The Story Behind…

“King John’s Castle”

Photographed in Limerick, Ireland, august 1994

Discovering Myself as I Discovered Europe

Brave?

Bold?

Scared?

Stupid?

These are a just few of the feelings I had as I stepped onto the tarmac of the Limerick, Ireland, international airport.

I had a rough idea of a plan. It was full hopes, dreams and possibilities, but lacked details. For example, I had no idea what I was going to do on my first day, or where I was going to stay that night.

I collected my backpack from the luggage claim conveyor.

It was enormous, an external frame full size backpack that I had purchased at an outdoor outfitter store. The sleeping bag I purchased was entirely inappropriate for my needs. It was huge, way bigger than it needed to be, but since I didn’t have a tent and thought I might be sleeping under the stars at times, I got the biggest one, rated for the coldest temperatures, that the store had.

Again, this was decades before shopping online existed, and I acted more on instinct than research in almost everything I did, so when I saw the maroon sleeping bag I bought it. I strapped the sleeping bag to the bottom of the backpack before leaving America and was relieved to see it still attached as all of my belongings moved towards me on the luggage carousel.

My most prized possession, my camera, nestled safely inside my camera backpack, had been with me in the cabin on the airplane.

I heaved the backpack onto my back and slung the camera backpack across my chest, so that I was carrying it like an infant.

I walked out of the airport, and as there was no one there to greet me, I started walking towards what appeared to be the way to town.

I had gone about 100 yards when a bus driver honked at me, stopped his bus, opened his door and yelled at me if I was going to town? When I said yes he said get in.

Thank God!

I really had no clue what I was doing or where I was going to do, but I did have a “Backpacker’s Guide to Europe” book. It was a couple inches thick and was like a Bible to me. After my camera and passport it was the third most important thing I had with me. The chapters were divided into countries. Among other priceless pieces of information, it listed hostels in major cities and large towns.

A hostel is a shared-living style situation. Similar to a dormitory, although no two hostels are identical. The one in Limerick was divided into men’s and women’s quarters. After checking in, I was given a towl, bedsheets, a keychain with a key to the building and a key to a room. In the room was about a dozen bunkbeds. Some occupied with people, some occupied with belongings, and others that were stripped clean. I was told I could take my choice of any of those beds.

After selecting one and depositing my gear on the bed, I loaded my camera with a fresh roll of TMax 400 black and white film and stepped out into my adventure.

I may have had a map of Limerick, but I did not have a destination. I simply walked, and looked, and breathed, and took pictures.

After some time, I reached the River Shannon and walked along it, until, up ahead, I saw King John’s Castle, a 13th-century castle located on King’s Island. It was built in 1200 for King John of England. It is one of the best preserved Norman castles in Europe. As I gazed upon its walls, towers and fortifications, I knew I was not in Nebraska!

Click, click, click.

I walked a little further.

Click, click, click.

I walked to get a new perspective of the castle.

Click, click, click.

Bracketing* is a technique, or was a technique, where you take three pictures of the same scene, and change the exposure of each frame slightly.

Photography has evolved so much that now, and new cameras sensors have so much latitude, especially using the RAW format, that bracketing is barely needed, because in post-processing, using the sliders in Photoshop or another editing program, I can change the exposure to make the photo brighter or darker.

Unless a photographer was taking test polaroid photos which would develop on the spot in about two minutes, they wouldn’t know until the film was processed whether the exposure was correct. If it was incorrect, the resulting photograph would be either too dark or too bright.

So bracketing is a technique where you deliberately expose one frame of film at the exposure you think is correct, then overexpose the next frame to create a brighter photo, and underexpose the third frame to create a darker photo. These changes could be done with either the aperture (f-stop) or shutter speed.

Some nicer cameras at the time even had an auto-bracketing feature, where the camera would take bursts of three photos at a time and automatically adjust the f-stop.

See the appendix for a more thorough explanation of bracketing.

Also in the appendix is an explanation of f-stops in photography. For now, just know that a stop is a way of measuring how large the opening in the lens is and it is adjustable. By controlling this opening, the photographer can control how much light enters the lens and makes its way to the film.

Since you wouldn’t know how the pictures would turn out until after the film was processed, this was a safety mechanism to ensure one of the three pictures would be the correct exposure, and all would not be lost if the original exposure was not correct.

In my case, on this trip, I was going to have to wait months to see the pictures. I wasn’t going to be able to process anything until I got back home.

So bracketing was essential to me in order to ensure I had pictures that would be exposed correctly. This is why I almost always take my pictures in groups of three. It was a habit engrained in me early on.

Click, click, click.

Get a new angle.

Click, click, click,

Get another angle.

Click, click, click.

Check and see how many exposures are left on the roll of film. Three.

Move my position one more time.

By now, I had found my favorite spot to photograph King John’s Castle, still standing 794 years after it was built. The sun was setting on a glorious afternoon, and two birds flew together along the river’s edge.

Click, click, click.

This roll of film was used up, so I pushed the rewind button on the camera and listened to the whirr of the film being wound back into its original canister. Once the noise stopped, I opened the back of the camera and popped out the canister of film. I took my sharpie, wrote “#1, Day 1, Limerick, Ireland” on the canister with my black sharpie and put it in my lead-lined bag.

I loaded up another roll of film, and continued my walk.

•••••

After returning to Nebraska in November I began the process of processing my film, then printing contact sheets, then looking at those contact sheets with my loupe, then printing test prints and eventually, an 8x10” print for my portfolio.

What joyful emotions flooded me as I took these steps and began to see where I had been and what I had done.

Just as I had done with “Fly”, I hand-tinted my final print of “King John’s Castle.”

However, five years later, at the Art Institute, the life of this image would take a dramatic turn. I was able to use the school’s film scanner, at the time a $10,000 piece of equipment, in order to get a digital file. I was then able to use that digital file in Photoshop, just as I had done with “Fly.” However, I was ready to expand my creative vision and use the clone tool to do something I had never done before.

Up until now, I had used the clone tool to fill in spots that were on the negative, most likely microscopic dust that showed up on the scan. Occasionally the negative was scratched, and the clone tool was useful for eliminating those scratch lines in the final image.

I was using the clone tool like I had used my fine point paintbrush to fill in those spots on my final prints for years. Now I was doing that with the help of a computer. It was cutting edge technology.

But now something new was about to happen. Something in my brain caused me to move the mouse over one of the birds flying along the river. I held the “control” button on the keyboard and clicked the mouse button once. Now I moved the mouse to a new position. I let go of the “control” button on the keyboard. And when I clicked the mouse button this time, an exact clone of the bird appeared where I wanted it to!

I had created a bird from cloning a bird in my photograph! Now there were three birds! My mind was exploding!

Had I crossed an ethical line???

This wasn’t painting, photography was all about capturing what exists, not about creating objects - or birds - out of thin air.

The feeling was exhilarating though! Knowing I could use the computer and this program called photoshop not to just adjust the exposure, or to fill in spots, but to actually create!

This was the beginning of a new love affair. A love affair that now coexists with my camera as naturally as can be, that millions of photographers don’t give a second thought to, but at one time was the equivalent of an interracial love affair in the time of segregation.

This new love affair was with Photoshop, and the magic of digital photography.

Long before digital cameras became remotely affordable, I was scanning in my negatives and creating digital images.

I was using Photoshop to push the boundaries and barriers of what photography could do.

And I was falling more in love with photography every day.

This version of “King John’s Castle” is the one I colorized using Photoshop, added a third bird using Photoshop, and entered into my senior portfolio at the Art Institute of Ft. Lauderdale in 1999. But the image was created in my camera, on August DATE, 1994, on my first day of backpacking through Europe.

And this is the story behind this photo.

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