Circle of the Sun Productions
Post Office Box 10264
Swanzey, NH 03446
603-357-4736
Questions answered
on photographic
topics, more information on offerings and
workshops.
Circle of the Sun Productions offers high-quality information and tools for photographers.
Photographer and Fine Focus Workshop teacher Bruce Barlow brings you the best of what has worked in his and Richard Ritter’s workshops.
Cult Classic Finely Focused: Mechanics and Creativity in Large Format Traditional Photography can now be bought as an electronic download! Early experience is terrific, and it's cheaper. Holy 20th Century, Batman! See details below.
IN THE WORKS: Finely Focused, Junior, that keeps the creative exercises, and dumps the large format stuff. I'm doing it to experiment with publishing on Amazon. Wider audience, same good exercises. If you already have Finely Focused, this is redundant. Don't buy it.
Fine Focus Workshops on Vermont Public Radio! A contribution towards our 15-minutes of fame. Here it is.
TILLMAN CRANE'S PLATINUM PRINTING WORKSHOP: I went with a group of good friends, fully expecting to have a nice time, but not pursue Platinum printing with any real gusto. After the first day, I led the discussion about having a UV light source building party. I'm completely hooked! Tillman is a fabulous teacher, his beautiful home is filled with his PT images, and the workshop gets you up and running fast, making decent prints almost immediately. It is much easier than I thought, and so much fun it's sinful. Highly recommended, but beware of its addictive qualities!
COLOR? DIGITAL? New directions. I had never made even a decent color image in my life until a few weeks before Christmas, when, shazam! A whole bunch flooded the camera. More have continued, including 30, count 'em, 30 keepers on the Winter Solstice. If I get organized, I'll put them up here. It's really exciting. Read the article below titled "Old Guys." Not me. This is a real breakthrough. Wonder what's next?
OCTOBER OPEN HOUSE: A good time. Nice people visited and looked carefully at over 120 images, about 40 new ones. Folks liked the Holga stuff. I did"artist profiles" of most of the artists on the tour. They're up on YouTube. Here's the link to mine, you can click on it and watch:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q29bztH7eZ4
FINE FOCUS WORKSHOPS 2012 SCHEDULE: "Snow and Ice" Feb. 16-19. May 17-20, "8x10 Tire Kicker" August 16-19, Large Format October 18-21. Tell us what you want to work on, we'll include it in the time you're with us. Specific titles have sort of gone by the wayside. At least you should not pay too much attention to them.
PHOTOGRAPHIC COMPOSITION INTENSIVE: Peters Valley Craft Center, Layton NJ. August 10-14, 2012. 5 days of unrelenting work on composition. Lots of exercises, some theory. Digital only (the Dark Side) so we can see what you've done. I have wanted to do this workshop for three years, but haven't really had the venue. Peters Valley is perfect. As the title implies, this will be intense. I can't wait.
AN EXCELLENT BOOK: "The Visual Story" by Bruce Block. The best book on composition I've encountered. It's about filmmaking, but think of that as 24 photographs a second, while we struggle with one at a time. Highly recommended, and available here: http://www.filmtools.com/vistbrblne.html
ANOTHER EXCELLENT BOOK!: "The Mind of the Maker" by Dorothy Sayers. Long out of print, I just found it reissued in paperback on Amazon. Sayers takes the religious view of the idea of Head, Hands and Heart and explains it in terms of the Holy Trinity. Photographers should think Subject, Craft, and Emotion. Far better than I can describe it, every serious photographer should read this book, and apply Sayers' ideas to the pursuit of his or her art. I'm so thrilled this is in print again! My bootlegged copy was made at Staples and lives sideways in a three-ring binder. Now, I'll have a real book. Yippee! http://www.amazon.com/Mind-Maker-Dorothy-L-Sayers/dp/0060670770
TILLMAN CRANE: Read the "Musings" on his web site, www.tillmancrane.com, to find a kindred spirit. He "gets it." I'm off to his Platinum printing workshop in November!
The inventory of offerings looks like this. Click on the title to go to a description.
A new, free article to irritate people: Practicing Photography. Let me know what you think...maybe. Update: Much good feedback, and yup. It irritated some people. One sage repeatedly asserted that he didn't practice, while describing what he did to practice... Go figger.
This article has been a Rorschach test for readers. I've gotten amazing criticism of things people think they read in it, but which I never wrote.. Brooks Jensen passed on using it in LensWork, so it's here, for free: Old Guys.
Finely Focused: Mechanics and Creativity in Large Format Photography CD-ROM book. NEW! I have come into the 20th century (!) and can now download the book electronically! It isn't automatic, but it's possible! Click the link for details.
Camera Repair in the Field with Richard Ritter. 59-minute DVD. The opening, where Richard crashes a 4x5 onto a rock, is worth the whole DVD. A Zone VI camera, it didn't even break until the fourth take. The DVD talks about field repairs, what to carry in your camera bag, marking film holders, and more.
The Richard Ritter Ultra-Large Format Camera Owner’s Manual. 50-minute DVD. Those interested in Richard’s 8x10 camera may want to check this out.
Fine Focus Workshops. A brief description of Richard Ritter’s and Bruce Barlow’s weekend workshops in southern Vermont and New Hampshire.
Gallery. Some favorite images, so that you understand my predispositions and biases. Crummy scans from a cheap scanner, they’re good enough for now. I barely understand how to open Photoshop, no less use it, and own a $99 ten-year-old scanner.
Free Downloads of past articles, and updates to Finely Focused will be posted here.
Links point you to some of my favorite people. They don’t sponsor me in any way. Click here.
