It Didn’t Hold a Fire

A frozen jug of water by an antique woodstove, and an elephant

As I type this, my film scanner is running. I’m scanning a lot of old 4 x 5 sheet film, some 120 film, and this, this was from 35MM, the oldest photograph of mine I guess you might see here.

The situation was that I was “house” sitting in a cabin, with free rent, while I was a college student. There was a bit of insulation, no running water (hence the jug), an antique leaky wood stove. But electricity, a refrigerator. The stove didn’t hold a fire overnight (though it would roar and cook before it burnt through the wood). Such a cold Vermont winter, like we don’t really seem to get anymore.

I like this picture, and the interesting thing is that even with so so many years having passed, it’s still hard to know whether it’s any good or whether I like it for all the reasons we have to fight through in putting something out in the world to resonate generally, beyond my own set of resonances.

I recently watched a documentary about another photographer, a contemporary of mine, and for her it was very different. For her it was all about putting her very personal resonances and so much about her out into the world. And she’s great, don’t get me wrong. But I’ve always distrusted my own eye when it’s about me to any great extent. I always think “because *I* made it” or “because I was there” or “because I am so creative” are all terrible reasons. Sometimes the images with a lot of that can still be great photos. It’s just trickier to sort it out, for me.

Still doing lots of scanning. Some of these sheets I can remember setting up the view camera in great detail, despite the decades. Others are a surprise. It’s interesting, and will continue to be as interesting as making new exposures, maybe for many reasons more interesting. Maybe my eye is better now? Maybe I know more about everything and I’m deeper. Still, I was on fire in a certain way in those younger days exploring film. We shall see.

Mid Summer, and Photo Work

In spite of my resolve to post more on this blog, I have been lax. But I haven’t been lax in my work in photography.

The new printer, an Epson Surecolor 7570 is proving to be fabulous. In particular, I find I have a much broader color gamut on some of the matte papers I prefer, like the Canson Edition Etching. And on account of that, I’ve been printing on watercolor paper a lot more, the Canson Aquarelle. I seem to land there as often as not when working on a print.

In particular, I just dropped off a reasonably large framed print of this one:

Leaf splash, birch and foliage reflection

I printed it on the Aquarella watercolor paper, which worked out better than I expected, with fantastic color fidelity and texture in the non-detailed areas.

This was part of a set of nine framed photos that went to the North Conway League of NH Craft gallery, delivered yesterday.

In all, in the last weeks, I’ve gotten a total of 47 framed and matted pieces out to almost all of the League galleries in New Hampshire. I’ve recently updated my offerings at the Long River Gallery in White River Junction Vermont.

Adding Small Framed and Mounted Matted Prints for sale.

There are a few reasons to hang a show of prints in a public place if I have the chance. Fame and fortune don’t usually figure in. One good outcome is getting my processes moving, putting a big slug of energy into this whole endeavor.

In cleaning up and organizing after the show prep — still doing that almost two months after hanging the show! — I’m going through so many prints I have around, unframed or mounted/matted/bagged.

I realized that mounting and framing a print is a big project for anyone not set up to do that. You go to a frame shop, and it’s expensive. As for me, I’m not a framing pro, but I’m set up with space to do it and some specialized equipment. I don’t charge pro prices for my matting and framing. I just want to help my prints find a happy home.

I’ve shipped matted prints as well as very small frames with glass. I like to put prints behind good Tru Vue anti reflective glass because it looks the best. I don’t want to ship prints with plexiglass or acrylic. I’m limited though in shipping: the fragility of glass goes up pretty fast with size. I’ll ship little frames.

I’ve also come around on small frames. When I first got big pro level printers and high resolution cameras, I printed almost everything big. But lately I’ve been finding some things work very nicely small. Images I only want to see as large prints are not included in the small frame selection.

All prints are of course printed with archival pigment inks and mounted with archival materials. The frames are natural maple. If any glass breaks in shipping, I will replace it for free.

To order a listed framed or matted print, find those revealed after clicking the “more sizes” button at the bottom of an image’s page.

Framed Prints

Matted Prints

I’m still (2/23/25) adding data and listing these, but the pages are filling out.

Iceland Cow and Onward

I’m going to go down the hallway from left to right. I probably won’t discuss every image, but give an impression of the show.

I almost didn’t hang this image, because it was in the last show I did at DHMC in 2015. I wanted to do all new work. I sold a print of this off of my site while putting the show together and figured, “Yeah, I better hang it.” And, yeah. I spent a total of seven hours (!) hanging up these photos over two days (mostly all the first day). So I had a lot of time there in the hallway, and I could see people stop, and people came up to me as I was messing with it. This cow in iceland image is one place people spend a lot of time in that hallway. This is in a 16 x 40 inch frame. It’s good pretty big like this, to give an experience of the space this conveys.

On that same panel of wall I’ve got a big print of blue ice and birch reflections, in a 28 x 32 inch frame. It’s a foray into my painterly style, and the large size gives that big-impressionistic-painting experience. The big print holds up to the big cow, even though it’s quite different. Peachy dawn light on the birch trees across the pond made these pink reflections while the ice reflects the blue winter sky. A green windfall apple is frozen in the ice.

more soon…

Dartmouth Hitchcock Winter ’25 Exhibit

Four framed photographs hanging at Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center in winter of '25 — Four out of Forty Six Photographs in this show

This is a show of forty six photographs hanging in the fourth floor hall above the rotunda at Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center, in Lebanon New Hampshire. The framed prints range in size from 10 x 10 intimate framed prints to 28 x 32 or 16 x 40 frames of landscapes or abstracts.

‘ll write a series of posts on this show, since it’s quite large. Posting photos of the whole thing, or much of it at once is impossible, since there are quite a few panels. Even though the space is pretty big, the hallway wide, it’s hard to get back far enough to get a view of much of it at once. I’ll go through the panels, with links to each piece as it is for sale unframed on my site.

First I’ll write a little about making the show. Every show — and I’ve done a good handful — is an opportunity to step up my game, try new things, and stretch out the boundaries of what I can do. Luckily this burst of energy can last after the show, and I have some new things I’m very excited about doing but I didn’t get to do in the show.

I had a real struggle with this one, but I’m extremely pleased. The feedback has been great. I think it’s the most successful thing I’ve done in spite of, or maybe somehow because of, the trouble.

Trouble started with a bad covid infection in late October. I am extremely careful about Covid. I know what it can do, no illusions or denial about that. In spite of great care, at a relative’s house, I got infected. They are not careful. I got very sick and then got a rebound, so I was quite sick for a couple of weeks. And then my energy just didn’t come back. I had stamina only until noon, then after a while I had stamina until 2pm. Even when hanging the show in early January I was really running out of steam. So I pushed through that.

Second problem was that my printer started to have problems. It’s (or was) a very good and large Epson Pro pigment printer. It makes archival pigment prints with a wide color gamut. I’ve done a lot of great work with it.

There is a known and well discussed intermittent and troubleshoot-proof problem with color management going bad in recent versions of Mac OS. I couldn’t fix it for weeks. I ended up having to send files to an ancient MacBook Pro and then print from that. Then I started getting banding when using “Photo Black Ink,” which is the ink that is used to print on Baryta paper. Maybe about half my work is on Baryta paper. This paper with this ink has deeper blacks and a greater range of colors, showing more contrast in vivid colors. I don’t use it whenever I can get good color on matte or textured paper, as I often like to play with the texture and tone of those papers.

I spent endless time troubleshooting and researching the technology behind the banding problem I was having. I spent hundreds of dollars on cleaning cartridges and some new parts. That all is its own story. The point is that a lot of energy and frustration went into that, and there were photos I really wanted to hang that I just didn’t print, because I wanted them on the Canson Baryta Photographique paper that I visualized them on. I had some already printed before the trouble, and I just had to abandon several images I really wanted to include. Oh well. It turned out.

Continued…

About Limited Editions

I’ve always been averse to “Limited Editions,” mostly because I keep getting better and so does technology. I’ve been doing this for 45 years, and every year I have a better eye and better skill than last year. Often when I go to print something, or just look at it a year later, I think, “This could be better.” It might be the paper it’s printed on, something like and adjustment in Photoshop using luminosity masking in a way I didn’t know to do a decade ago, maybe just something I saw.

I’ve got a new printer on the way. Last week I tried to fix my refrigerator sized Epson P7000 pigment printer, and it went sideways. I ended up with maybe $500 worth of ink being pumped through a leak and onto the floor of my printing/framing room. It was devastating. This has been a really good printer, giving great results, all archival with these pigment inks and on good paper. But of course it has limits. It can print more colors than a lot of monitors can display, but that depends on the paper. But often I can see “out of gamut” when I soft proof before I even print. Sometimes the print is better than I expect, and sometimes a bit worse, and I fiddle and do my very best.

My good old Epson P7000 getting taken apart so I can haul it away

I was really crushed about the loss of the old printer, but it’s almost certainly not worth investing $thousands into repairs at its age of over 5 years. I mean, I thought hard about giving up photography altogether, thought about it hard as I was cleaning up that expensive ink. I can’t justify the expense of a new printer. I can’t justify any of it, but here I am.

Now I’m exciting about the new printer on the way, an Epson 7570. I did some soft proofing with ICC profiles from this printer on papers I like, and at least in software and on the good monitor it rather far exceeds the colors I can hit over the old printer. Some scientific measurements say it has 10% more colors. Just checking a few things out, it seems that means a range from no-difference to, “Wow, I’m going to have to rip up old prints and re do them.” Really. If you’ve got a print on your wall from me that you were and are happy with, don’t feel bad. It’s still good. But if I print it next month it might be better. There are a few things I just haven’t printed because I haven’t been able to get something I like well enough. I think I can print those now.

Now, my understanding of an “edition” of prints is that they are all the same. It’s a run, same size, same paper, same treatment, and that’s that. I’d rather make 25 prints where each one is subtly better than the last (while of course the first one isn’t going out the door unless it’s good enough, the best I can do at that time). If I made 25 prints of something 10 years ago and had to ship that out instead of whatever file/paper/printer combination I’ve evolved to now — I’d be heartbroken to ship the old print.

It’s also true that I’m no longer young. I hand print each photograph on fine art paper with expensive pigment ink, and they are not cheap posters or commercial runs. That means that they are indeed very limited. I promise you all there are not more than a hundred, or more than 50 in most cases, of any of my prints out there in the world printed by me. And there won’t be a lot more of them before I die, I promise. Any print you buy from me is certainly part of a limited edition of sorts, and it’s also better than the first “edition,” the first run of that print.

No longer Photo of the Week here, and a huge show hanging

I’ve been neglecting this space, largely because I no longer want to do what I started out doing with this blog. I’m changing this up, so I can post more.

What I was doing was “Photo of the Week” where I added a new photo to my site every week and wrote about it some. This was good in that I brought-to-light and edited at least a new photo every week. Also it was maybe good to be writing some. But the ongoing effect was that I was adding too many photos to my site, and sometimes just writing because the week was up and it was time to do it. Also, if I remove a photo from lehet.com then this WordPress part of the site has a broken link. Better to have the site and the blog independent. Of course it will still be a photo blog much of the time.

So the big news is that I am hanging a huge show at Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center right now. It’s something over 45 prints, and some of them are big. Some of them are also quite small. I’m very happy with the space and how the photos flow across it. I’ve been getting effusive feedback from people passing by during the seven hours I spent hanging it. I spent a lot of time there, and it was great seeing people enjoy the images. Exhausting to hang it all though.

It’s impossible to photograph this whole show to post here, because it is well over 100 linear feet of hanging panels, with spaces in between them. There’s no way to get far enough back, or really all that far back at all.

I’ve also got a new huge Epson pigment printer on the way, an Epson P7570 I’m both excited and terrified. Scared because the thing weighs about 300 pounds. I need to have a few people to help me set it up, but I don’t. My old printer was essentially the same form factor and I somehow managed to set it up myself. I don’t remember how I did it, unfortunately. But if I did it once, maybe I can do it again.

Here’s the first panel of the show, moving from left to right. I’ll post more as we go along.

First Panel of a large photo exhibition at Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center in Winter '25

Upcoming Show at Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center

Back to posting! Maybe I can get back in the habit. I don’t know, something happened with this ongoing Covid pandemic. For one thing, I lost my blogging momentum. (However, I have been posting many photos on Mastodon @[email protected]). I’m finding Mastodon to be a congenial community.

Anyway, I’ll be working furiously and hopefully finding time to post as I work on the show, and certainly as it hangs.

Here is one new image, not yet for sale on the rest of the site, which I’ll probably hang.

New Show Coming Up!

I have not been showing any work particularly during the pandemic. I’ve had some work remaining in some League of NH Craftsman galleries, and I think a lot of that is sold, so I’ve got to replenish work in those galleries. I’ve refreshed my work in Long River Gallery in White River Gallery.

I’ve been posting new work on my Mastodon account — a refreshing and better alternative to Twitter, especially for photography. It’s quite a passionate-about-photography online community. I’ve been much more daring, posting work that is more like sketches than fully formed and printed pieces. Somehow in that context I feel more comfortable doing that than anywhere else. Really, I’ve never liked to post work that is not “locked in” to an edit, including the paper I print it on. However, in recent years I’ve accepted that I will want to improve work and will do it actively — and it’s a shame to keep something locked into an interpretation when I’m seeing it better or have better capability to express it than I had in the past. It’s why I rarely do limited editions. Though I also understand the idea that the print is the print and will be the print — that’s the print. But anyway, I’m feeling flexible these days.

To find my photos on Mastodon you can use the hashtag #johnlehetphoto. I tag pretty much everything. And follow me. My current address on the Fediverse as of 3/10/23 is @[email protected].

Anyway, this upcoming show, for April. The theme the gallery wanted is Spring. So I have a range of spring interpretations, quite a lot of photos I’m considering and working with the trade-offs between the wide range of my work interpreting spring, versus the harmony between pieces. It is in a state of furious flux at the moment.

More Coming, the Fediverse and Beyond

I’ve been rather behind on posting new photos to this blog, but I’ve got a digital ton of new stuff to put on here. Will do quite soon!

Edited this post to remove the stuff about turning the blog into a federated server. I was excited about Mastodon (still am, and I have deleted my Twitter account). There was no need for that plug in or publication of the blog to the fediverse automatically. I’ll post links on mastodon.

My Mastodon presence in general is [email protected]

Follow me there! I’m posting way more photos than I did on Twitter.

I also find that on Mastodon I’m rather looser about posting unedited or first-quick-edit photos.