April 2023
**Big Bend Pictures**
Last month I wrote a lengthy Full Moon email about my love affair with Texas Monthly. In the final hours Marci read it and felt like it was too long.
For those of you that would like to read the whole piece it is posted on my website. www.jameshevans.com
Log on and on the menu on left click on Full Moon Emails_2023.
I am excited to talk about the revision and republication of my first book Big Bend Pictures. The original was published by UT Press, designed by DJ Stout. It was reprinted twice and sold out. The book was released April 1 2004, 20 years ago.
This republication was the brainchild of Marci, because currently I do not have a book in print, and the retrospective is still in the works.
As we went through the original book there were images cropped like I would not do today. There are also 18 images we felt like we could trade out and make the book stronger.
When the original was printed I sent 11 x 14 prints on resin coated paper. This new book has all been scanned in house, so the images should be sharper. I also did not like the tone of the original book and we are going to change that too.
With about a third of the book I had already made tried and true prints. Another third are images I had already scanned, but not worked on or felt like I wanted to work on a little more.
The last third is new scans. Mostly they are portraits.
One of the greatest advantages of the digital age is the ability to manipulate a pixel. It is a lot of control, so say I want to lighten the petals on a flower I could do that.
Ansel Adams would have loved this.
SIDE NOTE:
A few years ago we met and became friends with Jeanne and Michael Adams. Ansel’s son and his wife. We spent a couple of days with them in Carmel California. Michael gave Marci and I a tour of Ansel’s darkroom. He had traditional enlargers, but he also had an enlarger turned on its side to make large prints. He would project the image on a wall. This enlarger had a bank of lights that lit the negative, instead of the normal one light to illuminate it. It was at least 6 rows across and 6 rows down. The bank of lights had an off an on switch on each light so if he did not want any light on a part of the negative he could switch that light off. It’s brilliant. It also had a big fan to draw off heat.