time awe-inspiring.
I’ve also included a black and white version of the Cheap Art bus, as well as an image of a storage building that caught my eye because of the way the light was falling on the clapboard siding.
These photos don’t differ much from those on the previous post – taken at the same time at the same location, but with a different camera.
I had to fly to Texas which limited how much gear I could fit into my carry-on. I would never check in my cameras. So I had the Leica M6 with me for 35mm, and for medium format I chose the Fujica GW690 (the Texas Leica, appropriately enough) which took up space but was light and self contained. It was also convenient that both cameras were rangefinders.
Anyway, here are the photos shot on long expired (1982) Kodak Tri-X. I’ve shot a quite a few rolls from this stash and I’m finding they’ve held up well.
The last photo is the view down into the riverbed. You get to the pools by following the bed toward the bottom of the image.
Big Bend Ranch State Park serves up grand vistas, more subtle than it’s better known counterpart in the National Parks system. The colors are muted, as you might expect of a desert, but still rich and varies within its selected palette.
So a cistern built of yellowish stones really stood out. This was different from the round concrete cisterns you would find at the base of windmills in much of the landscape. To begin with, it was square. And, again, the color, much paler than anything nearby, catching the light at sunset and sunrise.
I kept driving past this cistern which was relatively near my campsite and near the main park road. Finally, I stopped to investigate one late afternoon. Then I stopped again. I took a lot of pictures.
These were shot on the Leica M6 and Fujica GW690, on Cinestill BWXX, Kkodak Tri-X and Kentmere 400.
The drive down from Marathon to Big Bend National Park down U.S. 385 serves up grand vistas of a mountain range – the Chisos, I believe, but it could have been another surrounding the park. I didn’t have anyone I could ask. These are big negatives, 6×9, shot on my trusty Fujica GW690. An all-mechanical, no-frills rangefinder seemed to be the right choice given I had a limit to what I could bring on the plane.
The Mamiya 330 TLR is a beast of a camera – not a good walk-around piece, though I did haul it out for a walk about our waterfront.
Its bellows focusing system allows you to get really close to your subject. The TLR format lets you get low to the ground. The two combined gives you a perspective different from most cameras. The lens – the standard Mamiya Sekor 80mm f2.8 – is no slouch either.
The film is from my stock of Tri-X 120 film that dates back to 1982. I shot it at box speed and it seems to have lost little of its punch.
Captured by Film 