Robbie Becklund Photography

I've just finished a fairly large revamp of the site. I added a Holga Camera Photo Gallery which includes all my holga photos. I still have the Minnesota gallery but I've done away with the city and country galleries. Some of the photos in those galleries I like, but I just want to focus on my current work and make things a bit more cohesive.

For now all I'll be working on is holga pictures. I still have some old film to develop and there are a few older negs I haven't printed yet. I also want to experiment with a couple of diptychs and triptychs in the future. But other than that I'll be clicking away with the plastic gems.

I currently have three holgas, one for night photos (which I haven't used yet) and the other two for regular shooting and they're 6x6 format. I do like it much better than the rectangle 645 format.

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What is up with schools these days? For Halloween, my son's school had a pajama party! I guess that's better than last year, last year parents got a note to vote on how Halloween should be celebrated and then we got another note that said they weren't going to celebrate at all! It seems to me that there's a few people who complain about the school holding Halloween celebrations. I guess the school officials don't want to deal with the bitching and moaning or they've been threatened with a lawsuit--who knows, I just think it's lame. In Brooklyn in my kid's school, PS 107, they had a school wide Halloween party/parade, even the principal dressed up. That's the way it should be done.

Here's some interesting pinhole photos on Pinhole Toshi's photo blog. I like that he shoots right into the sun. The site's extra fun because it's all in Japanese and clicking on links is kind of an adventure (assuming you can't read Japanese of course).

Monkey Tilt a Whirl


NE Minneapolis 1


Pole & Bush

This are all recent Holga acquisitions. This were printed on Ilford Fiber Warmtone with LPD Developer mixed 1:1. I like this combo quite a bit. The scans aren't exactly the same as the prints, kind of close though.

There's a fable about Red Sox fans going to heaven and asking God, 'When will my team win the World Series again?' God scratches his chin and says, finally, 'Well, not in my lifetime.'

With Ballgames This Exciting, It's No Wonder Everybody's Yawning
Since Saturday I have watched maybe 19 hours of Yankees (yeah!!!) / Red Sox (Boo!!!!!!) baseball and the last game is tonight. It's been an amazing series--I just hope NY can pull it out.

I went to Subhankar Banerjee's photo exhibit at the St. Paul History Museum. My overall reaction was that the Alaska Wildlife Refuge is an amazing place. The photos were very nice, they were an excellent document of this beautiful area. The photos were large.

It's pretty cool to know there is a place like that in the U.S., I just hope we don't screw it up.

His book had many more photos than the exhibit and lots of writing. I didn't spend time reading it but I'd image it it's info about the Refuge and the people who live there.

Last night I decided to start experimenting with split toning with selenium and sepia toner. Ran to the photo store to get some supplies, including Ilford Warmtone Fiber paper, since I've read that it tones better than the regular Ilford fiber paper, which I normally use. Of course...I use a different paper (well I do use Oriental sometimes) and the prints have this weird subtle mottling. But when I do a second fix bath the mottling gets worse. Very strange, never seen this. So I make sure the safe light isn't fogging the warmtone paper (setting quarters on the paper for a couple minutes under the safelight). That doesn't seem to be the problem. But that sheet of paper got the mottling thing happening. So tonight I'll just mix up new LPD, because maybe it got contaminated somehow. I can't believe there is anything wrong with the paper. If after making a new batch of LPD it still happens I'll try using the paper I always use.

What a pain in the ass! I was going to print last night and tone tonight. Maybe I can print and tone all tonight and stay up real late.

A few posts ago I talked about what it is I really want to photograph, or I could have said what I want my photos to look like. So I'm trying to go down the path of what I want instead of what I think will sell best. It sounds easy, but it's not. After spending so much time working towards being a self supporting artist, every decision is tied to making money. I feel I have made the break, hence the experimenting with split toning.

The website of Subhankar Banerjee who photographed the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. His photos are being exhibited all over the country, there is a listing of them here also.

Here's a good article about his two years in Alaska

Last Chance: A Panorama of Alaska That Extends to the Senate - Subhankar Banerjee's photos were shown during debate on oil drilling in Alaska.

Interior Secretary Gale A. Norton, said that the National Wildlife Refuge in northern Alaska was "a flat white nothingness." That comment is real disturbing, is it just ignorance or politics or being bought by oil companies--or all three.

My son's school picture is tomorrow and out of the blue he said he wanted to get one of the pictures in black and white! (an optional black and white 5x7 is a new offering the school photo people have this year)
So yes, the beauty of black and white photography has sunk home with my 7 yr old son (he's obviously a genius...).

Hotrod, Austin Texas, 2002

Here's a recently developed negative of a Holga picture that highlights a nice hairline scratch across the negative, pretty much impossible to retouch the old fashion way. That is a big reason I'm done, or kind of done with using the Holga.


Agate Beach, Lake Superior, Minnesota, 2004
on eBay listed at $9.95 8x10 unmatted.
on eBay for $25, 8x10 matted to 11x14.

This is at the mouth of Gooseberry Falls. One of those times where the clouds were amazing and lo and behold there's this amazing huge craggy rock formation. It's got kind of a Rock of Ages thing going on.

Since I was commenting on my past photos I thought I'd post a couple of 4x5 contact prints from about 2000.



Long Island City, NY



Red Hook, Brooklyn

iN-PUBLiC.com - Picture of the Month - another. Okay I can't resist.

iN-PUBLiC.com - Picture of the Month Instead of working on my own photos, I'm checking out this street photography website--I love this picture.

Should fine art come with a warning label? An article about all the toxic substances artists are exposed to.

When I started back taking pictures in 1998 I was doing night photos, like I did at art school; then we moved to NY and I was doing abstract textures and photographing the industrial wasteland; then I moved back to Austin for awhile and then to Woodstock NY for a shorter while and started shooting with a Holga--I think this period with the Holga was some of my best work to date; then I moved to Minneapolis and started shooting photos around Lake Superior. One big thing effected my subject matter--selling. I started selling my pictures at the big farmer's market in town and regional art fairs, realizing I didn't have many photos that would attract the locals, I started shooting in Northern Minnesota and in Minneapolis of local sites of interest.

While I've been very happy with some of my Minnesota photos (and I love being in Northern Minnesota), the idea of making this into a business has completely changed the way I shoot and think about my pictures.

I've understood this all along, but I also understand that if I built a business around this type of photo it would take years to be successful (which is the case with virtually any successful small business (except the ones they advertise on TV, of course)). So I feel part of my struggle with what camera to use, is do I want to shoot for money or for myself. Because up until now I've been basing my decision (or lack of one) on the selling photos mentality. So if I know I'll be struggling for years to keep my head above water, maybe I should be shooting whatever the hell it is that I deep down want to shoot. That way I'll be poor and happy instead of poor and frustrated.

So this means there's no end to this story, but at least I might have a better understanding of what's causing all my confusement.

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Oh, and for anyone kind of following this, for a good laugh, I was checking out the Contax G2 (35mm camera) after all my talk about view cameras and contact printing etc. Maybe I need to have two or three cameras instead of fitting everything I want into one.

And--Go Yankees!!!! Next up, the BoSoxs -- Get Ready to Rumble...

Reading through my recent posts I sound like a schizophrenic... I guess it's a time of transition.

I think I've decided on getting a 4x5 view camera. This isn't the perfect choice but the most practical. I really don't want to get another enlarger, which I would need for the 4x5 negs. So then, you say, why not get an 8x10 and just contact print? Too expensive and I want to print bigger than 8x10. And the 4x5 neg will give me enough detail to make me happy with an enlargement. The cost of 8x10 scares me, because I think it would be a slippery slope. And, what if the initial images blow and I've got to go through $100 worth of film before I get everything straightened out. I guess some would say that's the price you gotta pay. I've even been entertaining going to 5x7 for contact printing, I could get a 4x5 back if I wanted to get big prints. hmmm. See there's just too many choices and none is perfect. Eventually this will all work itself out -- I hope...

Sometimes it just astonishes me the wealth of photography information on the internet. When I started back using the view camera in 1999, there was very little information regarding large format. Now there is so much. A new pyro developer has been formulated for contact printing and it's all the rage amongst the contact printing crowd. At a time when digital photography is sweeping the world and supposedly film is dying, there are more sources and styles of "old fashioned" cameras and film and paper and chemicals for traditional and alternative process photography. There's even become a renewed interest in large format press cameras, a la Weegee.

These two are from Ballclub Lake in the Superior National Forest. Ballclub is off the Gunflint Trail near Devil's Track Lake.

I recently listed these two photos on eBay.

Here's some very interesting fade test information that sure tests a lot of photographer's claims about the life expectancy of their inkjet prints. Very interesting indeed. There's lots of false information floating around about the fade resistance of inkjet prints.

Bad Day in Photoland



This is the result of an accident with the camera and a tree. The piece just snapped off. I thought I could still use it, but it froze up and no fiddling with it seems to make it work.

Hmmm, I guess it's time to move forward and get a new camera. Unfortunately that was my one camera right now. So now I'm cameraless since I swore off Holgas.

While Gooseberry Falls and Agate Beach have great picture taking potential I've got to go when there's not a million people and when I don't break my camera.

Regarding my Holga pictures... When my excitement for the Holga started to wain was when I started printing on real photo paper. In 2002 and some of 2003 I was scanning my negatives and printing on a Epson 1280 with carbon based inks on mat paper. The holga images looked very nice with this combination. There was a subtleness that seams to be missing now. Also I was able to fix some of the imperfections from light leaks and scratches on the negatives, that are very common, using Photoshop. Holga photos printed this way also look a slight bit sharper, which stands to reason since I was scanning with a Nikon Supercool 8000. Maybe the scanner was able to pull more information from the negative.

This is definitely not to say that I'll be going back to that method to create my Holga pics. If it's not happening with my current setup it ain't happening.

While it was real nice to be able to print my photos on an ink jet printer without all the chemicals and setup and having a darkroom. I am very happy I regressed back to the traditional way of doing things. While I like shooting more than the darkroom work, I have many fond memories from the different darkrooms I've worked in through the years: hiding screwed up prints in the ceiling tiles so we wouldn't get in trouble for wasting paper in high school; keeping beer cold in the water holding tray for all night printing at the School of the Art Institue of Chicago; and contact printing hundreds of botanical studies and very old glass negatives at the Field Museum.

I read what people are going through with their experimentations with digital - looking for the next best thing, finding the right printer and inks and paper and cameras. Business has figured out how to take the computer/software model of upgrade upgrad upgrade and fit it into photography.

Last night I did some test prints of some new holga photos that I was excited about. After printing them to 8x10 they really do nothing for me. So, I think for the foreseeable (is that the way to spell that (the dictionary says it is!)) future I'll be hanging up my Holga cameras. I don't know if its that I'm shooting blanks with that camera now or if my tastes have changed and nothing "holga" will excite me because I don't care for the "look" anymore.

I guess I'll be saving up my pennies (and I do mean pennies) to get a 4x5. I'm debating between going the ebay route or getting a Shen-Hao from Badger Graphics. The Shen-Hao is low priced and wow, would that be nice to have a brand new view camera. That would be pretty amazing! I've struggled in the past with some real lame used ones making it rather difficult to get good pics. And in the process souring me on the whole large format "camera work" routine. I think I'm ready to dive back in.

I'm sure my lenses, film holders and probably tripod will come from the house of ebay.


Tomorrow I'm driving up to Gooseberry Falls for some photoing, so here's hoping for some nice shots. Oh and it's gotten frightfully cold outside. If it snows tonite I'll be pissed!