A hand-written sign decorated the locked front door of Oregon Arts Alliance during Eugene’s First Friday Art Walk last night.

Art galleries that have gone under or severely cut back operations in downtown Eugene during the last year or two include OAA, DIVA, La Follette, Fenario and Karin Clarke.

Read it. It’s wonderful.

Several days later Murray asked me about a tourist attraction known as the most photographed barn in America. We drove 22 miles into the country around Farmington. There were meadows and apple orchards. White fences trailed through the rolling fields. Soon the signs started appearing. THE MOST PHOTOGRAPHED BARN IN AMERICA. We counted five signs before we reached the site. There were 40 cars and a tour bus in the makeshift lot. We walked along a cowpath to the slightly elevated spot set aside for viewing and photographing. All the people had cameras; some had tripods, telephoto lenses, filter kits. A man in a booth sold postcards and slides — pictures of the barn taken from the elevated spot. We stood near a grove of trees and watched the photographers. Murray maintained a prolonged silence, occasionally scrawling some notes in a little book.
“No one sees the barn,” he said finally.

A long silence followed.

“Once you’ve seen the signs about the barn, it becomes impossible to see the barn.”

He fell silent once more. People with cameras left the elevated site, replaced by others.

“We’re not here to capture an image, we’re here to maintain one. Every photograph reinforces the aura. Can you feel it, Jack? An accumulation of nameless energies.”

There was an extended silence. The man in the booth sold postcards and slides.

“Being here is a kind of spiritual surrender. We see only what the others see. The thousands who were here in the past, those who will come in the future. We’ve agreed to be part of a collective perception. It literally colors our vision. A religious experience in a way, like all tourism.”

Another silence ensued.

“They are taking pictures of taking pictures,” he said.

He did not speak for a while. We listened to the incessant clicking of shutter release buttons, the rustling crank of levers that advanced the film.

“What was the barn like before it was photographed?” he said. “What did it look like, how was it different from the other barns, how was it similar to other barns?”

A severe case of museum foot at the Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art Friday night.

The Eugene Concert Choir decided, in an effort to promote their upcoming “British Invasion” concert of Brit-influenced choral music, that it would be fun and entertaining to recreate the iconic cover of the Beatles’ 1967 Sgt. Pepper album.

It turned out to be a lot more work than anyone realized — and a whole lot of fun. They even got the mayor to join in.

photo: Sgt. Pepper, Eugene style, 2010

I’ve been keeping the printer busy with experiments in black and white. As you can see in the photo, I’m working out ways to make digital prints that — maybe — look something like the black and white prints I get in the darkroom. And, yes, it’s a steep curve. The material you can read online is over-technical, fussy and boring, for the most part.

On Saturday I went out in the woods and shot a roll of Tri-X on the Pentax LX; I also carried the K-7 and duplicated all 30 images, shot for shot, on the digital camera. (The lenses were fairly well matched in length: a 28mm f/2.8 on the LX and a 21mm f/3.2 on the K-7.)

I’m liking these first experiments. Initial reaction: Digital prints — at least the ones I make on watercolor paper — are sharper and cleaner, but don’t have the full dynamic range of darkroom prints. They’re also cheaper if you buy regular artist’s watercolor paper and cut it down and use non-manufacturer ink, like the MIS continuous inking system I bought.

Initial reactions to the MIS system: Like all things digital, it’s fussy. But, with excellent help from the support folks at inksupply.com, I got the thing up and running and it’s only stumbled a couple times.

I especially like having a big stack of paper and big bottle of ink to play with, without having sunk much money into it.

More as I learn more.

PS: You can see in the photo that I’m beginning to hand color some digital prints. That, too, is very different.