The Eleventh Hour of the Eleventh Day of the Eleventh Month........

The Armistice ending WWI went into effect.  After WWII we renamed it Veteran's Day here in America.

This is a special posting of Monday's On-line featuring imagery from WWI and WWII and photos taken by a Korean War Veteran..

First a recent link to World War I as the first real Media documentation of War:  We often forget how grim it really was.

Next images from World War II in Color.  All in Kodachrome! The Italian Campaign where my Father served. See some of his photos HERE (B&W).  And more WWII in color here.

And Finally a preview of some beautiful photography by my late Father-in-law from Post war Japan.  He was on his way to Korea, and fortunately for him the Korean War ended before he got there.

And what Most Veterans Actually Wish for our Future:

Saturday's Online: How it Looks...How it Lasts

Homage to Kodachrome, and the loss of Archival Stability. Link to the Project.

Rock Photography Part II: Photomicrographs and Lab Shots

Photomicrographs are a type of technical photography, which simply means taking a picture through a microscope. Geologists use Petrographic Microscopes, which are modified for optimal rock analysis by the addition of a rotating stage, polarizing light and other specialized features. The rock samples are thin sections, rock slices only microns thick and mounted on glass slides. I have taken photomicrographs with a variety of systems: Leica-Leitz (by far the best optical system), Nikon, and Olympus. Examples of each are shown below. Olympus proved to be the best of the affordable systems (Leitz microscopes cost twice as much as Nikon or Olympus). And when I find myself with a spare $20,000 to burn, I’ll have my own Olympus microscope-camera system.













Polarized (top) and non-polarized (bottom) images of the same thin section; taken with a Nikon system. Samples from Mt St Augustine, Alaska. Film: Kodachrome
















Polarized (top) and non-polarized (bottom) images of the same thin section; taken with an Olympus system. Andesite samples from Tisingal Volcano, Panama. Film: ENC-II

















Polarized (top) and non-polarized (bottom) images of the same thin section; taken with a Leitz system. Peridotite samples from Ichinomegata, Japan. Film: ENC-II








The lab shots simply show macro photography close-ups of rock slabs, highlighting the textures of the samples. Sometimes similar shots are taken in the field.



Garnet Lherzolite Xenolith from Kimberly, South Africa.



Camera: Minolta X-700
Lens: Rokunar f2.8 50 mm Macro
Film: ENC-II


Another interesting type of Lab Photography is making ‘maps’ for the electron microprobe. This consists of placing the thin section in a photo enlarger and exposing a projection onto a sheet of photographic paper. I will show an example in Part III where it will become more apparent why one might need to do this.

Not Quite Done with Apollo 11

My last thought on Apollo 11, especially for film users. Ken Rockwell (from my photo links at left) has searched and sorted the NASA Apollo 11 Gallery to present the Hasseblad Photos taken mostly by Neil Armstrong (you get the feeling that maybe he enjoyed being the expedition photographer). I assume the film was probably Kodachrome, but I'll try to find that out and post later.

I Never Liked Kodachrome Until............

I normally don't post twice in a day (I'd run out of ideas too fast). But the end of Kodachrome deserves to be noted here.

Kodachrome for me is soooo 60's. It evokes memories of my childhood cross country family vacations, dutifully recorded by my mom in Kodachrome slides. I have most of my mother's slides, but sorting through them on such short notice to find an adequate representative (mom + instamatic cameras = not the greatest photography), but in the coming weeks I'll try to find some hidden gem in all those memories.

So for now let's remember the famous "Afghan Girl", immortalized by Steve McCurry with Kodachrome film. Although, even he acknowledges that in his search for the grown-up Sharbat Gula, he re-created the image using Kodak E100VS.

But I never liked Kodachrome until I saw my father-in-law's slides of post war Japan (early 1950's), all in Kodachrome. Absolutely beautiful! Kodachrome was always favored by professionals, but had such a complex processing method (K-14) that it could only be done by Kodak. Thus the Ektachrome family of films (E-6 processing), which could be processed by local photo labs, gradually became the transparency film standard. I will even be trying E-6 processing myself later this summer. Let's be honest, the films that survive will be the ones that we can process ourselves (or are cheap enough for others to continue to do). I love Daguerrotypes too, but the processing is so toxic that I can do without trying it.