Figure 1 – Rotten apples, Salem, MA. (c) DE Wolf 2020.

Apologies to my readers for falling silent for a bit. I have been taking lots of photographs, but work has kept me too busy to work them up and post. I was walking the other day on the Salem waterfront and found these rotten apples in front of one of Salem’s witch shops by Pickering Wharf. They had clearly been left out intentionally and neatly arranged. The effects of freeze and thaw and oxidation are obvious and I think quite beautiful This, I suppose, raises the point that there can be beauty in decay, perhaps because it is part of the natural cycle of rebirth and restoration.

I have not been completely happy with toning in Adobe Photoshop; so I decided to experiment here with my old standby, duotone. Duotone is, perhaps a relic. The idea is that you fill your printer’s ink canisters with two or three different inks, In this case it would be one black and one sepia. You then independently adjust the lookup table for each. It is the secret of all those wonderfully rich black and white images in high quality reproduction. Kudos here to the best of the best “Lenswork” Magazine, which I recommend to all black and white enthusiasts.  And while I’m on the subject, a big thank you to Facebook for making it ever more difficult to post my blog!