The Photography Gallery
Updated April 17, 2006

This is the section that contains some of my photographic work, most of which are portraits of other people. If you want to see pictures of me, you need to go to to Pristine's Photo Gallery.

  © 2006 all images on this website are the sole property of WordNasty Ink. Publishing, and The Solitary Arc at d332.com, and cannot be reproduced without written permission and consent from Pristine A. Gee

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Munich I, Germany	Xi'an, China	Xi'an II, China	Xi'an, China
Munich I, Germany	Munich II, Germany	Munich III, Germany	Marienplatz, Munich, Germany
Po Lin Monastery, HK	Covent Garden, London	Reichstag, Berlin	Verrazano Bridge, NYC

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After months of chugging twinkies, and dancing in the nude to Neil Sedaka songs, only to pass out screaming Virginia Woolfe mid-sentences in my sleep- it's finally finished!  My dream camera.  The king's new pajamas.  My very own white whale, The Linhof KolorKardan 8x10, all 80 kilotons of it!  Finally, no more rude stares from Nikon meanies and Leica browbeats like the time I waltzed up to the half dome at Yosemite with my duct-tape Holga ready to capture the decisive moment.   This dream camera was beckoning at my birth, when my dad, a professional photog  wanted a Linny but could only afford a Speed Graphic.  Oh! Days of being laughed at and taunted by school mates for being the graflex poster child in the neighborhood!  It is almost impossible to believe I am as normal and well-adjusted as I am today even though  I fought the feeling at first.  I pretended to be one of those pentax 110 in-crowd just like all the other guys who thought they could impress the girls by being men who did not have to overcompensate:

"Oh god! Debbie, you know...I'm like: his camera is so TOTALLY small, he must have a lot of macarena going on under them there pants."

Don't ask me.  It's all french to me.  I don't understand a damn word those girls say when they are among their own kind.  You know what Sigmund Freud once said:  "Sometimes an Alpa is just an Alpa."

Well, I went through my telephoto phase too.  What guy in their right mind wouldn't feel a sense of security walking around with a cocked 1200mm nikkor telephoto even if the occasion is just a backyard bar mitzvah in Brooklyn?  Hell, I even took my Spiratone 400mm with a 3x teleconverter to the locker room at the gym to undress along with the big boys!   For once I didn't have to squeeze my thighs together and hunch over myself in the shower room.   Somehow I felt I belonged.   Sure your mother might get mad at you if she wanted a snapshot of herself in this season's new flower print dress to send to aunt harriet, and you have to tell her to back herself up to Nebraska just to get her big toe into the viewfinder.

Oh yeah, and then there was the motor drive.  No, really I needed that 6 frames-per-second caffeinated motor winder to tear through a roll of 36 frames faster than you could say "two bourbons straight up and a quesadilla on the side."  Upon examining my contact sheets, I eventually determined that my tendency to shoot still-life does not benefit considerably from my mid-chassis, overhead cam, quad valve motor drive from Browning Arms.  I mean there is nothing worse than taking on shooting assignments at an old home with a speed mongering MD-11.  The sound of the rat-tat-tat as a few blue-haired octogenarians sidle by in their walkers.  They couldn't help but feel obligated in some way to move faster.   I knew I had to stop.

Well, one fine day, I decided that years of darkroom work in a makeshift outhouse was not my idea of a hobby.  If you wanted to go through ten minutes of selenium toning while catfishes are chomping away five feet below you, you might as well go for broke.  Forget about the weasley 35mm and go for something substantial.  I remembered how readers at Pop Photography defended the Kowa Six like bums in the ghetto defend the Ford Pinto as a source of heat in the winter time.  So I decided to get my hands on my very own Kowa.

Big mistake.

I discovered that the overall abundance of Kowas was solely attributed to the fact that they are to photography what fruitcakes are to the Holiday seasons:  You're not suppose to use these things! They are for passing on to the next aspiring Kowa bunga.  Sure they look good.  My English degree from college looks good too.  I rest my case.

At a party, I overheard some women talking about a Holga.  So I decided, along with my arsenal of Fuji disposables, I would enlist this backup camera to fill out the rest of my titanium zero halliburton case.  The idea of owning equipment that could double as door-wedges and hacky-sacs appealed to me no end.  The romance was intoxicating:  Just to be able to throw your camera into the Niagara Horseshoe Falls and make a wish while all the other wimpy Hassy owners are shielding their Planars was more invigorating then driving your winnebago down to the store for the morning papers during the fuel crisis.  Of course, I quickly found out that the highly challenging method of operating the Holga and the need to keep an Access Database tracksheet of which frame you were on quickly brought the golden era of no-guilt photography to a screeching halt.  There was silence in the house while whole rolls of blank 120 film hung drying with not a single frame exposed.

That was the day I decided to go back to my roots.  When he was alive, my dad always told me that if one was financially able, one should always acquire equipment that was most likely to cause hernia and groin-related medical emergencies-  The old school's proven method for testing durability.   I knew I was in love with the KolorKardan the day I saw it in a store collecting dust, and upon sticking my head into the bellows, discovered Hoffa's remains, Kenny G's soul, and the first sighting (ever)of Keanu Reeves's acting abilities.   I mean, let's face it:  Any camera with enough parts and compartments that are readily interchangeable with Westinghouse elevators from the 50s has got to be a choice candidate for highly hospitalizable camera bugs like you and I.   Along with the horrendously slow times it takes for an 8x10 view to expose its negatives, I also came into possession of a 600mm 24" f9 Rodenstock APO lens for my low light indoor shots.  On a recent visit of Washington DC, I actually set up this rig on a rickety Sanford and Davis Floating Action (referred to affectionately by most of my friends as the Sanford & Sons tripod).  To my amazement and astonishment, I managed to catch entirely sharp shots of beauracrats at work in a federal office, despite a noted 28 minute exposure time at f11, give or take a quarter of an hour.  (Tip of the day:  Tri-X Pan is highly recommended in situations where Calculus equations are your most accurate light meter.  Hey, you are going to need ALL the latitude you can get.)

The shutter is a Packard Style electric time shutter with a DC rectifier that plugs into an electronic digital gralab timer.  The gralab timer in turn plugs into a footwitch that is rigged to a 400 series gralab enlarger timer whereupon two alligator clips are hooked to the opposite end of the dial.  Upon completion of the elapsed time, the two clips connect, thereby closing the circuit and tripping off the timer which in turn, activates the electric shutter pump.  As you can see, this is the choice setup for high speed shots required by trackside photographers at a Grand Prix hairpin turn as well as the entrance to the Men's room at your nearby Taco Bell during their two-for-one bean burrito specials. 

I finally got rid of this monstrosity of a lens rig on ebay and settled down happily with a faithful 480mm Schneider. Used lenses hit golden pond when they land at my retirement home. It barely has to work: Lazing away all day by the other Schneiders, waking up late mornings to supervised shutter tai-chi, and chowing down on a steady diet of oat bran lens tissue with lots of environmental-friendly dust-off compressed air.

It doesn't get any better than this.

© 2002 WordNasty Ink.
all images on this website are the sole property of WordNasty Ink Publishing, and cannot be reproduced without written permission and consent from Pristine A. Gee