Category Archives: Black and White

Black and White, Cameras, DC Cityscapes, Medium Format Cameras, Photography, Travel, Washington DC

Neighborhood Wanderings, and an Experiment

July 15, 2013 dcphotoartist Leave a comment

For wont of anything better to do on Sunday afternoon, I went out for a stroll in the 90+ degree heat (what was I thinking!!!) with the Rolleis for company. I wanted to do a little film and development test to see how well my results would come out. I’d say I nailed it based on these shots. The film I was testing is Ilford PanF, a very slow, fine-grained emulsion. The film speed Ilford recommends for this film is ISO 50. Quite a few folks I know recommend giving it a more generous exposure and rating it at EI 12. I shot some before at EI 25 and got good but not knock-your-socks-off results, so I thought I’d try the 12 and see what difference it makes. I took a risk and changed two variables at once – film speed and development technique. Normally I use Rodinal at a 1:50 dilution and develop for 14 minutes, agitating the chemistry for five seconds out of every 30 seconds. This time, I used Pyrocat HD for my developer, gave it twice the normal dilution (I usually use it diluted 1:1:100, but this time I used 1:1:200) for 45 minutes, with 5 seconds of agitation every 15 minutes.

This development technique is known as semi-stand development. Semi-stand uses highly dilute developers for greatly extended periods of time, with minimal agitation. What this does is it allows micro-contrast areas to form on the film where byproducts of the development process accumulate on the edges of light and shadow. These byproducts serve as a mask and lead to a boost in contrast at that edge, increasing the appearance of sharpness. If you look at the emulsion side of a negative that was developed using semi-stand, stand, or extreme minimal agitation technique (variations on a theme), the emulsion will actually appear in relief as if it had been etched.

This technique is also useful for managing high contrast situations because it allows for greater adjustment of the length of development to manage highlights. When you develop a roll of film, the shadow areas develop first, and once they have reached their maximum recorded density, they stop. Highlights will continue to develop long after the shadows have finished. This is one of the primary means for controlling contrast in an image- if the highlights are known to be too bright before developing the film, you can simply reduce total development time to keep the highlights from becoming unprintable.

These first two images are of the Capitol Bikeshare rental rack near my house. I’ve photographed the Bikeshare racks before, with full racks of bikes, to capture the receding perspective of the bike wheels. This time, I shot the bike rack with only one bike in it, to work with the late afternoon shadows created by the rack itself, and also to demonstrate the popularity of the Bikeshare, at least in my neighborhood. As you can see, on a Sunday afternoon, with the heat rising to over 90 degrees F, all but one of the bikes from this rack are in use.

Very much in the same stretch of 11th Street as the bike rack is where these two scenes can be found. The stone house is a bit of a neighborhood landmark – there are maybe half a dozen or less in the neighborhood with similar facades, and the rest (hundreds of houses) are varying types of brick or stucco over brick. The basement door photo was taken as part of this exercise, not only because I like wrought iron, but because the scene had extremes of contrast that I wanted to see if I could tame with the semi-stand development.

These two photos are of neighborhood icons – you’ve seen my color photo of Cavalier Liquor at night before. It has been the subject of many a photograph by fans of urban texture, neon, and Deco architecture. Hellers Bakery has been in their current location for many many years, and if you saw the movie “State of Play” starring Russell Crowe as Cal McAffery, a hard-luck, hard-boiled reporter who uncovers a Washington conspiracy, you’ll recognize their neon sign from below his apartment window. I’m very annoyed with Hellers that they don’t illuminate their sign very often, so it makes it very hard to get a good photo of it after dark!

And last but not least, an appropriate sign to end the post with:

Black and White, Cameras, DC Cityscapes, Medium Format Cameras, Photography, Washington DC

More Columbia Heights

July 11, 2013 dcphotoartist Leave a comment

Here are the outside shots of Mad Momos Restaurant and Beer Deck.

This is the entrance, as viewed from under the awning. When they bought the building, the structure was partially renovated with the intent to turn it into a restaurant. They followed through and finished it out, leaving the awning frame up but not getting a canvas/vinyl cover. Instead, they are training a vining plant in barrels, which will take a couple years to fill in (visible in the second photo of the awning). I just liked the structure of the awning and thought it would be an interesting frame to contrast its geometric structure against the decoration of the building behind it.

I don’t recall if the paper cutout figure over the door ever had a head or not, but in any case, it’s a little girl holding an iPhone like a handgun.

Here is the facade of the building. In case you’re wondering, the paper figures plastered to the wall are Osama Bin Laden giving Honey Boo-Boo a piggy back ride, whilst she’s holding a molotov cocktail. Yeah, the guys have a quirky sense of humor.

Another view of the awning structure, dappled with sunlight filtered through the tree above.

Chrome chairs on the patio at Mad Momos:

The chairs were still stacked from having been stored the night before. I loved the repetition of the shapes of the chairs.

In contrast to the modern awning frame and handrail around the front patio, this 1910s/20s wrought iron hand rail frames the steps on the house next door to their building.

All these photos were taken on a Tuesday – the slowest day of the week, thus the absence of customers. I’m going back there tomorrow after work with some color film to take some night shots – the place gets packed!

Black and White, Cameras, DC Cityscapes, Medium Format Cameras, Photography, Portraits, Washington DC

Portraits of a friend, and street photos

July 10, 2013 dcphotoartist Leave a comment

Here are two portraits I took of my friend Wanchuk, who is co-owner with Sam Huang (photo posted previously) of Mad Momos Restaurant & Beer Deck. I’ve known Wanchuk for nearly a decade. He’s from Sikkim, which is now a province of India in the Himalayas between Nepal and Bhutan, but used to be an independent kingdom with close ties to Bhutan.

We met through a common love of photography – at the time he was still in post-college bum-around-the-world mode, and wanted advice on how to take better pictures in the places he was going. Now he’s running a restaurant and giving me a show of my photos. The exhibit will open on August 2nd and run through the end of October. Details about the opening reception will be posted separately.

I took those photos of him after we finished a meeting about the exhibit, then went for a 15 minute walkabout in the neighborhood around the restaurant to see what I could find. There’s an old bar/club across the street called “The Pinch” – I so want to photograph the front door because it has cool architectural detailing and some nifty graffiti, but from the looks of the folks hanging out by the front door, I may have to come back and shoot that early in the morning when they’re closed -their patrons may not take too kindly to being photographed.

Here’s their logo on the wall facing the side street – it has a very 70’s look to it, but the paint seems very recent.

Pivoting to the left of the Pinch logo, I saw this lovely vanishing-point perspective of the building walls, dappled in evening sunlight. As I was composing the shot, this man hauling a gigantic cardboard box over his shoulder walked into the frame. Taking advantage of the serendipitous perspective-giving presence of the man, I waited until he was about 2/3 of the way in the frame before shooting.

Black and White, Cameras, Medium Format Cameras, Photography, Travel

Photostock 2013 – Lake Oneal and The Birchwood Inn

July 9, 2013 dcphotoartist Leave a comment

I don’t recall if I regaled you all with the saga of my stuck rental car. I had heard from some other folks at Photostock about Lake Oneal, which they said was absolutely beautiful, but really needed to be photographed in foggy conditions. Something was mentioned about the road to it being challenging, but that kinda got lost in my memory at the time. On my last day at Photostock, I decided to drive around on my own and take some photos. I had stopped in the general store in Good Hart and the owner gave me a map of Emmett County and marked a number of photogenic sights on it. I headed out, map in hand, stopping at the boat launch in Cross Village to get my shots of Lake Michigan. Carrying on, I saw the road to Lake Oneal marked on the map. At the end of the road there was a symbol for a boat launch. I thought, “how bad can the road be if there’s a boat launching ramp at the end?”. So, naive as I was, I drove back there. The road had some sandy spots in it, but nothing I couldn’t navigate around in my Ford Fusion. Then, at the very end of the road, there was a tall uphill, and on the downslope to the parking/unloading area, a VERY sandy stretch. I managed to get down the slope fine, so I figured I could follow the same track back up. NOT. I tried, several times, and ended up getting the car stuck on the side of the road. Long story short, two and a half hours and $300 later, my car was back on a hard surface road.

While I was stuck there, in the bright beautiful sunlight of a fog-less afternoon, I decided I would take on the challenge thrown down by the other photographers of getting a good shot of the lake with no fog. Here are the results:

The bridge is over a sluice/runoff drain for the lake. Judging from the stands of dead trees sticking out of the lake waters, the lake was an artificial lake. Why it was created I’m not sure, but I’m not about to complain.

Here you can better see the snags of dead trees reflected in the waters. Other than the leaden white sky (there was a little overcast, but still bright sun), I’d say challenge met.

These next two photos are of/at the Birchwood Inn, our headquarters for Photostock. The first one is of some magnificent clouds we had one evening. The roof of the annex to the inn is just visible at the bottom.

The last photo of this post is the Birchwood Inn’s patio illuminated by the full moon. This was I believe the night of the “super-moon”, but late enough it no longer appeared larger than normal. But it sure was bright and beautiful.

All the black and white images were taken with my Rolleiflex 2.8E, on Ilford Delta 400 film. The color shot was from my iPhone. Which was my lifeline to getting un-stuck, but barely – signal at Lake Oneal was so bad, I kept dropping my calls to AAA. So two words of caution should you ever want to visit Lake Oneal yourself – ONE: bring your own 4-wheel drive/offroad vehicle, preferably with a bumper-mounted winch, and TWO: a satellite phone would not be a bad investment. I watched two different 4wd vehicles go up that hill, and both had trouble, although one fared better than the other. The first one was only technically 4wd, because his front transfer case was acting up and so the power was only going to the rear wheels. His knobby tires and high clearance were what enabled him to get out. The other one spun and sputtered and wallowed through the sand but made it out in one pass.

Black and White, Cameras, Medium Format Cameras, Photography, Portraits, Travel

Yet More Faces of Photostock 2013

July 8, 2013 dcphotoartist Leave a comment

Here are some more (the last batch, actually) of my “Faces of Photostock”. In no particular order:

Well, no particular order other than I bracketed the series with folks not looking directly at the camera. I’m including these shots for sentimental reasons more than for the quality of the portraits.

All shots taken with my Rolleiflex 2.8E, on Ilford Delta 400 developed in Pyrocat HD. That Rollei is a fantastic portrait camera, considering it has a fixed “normal” lens on it, isn’t it?

Black and White, Cameras, Events, Medium Format Cameras, Photography, Travel

Photostock 2013 – St. Ignatius Church, Good Hart

July 8, 2013 dcphotoartist Leave a comment

Here are the promised photos of St. Ignatius Church and the cemetery next door. St. Ignatius Church as it currently stands is the third structure to have been erected on the site, the oldest of which was the French Catholic mission to convert the natives in the 1700s.

Today, the churchyard contains mostly 19th and early 20th century burials of Polish and Scandinavian immigrants. The churchyard is famous for the white wooden crosses for grave markers.

Here is a close up to show the tin markers with the names and biographical data on the crosses.

The church no longer has an active congregation, but is maintained by a local organization for its preservation.

Black and White, Cameras, Events, Medium Format Cameras, Photography, Travel

Photostock 2013 – abandoned buildings

July 7, 2013 dcphotoartist 1 Comment

Although these houses are familiar to Photostock participants from years past, I figure most of my readers have never seen them. The first building is across the intersection from Moose Jaw Junction, a roadside restaurant and bar near Larks Lake. The property is for sale, should anyone want a total tear-down.

The Slumping House, End View, Moose Jaw Junction

A different view of the building:

This house is/was a little cabin across the street from the St. Ignatius church in Good Hart, Michigan. Pictures of the church and its cemetery will be forthcoming in another post. From what I hear tell from past Photostockers, the cabin used to be far more intact than it is now and they have watched it deteriorate into this condition over the last half-dozen years.

One wall of the house is essentially gone, and you can look inside the structure through it. I would NOT attempt to enter, as there is a considerable debris field on the floor of the lower level, making for a prime residential facility for wildlife of the four-legged and no-legged varieties. You can see the remnant of the staircase through the opening in the wall, though. The texture of the wood and the coloring of it reminded me a bit of Bodie, the California gold-mining ghost town in the Eastern Sierra.

This is a view of the debris field and the remaining structural walls of the house. Amazing how the light level balanced between inside and outside- no HDR or even burning/dodging required to preserve interior and exterior detail alike through the window frame.

Here is a view of the end of the house, showing the whole of the structure.

All shots taken with my Rolleiflex 2.8E on Ilford Delta 400, developed in Pyrocat HD developer at 1:1:100 dilution.

Black and White, Cameras, Medium Format Cameras, Nudes, Photography, Portraits

July 4th Shoot – Figure in the Landscape, Along the Potomac

July 7, 2013 dcphotoartist Leave a comment

I was determined to avoid crowds and public gatherings on July 4th. Post 9/11 I get nervous in large crowds, especially when ingress and egress are difficult, and when large numbers of them are drunk. Not that my PTSD* gets triggered and I feel like the walls are closing in or anything (although I did get near-panic at Obama’s first inauguration- that was just WAY too many people and it was hard to move- even if something rather pedestrian happened like someone fell and got hurt, or a bottle of carbonated beverage froze and burst and people panicked THINKING it was a gunshot, you could have gotten trampled to death in the stampede!). Anyway, back to the real story – so I wanted to avoid the National Mall, because it’s just a filthy zoo of humanity on the 4th, so I called up a friend who had expressed an interest in posing for me, and we went out along the Potomac to some spots I know that are fairly private and make for good shooting. These are the first few images from the shoot (we’re still negotiating the use of the rest of them).

Chern K – Profile

These first two portraits I particularly like. The profile shot was taken with a Rolleinar close-up adapter on my Rolleiflex. The Rolleiflex by itself has a minimum focus distance of 3 feet, which is fine for general subjects, but for flowers, bugs, macro photography in general, and even tight portraits, 3 feet is not close enough. So Rollei in their infinite wisdom invented the Rolleinar close-up filter sets. They come in four strengths – 1,2,3 and 4. The 4 is extremely rare and you almost never see one on the market in any size. The #1 cuts the minimum focus down to 1.5 feet, the #2, to .75 feet, and so on. I have a #1 and a #2. At some point I MAY get a #3. Some people complain that the Rolleinars add too much “distortion” to portraits and as such are bad for doing them. I say shots like this disagree with that notion. If you need more proof, check out the work of Richard Avedon, as well as my friend Sanders McNew (the book cover for “Triptych: Sixteen Months” looks like a good example).

Chern K - Backlit Portrait — Chern K – Backlit Portrait

The backlit portrait was shot normally, no close-up filter required. I was figuring out the exposure for this shot and used my meter in incident reading mode. I had a brief doubt when taking the shot because the meter was suggesting only 1 stop different from what would have used for a non-backlit subject, but I went ahead and used the setting anyway. My doubts were renewed when I looked at the raw negative – reading a negative is a skill any serious film photographer should develop, and I’m pretty good at it now, having looked at literally thousands of negatives I’ve produced over the years, but I’m still, always, getting better at it. This was a case in point.

Then we got into playing with props, specifically, an ostrich egg and some leather masks I got at the Maryland Renaissance Festival.

Chern K - Ostrich Egg — Chern K – Ostrich Egg

I’ve been carrying around this ostrich egg shell for a while – I got it as a prop to use for another shot in my Tarot Cards: Re-imagined series. But getting the model who is supposed to use it to show up and sit for me has been a challenge, so it has been lingering, unloved, in my prop bag for some time. Well, it earned its keep with this shot. This is just a straight scan of the negative, so I’m still playing around with how to render the ostrich egg better – I want to preserve detail in the shell without it looking gray, or getting too blown out. Just as I got the shot composed, clouds kept drifting in and out of the sun’s path, changing the nature of the shot. I watched and noticed that the blown-out brilliant highlight caused by the direct sun on the shell’s smooth surface was greatly reduced by the cloud cover. By the time I got the meter reading for the cloud-diffused light, though, the clouds had moved on and it was back to full sun. So a waiting game ensued. I took this shot with partial, thin cloud diffusion because it was getting too hot for either of us to keep standing there waiting for a big cloud to drift back over again!

Chern K - The Sun Peeks Out — Chern K – The Sun Peeks Out

Here are the mask shots. Not much to say about these really – they’re fairly self-explanatory with the masks doing the talking. The masks were also bought for use in the Tarot Cards: Re-imagined series, and this is giving me new impetus to take up the series again and try to finish the Major Arcana.

I shot these all with Ilford PanF because it is such a slow film, and I wanted to try and shoot a lot of these wide open to get the blown-out, swirly background the lens is capable of producing. On the Rollei this can be a challenge with faster films because the fastest shutter speed is 1/500th of a second, which still isn’t fast enough in bright daylight to let me shoot the way I was looking to if I used even FP4+.

I don’t know if it was because I had been bottling up my human figure creative juices for so long, or the fact that I had a good model who understood how to pose and move, or having the right tool in my hands for the job, or what, but I got a crazy amount of successful images from this shoot- fully 24 out of 36 were ones I wanted to work with. That’s an amazing hit ratio, especially when you consider that of the 12 I didn’t pick, probably 1/2 were variations on a theme of ones I DID pick. So an 80% +/- hit rate? WOW.

* I was working in the Pentagon on 9/11, when the plane hit. Low-flying aircraft still make me jittery, but 12 years on, that’s about it. I have it pretty good all things considered.

Black and White, Cameras, Events, Medium Format Cameras, Other People's Work, Photography, Portraits, Travel

Photostock 2013 – Some Black and White Work

July 3, 2013 dcphotoartist Leave a comment

Since Photostock is all about photography, I thought I’d lead off this post with photos about cameras and taking pictures. The first photo is Jaime Young’s 9″ Cirkuit panoramic camera. A Cirkuit is just an ordinary Graflex field camera, but with some special modifications – it comes with a giant geared wheel and a series of reducing gears and flywheels to make it rotate up to 360 degrees and a special back that holds a 9″ tall roll of film. You can change the speed of rotation and the amount of rotation through changing gears and flywheels and adding stops to the large geared wheel. Jamie did a big group shot with the Cirkuit at the workshop facility dedication ceremony, where we had almost 70 people. The Cirkuit was absolutely needed this year to get the whole group shot done. One of the cool things about the Cirkuit is that because it rotates at a relatively slow speed, once the lens passes you, you can get up, run around, and get back in the picture, so you appear twice (or more). I’m itching to see the final print from the Cirkuit – some folks did just that, the run-around, and so they will be in the photo two, three, or in the case of one or two jokesters, even four times.

This is Steve Zimmerman, with his Rollei. We shot dueling Rollei photos of each other in a fit of silliness. His Rollei has a great story – he was out photographing in downtown Minneapolis, and some guy walked up to him and struck up a conversation about cameras and photography. The guy then pulls a BRAND NEW, IN ORIGINAL BOX Rolleiflex 2.8E, AND an equally brand new Leica M3 with the Summicron f2 lens out of a bag, and gives them to Steve for $100 each. Steve tried to pay him more (each of them was worth about 10x what he paid for them!) but the guy insisted on the cheap price, because “I know you’ll enjoy and appreciate them”.

Here’s Steve’s shot of me… why couldn’t he have photoshopped a full head of hair onto me? It would have helped compensate for the double chin…

Me, in a Rolleiflex Duel with Steve Zimmerman

Someone (I forget who) brought a beautiful RB Graflex Super D 4×5 SLR to the event. Here is Dan Lin, a fantastic photographer who I’ve done a print trade with before, playing with the Graflex. Alex L is in the background.

And here’s Judy Sherrod again, with her pinhole cameras. The one in front of her is the first version of her 20×20 wet plate pinhole box camera, made of plywood. It has since been retired and replaced with a new, better built one. The drum on the tripod behind her is an anamorphic pinhole. The pinhole is in the end of the tube, but the paper or film goes around the inside, instead of on the opposite wall of the camera. This works because of the way a pinhole works. The pinhole projects light in a very wide circle, not just a cone like a lens does. Doing so allows you to make some very different images.

Here’s Dorothy Kloss with her creepy doll. She likes collecting antique dolls, and the creepier the better.

It seems everyone has a Rolleiflex story somewhere or other. I was playing around with my Rollei and it reminded Dorothy that in some boxes of her father’s stuff, she has his old Rolleiflex, and maybe the Rolleinar close-up filters like I have and was using for the shot of her with the doll and this photo of the doll by itself. It inspired her to go dig through her dad’s stuff and find it when she got home.

Pele the Weimeraner. Pele was a great dog and a fine addition to the Photostock community. He is very attentive and friendly, and you can see in the subsequent photo of him with Arnaldo, his owner, very fixated on his ball.

Arnaldo, in the posing chair with head clamp, waiting for the wet plate collodion portrait that Andrew Moxom took of him to develop, playing with Pele.

Arnaldo. Arnaldo is a photographer from New York City. He drove to Photostock from New York in a 1980s vintage Porsche 944, and continued on to the Southwest (New Mexico and Arizona if I’m not mistaken) afterward.

Mat Marrash. Mat runs the Film Photography Project podcast, and does AMAZING 11×14 Infrared (!!!) photographs. Yes, I said 11×14, as in 11×14 inch film. He has a stock of Efke 11×14 infrared film that he’s working through – the Efke is no longer made, so once his stash is gone, that’s it.

Here’s a portrait of Dan Lin, without the Graflex, but with his pipe. I don’t think I got one of him wreathed in smoke from it, but I might have one like that on one of the remaining rolls from the trip I still have to develop.

And in the closer for this post, is Evan Schwab, the son of Bill Schwab, our host and organizer for the event. Evan is a terrific little guy, very smart and a good conversationalist. A kid even WC Fields could like.

Black and White, Cameras, Color, Events, Medium Format Cameras, Photography, Portraits

Faces of Photostock 2013

June 29, 2013 dcphotoartist Leave a comment

Last week (June 19-23) I was in the upper upper corner of the Lower Peninsula of Michigan (troll land – why? because it’s under the (Mackinac) Bridge!). The event was Photostock 2013, a very loose, casual gathering of photographers to hang out, shoot, share work, talk photo, and just relax. The event was held at the Birchwood Inn in Harbor Springs, Michigan, which is on Lake Michigan, not far south of the Mackinac Bridge. The bridge spans the strait that separates Lake Michigan from Lake Huron. It’s the second longest suspension bridge in North America, and the fourth longest in the world.

Here’s a photo of the bridge in the morning fog:

To clarify some confusion, Mackinac is pronounced Mackinaw (why I don’t know, but it is). If it’s a transliteration from a Native American word, then you’d think Pontiac should have been pronounced Pontiaw. But it’s not. Go figure. Anyway, you’ll sometimes see Mackinac written Mackinac and others Mackinaw. And same with the resort island of the same name.

Back to Photostock- it’s an environment where you don’t feel like the odd man out for being a total photo geek for bringing TWO Rolleiflexes with you (that was me, and in comparison to some folks, I was highly under-geared!). Here I am having fun with my Rolleiflexes- they’re wearing my Ray-Ban Wayfarers:

The coolest thing about it for me was getting to meet a whole bunch of folks in the flesh I only knew virtually, from participating on APUG (http://www.apug.org), Large Format Photography (http://www.largeformatphotography.info/forum), and Rangefinder Forum (http://www.rangefinderforum.com). Some of them I’ve known as virtual beings for nearly a decade. Everyone attending was just terrific, and I can’t think of a single conversation that was anything other than interesting or a person who was anything other than energizing to talk to. We had some really fantastic photographers give demonstrations of their work, like Judy Sherrod showing off her homemade 20×24 wet plate pinhole cameras and the accompanying alumitypes she made with it – WOW. Talk about inspirational – here was someone who was told “no, it can’t be done”, decided that no was not an acceptable answer, and proved the naysayers wrong. She shot wet plate pinhole photos of the beach and ocean at Pass Christian, Mississippi, coating her giant plates at home, driving to the beach, setting up, exposing, driving back and processing the plates all within a half hour span – pretty amazing considering that her exposures were 7-10 minutes each!

Judy Sherrod's Pinhole Camera — Judy Sherrod’s Pinhole Camera

EDIT:

I received the following note from Judy Sherrod clarifying the information about the wet plate pinhole work:

The 20×20 pinhole cameras are made to shoot wet-plate collodion plates in a collaboration with S.Gayle Stevens. Gayle is the collodion artist. I am not. I make the boxes.
I live in Texas, she lives outside of Chicago, and we work from a darkroom in Pass Christian, Mississippi. It’s a long commute for each of us!
We coat the plate in the darkroom, put the plate in the camera, put the camera in the car, jump in and drive to the beach, where the exposures are made. Most exposures are about three minutes. Then we put the camera back in the car and return to the darkroom for processing.
Thank you for writing about this project. It has turned into a dream come true for me. I can’t wait to see what happens next!

looks like I got a couple facts turned around in my head! Thanks, Judy for the clarification!

This is a preliminary set of photos of the people attending Photostock – there were nearly 70 people participating throughout the week, and I’m sure there were some I barely saw let alone got to meet and talk with.