JOURNAL
Striving to experience new landscapes by traveling far and near; rediscovering them when writing about them, with new eyes.
These Fragments I Have Shored: St. Augustine and Vilano in Ghostlier Demarcations of Infrared.
In a Florida summer, an infrared camera turns a Fort Mose boardwalk into a winter wonderland — foliage burning snow-bright, skies drained to black — a season that does not exist, built entirely from the heat at hand. This is a black-and-white infrared photo essay from St. Augustine and Vilano Beach, made with a Phase One IQ3 100MP Achromatic back on a Cambo WRS-1600 technical camera with a B+W 830 (093) infrared filter — a system that records deep near-infrared light no living eye can hold. Low tide clears a path to the ruins of the old Vilano Bridge — I call it St. Augustine's Parthenon. A modern bridge now sweeps across the Tolomato River, and on the shore beneath it a solitary figure keeps her vigil in a three-second long exposure. Back in the oldest city in the USA, the Medici-inspired stone lions of the Bridge of Lions keep watch over the Matanzas tide, and the Castillo de San Marcos stands stoic. It has endured by yielding, outlasting the concrete that cracks. Entropy is pervasive, and the photograph is a fragment shored against it.
Morning Ambience
In the early light of St. Augustine, photographers find two opportunities — radiant illumination and serene, empty streets — and two challenges: taming contrast and keeping verticals true. Both can be mastered with intention — through thoughtful exposure, the Zone System, combining a digital back with high dynamic range, like Hasselblad CFV100C and the precision of a technical camera like a Cambo WRS 1600.