I'd always planned on uploading an image here from my Cyclops project.   I started that project when two 5 inch military glass magnifiers showed up on ebay for about $12.00 each,  and my purchase of them turned to produce some interesting results.   I shot images like this w/the first one, the second identical magnifier I used as a subject for 'Big Mag and Little Bulb', which is a couple of pages back from this page on this site.

What I learned like everybody else is learning, is that instead of paying attention to the suggestion that something can't be done, is try it anyway.  I shot this w/Portra 160, w/a magnifier that wasn't corrected for anything let alone color, and sent it to the lab to let them play w/it, and to me, it came back better than I thought it would, colorwise.  Whether or not the lab performed miracles, I'm glad I tried this, instead of choosing not to try it.  

I'll include the shot of Cyclops mounted on my Mamiya 645,  w/stepdown rings I can screw Cyclops into the rear of my Ilex Universal #5 shutter to use w/810 so I'll be playing around with that when I get back to testing my other lenses.

I've come to kind of a crossroads, I got the Taylor-Hobson 5in, F1.5 projection lens as my last acquisition, and will do some things w/that, but a switch has clicked off in me, and there'll be no more lens acquisitions.  I'm done.  I've been on both sides of this, buying expensive, buying for pennies, getting excitied and seeing something else, and obsessing until the thing is in my hand, but that time has now gone.  It's time to experience nuance in detail with what I've got.

The modified Turner Reich lenses I got from Jim Galli and the results of my tests with them kind of steered me toward another mindset, I realized I could spend the rest of my life JUST using the TR lenses, and ergo the reminder that I've got enough lenses, so that's the road I'll be on from now on. 

But I've got to tell you, it was BIG FUN typing in mis-spelled versions of diff lenses in my search engine so I could come up w/a lens for $30.00 that everybody else was paying much more for, when that happened that feeling was delicious!!!

 Getting the 10in TR for about $79.00 and getting the results I got w/it were almost as good as sex, remember I said almost!!!  On one day when I was feeling like I ought to be a saint I even told one guy how valuabe his lens was, at the expense of my not getting it cheaper, and before I blurted out the truth about the lens, it was just like in the movies, a 'little devil' was sitting on my left shoulder telling me 'you're not stiffing this guy, if he doesn't know any better, it's sure not your fault', and a 'little angel was sitting on my right shoulder saying 'Jonathan, you know what's right, what are waiting for????'.   I didn't even feel bad after paying out some more money I didn't have to pay. 

I'm weening myself off ebay except for polaroid film and some other 'nicnacs', but I've always had a distate for ebay, bidding in an auction w/other photographers is kinda like several tigers in a cage and somebody throws in one piece of meat, I've never like that.   Sure, it's true, if they throw in one piece of meat, it might as well be you eating it, but it doens't mean you have to like it. 

 So with all these thoughts, I've come to conclusion that I need to spend more time shooting, and that's what I'm going to do. 

Eight new paper negatives of this set up today.  But I happen to know my friend Jonathan is just a wee bit partial to Pinkham & Smith lenses.  This one is I believe the first image my new-2-me Pinkham Bi-Quality 14" lens has made for me.  I used good old Kodak RC Polycontrast paper with an Aerial Recon yellow filter in the light path.  That cuts the contrast to about half.  Paper negs usually suffer from too much contrast.  These have luscious tones.  I would urge you to click on the link for a larger version of this scan.  It's trite to say you can't see it all in a 90kb .jpg, but in this case the Bi-Quality has packed a powerful punch that may only be seen in a print held in your hand.

apricot blossums 

A larger version of this may be seen here;

I hope that while I'm lucky enough to be the current steward of this lens I can tap just a small portion of it's capacity. 

    Danielle is my little girl, I'm eternally grateful for that and it's why I'm uploading an image of her, but I'm kind of sad because in about 2 months, she reaches 13, and then starts to become a Princess and then a 'little lady'.   I've already told her she can forget about boyfriends for quite some time, and that she won't have a thing to worry about since I'll be sitting in the backseat of the car for her first 100 dates  8^)) !!!!!!!!!

Yes!  Well let him out!  If your grandparents were typical US kids they played this joke on their grocer.  It's one of those old jokes that has become like urban legend. 

This can has sat atop this workbench since our grandparents were kids.  No one has disturbed the contents of this old mill building since perhaps 1936.  I used my sweet little Cooke 8 1/2" on full plate size for this. 

        First off, I did not Photoshop this together.  It's a straight film shot.  This is a 2 dollar plastic magnifier sitting over a pair of Ray-Bans, sitting on brushed Aluminum.   You can get the same effect of a light pattern if you get a magnifier and look at it at an extreme angle which should hopefully convince everybody that I didn't do this in Photoshop.

        I started playing around with this magnifier, proping it up by putting objects under it which produced some interesting light patterns, which to the naked eye were much more defined than you see here as the Turner Reich renders these light patterns in a much softer way. 

        Getting the magnifer at a certain angle to the light,  and looking through the Turner Reich, the light pattern looked like something mystical to me and I thought of what I read about 'Indra's Net', thus the name of the shot.  I wanted to inject the human element into the idea, so I thought of glasses which is what folks use to examine things.   I wasn't about to putting reading glasses under the magnifier to prop it up, so I used my daughter's Ray-Bans.

        The illusion of the 'road of light' trailing off into the background under the glasses was a surprise to me because the glasses are under the magnifier, and the light pattern is along the fresnel pattern of the magnifier which sits over the glasses, so it's the exact opposite of what it looks like.   The glasses have a certain texture because they're sitting under the magnifier.

        I didn't know what the hell to use for an exposure, so I used 'one thousand one, one thousand two, and fired the shutter.   The copy of this image on my website looks different becuase I simply 'dragged and dropped' this smaller image onto a larger black background and left it at that.