In the 1980s I ran a computer bulletin board system (bbs) that was part of a network called Fidonet, a precursor to the World Wide Web. The inventor of Fidonet was a unique personality, Tom Jennings. Trolling around the net early this morning, I stumbled on his web site and this collection of images of nuclear tests which he harvested from a publicly-accessible computer at Los Alamos shortly before it was disappeared. The complete collection can be viewed along with Tom's notes on a page at his site.







Nuclear-Weapon States and Weapons:

United States: 5,914 strategic warheads, approximately 1,000 operational tactical weapons, and approximately 3,000 reserve strategic and tactical warheads.
Russia: 4,237 strategic warheads, approximately 2,000-3,000 operational tactical warheads, and approximately 8,000-10,000 stockpiled strategic and tactical warheads.
France: Approximately 350 strategic warheads.
China: 100-200 warheads.
United Kingdom: Less than 160 deployed strategic warheads.
India: Up to 100 nuclear warheads.
Israel: Between 75 to 200 nuclear warheads.
Pakistan: Up to 60 nuclear warheads.

Recycling

Neighborhood Parade






Shot with the $10 Vivitar Ultra Wide & Slim

Two cats and a close relative






Pentax Spotmatic

The National Atomic Museum in Albuquerque is getting ready to move to a new location away from its current facility in the Old Town District. The expanded facility will allow the display of several WWII-era aircraft as well as other new features. The exhibits in place now are pretty well mounted and tell their story well, with the exception of the parts dealing with the dropping of the bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The story is ok as far as it goes, focusing on the point of view of most Americans at the time about the rationale of the bombing and its outcome. Where it comes up short is in depicting anything near to what the reality was on the ground in Japan. There are a few statistics on deaths, a photo of an incinerated tricycle, and another of a bunch of smiling Japanese children in a memorial park. It is an inadequate portrayal of what happened.

I took the picture of the sign on the museum roof with a '1950s Soviet camera, a FED 1g that is a copy of the 1930s German Leica. I still need to do a little work on the shutter, but the camera and the Elmar-copy collapsible lens show great promise. As usual, the cats were happy to serve as test shot models and to help me finish off the roll.

El Malpaís and El Morro

The Writing on the Wall

A brief road trip down what-used-to-be Route 66 took us to two adjacent National Monument sites south of Grants, New Mexico -- El Malpaís and El Morro.

On the east side of El Malpaís I clambered up over the boulders for a close-up view of the giant rock arch known as La Ventana.

The visit to the spectacular El Morro site and its Inscription Wall provided some new rock art pictures and got me thinking about the question of why people write on walls. That is something that will be endlessly debated because it concerns what happens inside peoples' heads. What one can easily see at El Morro, however, is how culture shapes expression in the form of rock art, and later graffiti. Over the past few centuries European-inspired messages inscribed in the El Morro sandstone all had one basic message: "I was here". The earliest European visitors, the Spanish conquistadors, elaborated on that by adding "...for God and the Empire". There was some of that in the messages left by the early American explorers and settlers too, but later messages would be merely personal and individualistic. In the earlier rock art left by the indigenous peoples, there is no apparent "I", but only an implied "We" and a reference to the relationship of the people to the earth and the gods of the earth.

It is also interesting to note the changes in the rock art over time of both the indigenous people and the invading Europeans. Themes and techniques of the native people changed very slowly and showed great sophistication in execution. Up to about one hundred years ago, the messages left by European visitors were also characterized by considerable artistry and attention to craftsmanship. The earliest Spanish inscriptions at El Morro are done in a very refined calligraphic style. The brief messages left by Americans around the time of the Civil War show an awareness of typographic styles from that time and are executed with great care. Later visitors, starting around the beginning of the 20th Center leaving the "I was here" message clearly were barely literate, and that trend continues into the present time at such remote sites.

The Village of Doña Ana

I've added a few photos and words to my site's page about this little town a few miles north of Las Cruces, New Mexico. One of the reasons I like living in New Mexico is that one can still find these small traditional communities. Places like La Mesilla, Santa Fe, Taos and Albuquerque's Old Town have echoes of the old traditions, but mostly they are recently constructed fictions designed to fit the fantasies of tourists and help relieve them of their dollars.
    The change to the Doña Ana page is also part of an effort to make the web site easier to look at and navigate. I'm trying to put more of my recent photo work up front, and in some cases to provide more of my personal perspective on what the photos mean.
    The first six photos of Doña Ana were made with a borrowed Bessa-L and an ultra-wide Voigtländer lens. The last three pictures are from an old Bessamatic slr with the 35mm Skoparex.

Photo by Richard Evans Schultes

I saw a posting at photonet about an exhibit of the Schultes photographs at the Smithsonian which will run until November 2nd. I briefly discussed this subject in a previous posting after finding the book, The Lost Amazon. The fine picture above of the apprentice shaman is more representative of the quality of the photography in the book and the exhibit than the one I showed. The Smithsonian site also has a nice picture of Schultes with his Rollei.

Memory Go 'Round

Around 1950 my parents rented a place at Redondo Beach, south of Seattle. It was really just a little beach-front summer cottage with a fireplace and a wood stove for heat. I could walk across the road to play on the beach when the tide was out. When there were storms, the waves crashed against the wooden bulkheads and sent salt spray into our front yard. On the hills behind the house was a damp, dark forest of firs and alders, and the soggy ravines were full of skunk cabbage, devil's club and thick patches of nettles. Down the road a bit a small, noisy creek ran through a park and into the Sound; huge silvery salmon came up it to spawn, and you could easily catch them by hand. A half mile up the road the other way was a dock and an arcade which ate my nickles and quarters in shooting galleries and pinball machines. There was a merry-go-round beside the arcade with the usual collection of wooden horses and fanciful riding animals; I don't recall seeing it running, and I probably would have been too self-conscious to ride it anyway at the advanced age of ten. Sometimes on weekday evenings, though, when no one was around I would slip under the canvas cover, mount the biggest of the horses and take long rides into the night.

The photo was taken at the State Fair Grounds in Albuquerque with my FED-3 and the Jupiter-12 lens.

The Outside Cats

Coincidence

Photo by Richard Evans Schultes

I visited a used book store in Albuquerque recently and stumbled on a fine book: The Lost Amazon: The Photographic Journey of Richard Evans Schultes by Wade Davis. The story recounts episodes from the Harvard scientist's travels over three decades in the Northwest Amazon. Schultes brought the discipline of ethnobotany to life in the twentieth century, giving perspective to the work of the great naturalists of earlier centuries. In the process, he discovered hundreds of previously unknown plant species, concentrating primarily on hallucinogens and poisons developed over millennia by the indigenous peoples of the upper Amazon. Schultes also undertook the gargantuan task during wartime of tracking down examples of rubber trees in the Amazon forest which showed some blight resistance, offering the possibility of New World natural rubber plantations which had been impossible to sustain up to that point. As it turned out, the opportunity was squandered by U.S. bureaucrats and politicians who, in their ignorance and arrogance, believed that the petrochemical industry would be able to provide synthetics that would meet all needs.

As for the coincidence, in leafing through the magnificently produced book of photos and biographical notes I saw that I had inadvertently retraced a rather large part of Schultes' journeys when I visited the Northwest Amazon with four friends in 1960. In Schultes' fine photos, made with a Rolleiflex twin-lens camera, I recognized the ceremonial costumes of the Yucuna and Matapie of the Miritiparaná River. The pictures of small river launches on the wide Amazon tributaries and of dugout canoes being wrestled up through shallow rapids brought back a flood of memories from my twentieth year. At that point, I was only seven or eight years behind Schultes, but I don't recall anyone mentioning his name or his presence in the area, even though many people I met there must have known him. Quite likely, my poor language and social skills at the time kept me from appreciating the important part of the region's history represented by the scientist's passage. He was revered by the indigenous people everywhere he went because of the respectful manner in which he undertook his epic investigations which involved not only plant collecting, but also the unraveling of the story of how the native peoples made such sophisticated use of the plant life for medicinal, religious and practical purposes. I wonder now if the warm reception I received so often from people throughout the region was due in a large part to the legacy of good will which Schultes left behind.

My own travels were not guided by Schultes' sense of purpose, but the experience and my memories of the journey nevertheless had a formative influence for me throughout the years and decades since. I think the book about his epic journey and accomplishment will be a fine excuse to revisit those times, and perhaps to solidify some perspective on my recollections which I haven't taken the time to explore up to now.

Portraits of Margaret

I've posted some portraits on the page about my FED 1g, the Leica copy built in the former Soviet Union in 1955. I thought the old Elmar-style lens performed admirably. Some of the photos seemed underexposed and very low contrast. I'm not sure if that was just an exposure error, or if the shutter wasn't working quite right. I'll shoot some more with the camera and decide if I need to get something done about the focal plane shutter.

Kodak Reflex II

The Kodak Reflex II was the company's top-of-the-line twin-lens camera, appearing soon after WWII and incorporating many advances and innovations in design and construction. Both the taking and viewing lenses are sharp 4-element Anastars with Kodak's "Lumenized" anti-reflective coating. The big viewing lens, coupled with the viewscreen and a fresnel intensifier provides an exceptionally bright viewing image. The shuttered red window on the back is used only to position the first frame; after that the camera automatically handles frame spacing and counting. The Flash Kodamatic shutter features speeds from 1/2 to 1/300 seconds, plus T and B; it is cocked with an upswing of the release lever. Focusing is accomplished by turning either of the lenses which are coupled by external gear rings. The Reflex II is very solidly constructed with excellent materials and craftsmanship evident throughout.

To use the camera today, one needs to take into account the fact that it was designed around Kodak's 620 film format which is no longer available. My initial answer to that was to use 120 film with the spool ends trimmed down flush with the paper backing, which allows the film cartridge to fit into the camera. It is a tight fit, so it will be helpful for those using this method to unspool enough of the paper backing to allow the takeup spool to get a good grip before trying to push the cartridge into the feed side. Once in place, the film should move through the camera smoothly. More recently, I have begun re-rolling 120 film onto the old metal 620 spools, and this does smooth the film advance. Either way, there is some irregularity in the frame spacing, which may be the result of thinner backing paper on modern roll films. One easy solution to that is to just use the red window rather than depending on the camera's auto-frame spacing mechanism.

For those accustomed to other TLR cameras like the Rollei or the Yashicamat, the Kodak will take a little getting used to. Once the routines of film advance, shutter cocking and focusing have been practiced a bit, however, the Reflex II is about as fast and easy as any other similar camera. Even with the relatively bright viewing screen, I find I generally like to focus precisely using the flip-up magnifier lens. A cable release can also be helpful when shooting at slow speeds.

My camera came to me in quite good shape for its age, but did require some cleaning of lenses, view screen and shutter. Shutter and lens access is actually somewhat easier than on many other TLR cameras, but it was also a big help to have Rick Oleson's exploded-view drawing in getting things apart and back together again. Another excellent resource for Reflex II restoration is the berndtmn camera repair page on Flickr.

Below are some sample images from the camera:

Operating Instructions are at the Butkus site.

A few more words are in order about my newly acquired Leica copy from the Former Soviet Union (FSU). I ran a roll of Kodak Gold 200 through it recently in the course of an early morning walk around Albuquerque. I thought the results were quite nice from the Tessar-style lens, so I put some sample color shots together with the previously shown b&w images into a new page on the FED-1g in the vintage cameras section of my web site.

I've limited my comments on the camera to a brief description of my own experience. There are millions of words floating around on the original Leitz design by Oskar Barnack. The German original achieved a large cult following long ago which has driven the price of Leicas beyond the reach of many who would productively use them. Luckily, the FSU Leica copies are still an affordable alternative for those who want to explore the camera design that changed the way the world sees itself.

Even a lot of the Leica cultists have come around to the idea that the FSU Leica Thread Mount lenses are a nice alternative to getting quality results from the old cameras using the 39mm screw-in lenses. In the past six or eight years, a lot of Americans have also discovered that many of the FSU cameras are sturdy and reliable performers which cede little ground to the Leitz originals for those still interested in shooting film.

A New Camera

I took a walk around Old Town this morning with my new FED 1g, a Leica-copy built in a Soviet factory in 1954. I'll have more to say about it later when I've learned more about it.

My walk included stops at the Art Museum sculpture garden, the Plaza, and the National Atomic Museum. The pictures from the FED 1g are in a brief slide show.

Cougar Kill

We had a great day learning about cougars at the Ladder Ranch. Our thanks go to Travis Perry and Harley Shaw for their excellent presentations and guidance, and also to the hard-working staffs of the NM Museum of Natural History and the Ladder Ranch.

View the photos from the day.

Visit the cougar project's blog.

The Saturday Market at 8th and Central

Gimme a dozen of those...

UNM

I like walking through the Campus on weekends when there are few people and one can better enjoy the Southwest-style architecture. The Zimmerman Library is an especially impressive example of the Pueblo and Spanish influence which has guided the architects over the years. The treatment of the passages, stairs, walkways and ramps often has a more modern feel which departs from the basic style, but which mostly fits in well with it.

The camera was an Ikonta 521/16 folder which I've had for many years, but done little with. I was pleased to see it performing well after a few recent adjustments. I have added a page on it to the vintage cameras section of my web site.

A Slide Show from my walk.

The summer rains have filled the river and turned the bosque lushly green.

The slide show

Reminders of Times Past (a brief slide show)

Ikonta A 521, 3.5/70mm Tessar

Downtown

Living in an urban setting provides many opportunities for exploring the forms and textures of the built environment as revealed by the ever-changing light.

A couple walks through Albuquerque's central downtown area produced some photos which can be viewed in a slide show format.

Zeiss Ikon Ikonta 520, TMAX 400

Tecolote Trail

Any list of the good things about Albuquerque has to include its proximity to the Sandia Wilderness. Today, we walked the short Tecolote Trail on the east side of the mountains.

A day at the zoo (slide show).

Albuquerque's Balloon Museum

Great building and exhibits.
Take a slide show tour.

Saturday Morning

I took a walk this morning through the Botanical Garden where everything is in bloom. My first stop is always the lily pond.

Back from my walk, I found the little one asleep in the scale we have been using to weigh the kittens. She is up to a whopping pound-and-a-half now.

First Light

These images are from the first roll of film through my recently acquired Minolta Autowide, a camera from Japan, introduced in 1958. It is a wonderfully crafted instrument, and one of the most interesting in my collection of classics. I'll try to add a page on this camera to the vintage cameras section of my site in the near future.