It’s times like these – when I see Hal surrounded by those who love and cherish him – that really touch me the most; he’s really got quite the fan club!
I don’t think he quit grinning from ear to ear once last night… :)
We’re moving toward the final stages of filming (unless we can get to Paris – fingers crossed!), so we sat down with Hal to film some selected images from his massive body of work while he provided a little back story to each – an especially fun and meaningful day of filming for all of us.
I should really be using my camera to shoot this stuff, but my Droid is less cumbersome in this small space…
Hal made us brownies and served a bit of 20 year-old port …
Fun (surreal) to see one of my prints among his collection …
Hal’s gorgeous large format camera …
… and studio lights
We had an amazing ride with Hal Gould for the first eight months of 2012. We put in several hundred hours and have about 35 hours of film (digital, of course). At the end of August, it became clear that my crew and I needed to take some time to tend to matters in our own little realms, but I vowed that we would fire things back up after the turn of the new year. Well, here we are, and very excited to get back to work! Most of the filming is finished, so for the next several months, I’ll be focused on setting up our fundraising platform, writing, and editing. Thank you for your continued moral support as we work toward bringing this labor of love to life; Hal’s is a life truly worth examining and celebrating!
Happy 2013!
Shannon
It was really lovely to get to see and meet so many wonderful people in Hal’s world at his family reunion picnic this past weekend. I only took a few pictures but I have no doubt, in this photography-loving gathering of folk, that hundreds of images were captured that night.
The entire meal was prepared using food from Juliette’s organic farm in Boulder – and it was absolutely delicious. Please check out the Facebook page for Everybody Eats; they are doing such good work up there!
“Everybody Eats! is an all-volunteer collective of the Rocky Mountain Peace and Justice Center located in Boulder Colorado which promotes local, sustainable, organic agriculture and opposes genetic engineering in food by creating a sustainable and secure local food system.”
Toward the end of the evening, Hal came over to me with a big ol’ grin on his face and said, “This is why I’ve lived so long.”
Cheers to that, Hal, cheers to that. 
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- Father, daughter, and friends.
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- Juliette telling us a bit about the farm before the tour.
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- Hal, living and loving life – with his brand new DIGITAL camera. That’s right folks, Hal Gould has come to the digital side.
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- Juliette giving a tour of her beautiful organic farm.
With the wildfires burning down the front range as of late Dominic has been busy filming for ABC, so we’ve been on a bit of a hiatus. Actually, we’re close to filming the bulk of the Colorado stuff and the interviews have more or less wrapped up at this point – we just have some B Roll to film and we’ll start the editing process. I think we’re up to about 35 hours of footage, so there’s a lot to sift through.
At the end of June, Hal, my friends Peter and Kate, and I took a road trip down to New Mexico. We visited Hal’s good friends Felicia Ferguson and Chuck Henningsen, had lunch with another of Hal’s friends, Andrew Smith, and met up with Dick Bostick and Melody Sullivan at their home for dinner. It was like a full-on photography immersion trip as we discussed the history, future, philosophy and religion of the medium. Good stuff; a photography geek’s delight.
We also made the somewhat harrowing pass on over to Cuba, NM to visit Q-Bar Ranch – the ranch Hal and his father had from the time Hal was 12 until the forest service bought his father out several years later. The main house is still standing, but the outer buildings were apparently burned down by the forest service in an effort to get them to sell more quickly (nice).
Dominic was working the Waldo Canyon fire and unable to join us, so I just took a few pictures along the way…
Hal asked me if I could make his “Team Hal” t-shirts available to friends, family, and anyone else who might be interested. HERE’S the Cafe Press shop where it and other Team Hal items are available. Any proceeds will go toward the making of the film; thank you for your support!
Learn it. Know it. Live it.
Team Hal!
From today’s editing meeting…
Working on the more tedious and behind-the-scenes aspect of the film now, but still looking forward
to conducting a few more interviews – still have a bunch of stuff to shoot yet with Hal – and then,
of course, finding our way to Sabastiao Salgado in Paris.
Maybe that picture in David’s editing room is a good omen
Dominic is still traveling, so Hal and I were left to our own devices yesterday. It’s nice to just hang out with Hal – no filming, no schedule – just get into whatever kind of trouble we can find. I suggested that we perhaps, maybe, possibly go into the darkroom a make a print or two. It’s been a few years since Hal’s made a print but, coincidentally, a couple of days ago he’d made a few contact sheets of the Three Graces image he shot at Garden of the Gods last week.
Over lunch, he told me how he’d processed each of them – said it took him two days to make the first one. When you haven’t done something in a long time and there are a lot of moving parts and chemicals and it’s dark and you only have one working eye – well, yeah, it’s going to take some time to work through that process. But he did it. He’s cool like that.
Anyway… we got down there and he turned to me with a little twinkle in his eye (I kid you not – full on twinkle) and said, “Wanna make a 16 x 20?”
When I’d first arrived at Hal’s yesterday, he was standing at the front door looking pretty deflated. I saw that he’d been mowing his front lawn – the long, orange cord of his electric lawn mower strewn all about.
“What’s going on, Hal, you okay?”
“I broke the cardinal rule.”
“You ran over the cord.”
“Yes. Dammit.”
Dammit was definitely the word of the day. At least until we got down to the darkroom, then all that cord business melted away and we were laughing and high-fiving like a couple of goofballs.
As he pulled that first sheet out, he lamented over the fact that they don’t make the kinds of paper he likes anymore. It’s true – print makers seemed to be screwed these days; it’s too bad, really. We got everything arranged and focused under the enlarger, then he turned to me and said, “This is when the real magic begins.”
Hal always moves and speaks with purpose – he’s the least wasteful person I know in this regard. Sometimes, if there’s something he’s wanting to do or something he wants to say and he can’t quite remember what it is, he just becomes still until it comes to him. A wonderful thing happens when he’s using his cameras – and I saw it in the darkroom, too – his mind and body fall into a very natural and familiar rhythm and he very nearly skates around with no effort at all.
He turned on the timer, dipped the paper in the developer, agitated it a bit, and then he did five standing push ups. He agitated a bit more, did a few more push ups, turned the paper over and we watched it come to life. Once we got down to the stop bath, we celebrated and high-fived; the image looked fantastic. We studied it for a very long time and then Hal said, “Wanna make another one?” After the second print, “Wanna make another?” After third print, “Wanna do one more?”
Magical, indeed.
With Dominic working other assignments for the next couple of weeks or so, we decided to take a break from filming and just go have some fun. Hal has mentioned going down to Garden of the Gods on a few occasions, so we took advantage of the gorgeous weather and headed down south yesterday.
While I was distracted getting his lunch ready, Hal decided to crawl up into the Three Graces so we could take his picture…
There were several tourists gathering around snapping pictures of him, too; guess they aren’t used to seeing a 92 year-old rock climber. Oh, Hal. :)
My dad joined us for a bit – it was nice that they could spend a little time together – it’s probably been awhile…
He took this beautiful shot…
Some more from the day…
