AND in Honor of my life, lived as an Anti-War Activist, I offer, with gratitude:
Based on a Leica M Bellows, disassembled, and carefully hacksawed, a Novoflex Castel Q focusing rail, 2 Chinese Rotating quick release clamps, and both Really Right Stuff and Chinese quick release plates. The device goes together and comes apart in a minute or two; and allows for swinging and shifting both lens and body, and tilting the lens; to achieve changing the plane of focus on the sensor. Here we see the platform with Leica M 240 body and a 1970 Leitz Wetzlar 1:3.5/ 65 mm Elmar. The next 2 photographs show the results.
(click photo to view larger)
Test Photo 1 – The flower image below was taken without swing or shift and wide open @ f:4. You can see the everything behind the point of focus quickly falling out of focus. 
Test Photo 2 – By swinging and shifting the lens you can see, below, those elements, behind the point of focus coming more into focus, even including some of the distant, sunlit background. The camera did not move. The aperture did not change its only the effect of swinging and shifting the lens. This “look” can only be achieved “optically.” It cannot be achieved digitally in post processing. Here we see the degree of swing and shift used to achieve the look in Test Photo – 2.
Today I also checked to make sure the contraption will work the Leica SL body.
Below we see the result achieved with this body, and same 53 year old Leitz lens, on the platform; with a bit more time spent considering composition . The result of a threesome:
a Leica SL digital body,
a 1970 Leitz Wetzlar 65mm lens,
and a contraption I’ve
been developing over years;
just to stay in touch with
“the optical bench”
that was the “view camera” experience.
The 65mm Leitz Elmar sits among the ‘bokeh’ royalty; in my occasionally humble opinion.
A Facebook group formed by mutual interests in: photography, place, nature, flora and fauna.
Enthusiasts share photographs made with cell phone cameras, point and shoots, as well as the latest, auto-focus-on-your-critter-eye mirrorless cameras. All photographs shared on the group’s Facebook page are made within the Woodland Dunes Natural Area, Two Rivers, WI. So I, for one, find myself getting to know that area more intimately.
(click photograph for a larger view)
Waves of revelation wash over me with each and every participatory moment of the Art as Poetry as Art process. Making art is a very solitary, mind-body-spirit experience. Submitting a piece of art for participation in an exhibition can feel like taking your child out in public, where it may be judged, criticized, rejected… it qualifies as a “call for a response.” …we dress ’em up, and begin to feel the anticipation: “what will ‘they’ think? will they accept her? will they think he’s beautiful? how will they compare ours to all the others?
Yesterday, as I allowed myself to absorb the Art as Poetry as Art exhibition at the Rahr-West Art Museum, I began feeling like, I imagine, and have occasionally experienced before, a community gathering, around a fire, with dancing and storytelling, and masks, and costumes, and quite a bit of synchronicity, harmony, and rhythmic movement to drumming, calling out and responding, …in kind …appropriately …touchingly …with heart …and understanding. Once more common. Rather rare today. Thank you Jenna Rindo, Lakeshore Artists Guild Rahr-West Art Museum, and last, though certainly not least, Jen Anne
(click images for larger view)
…and yesterday was the 70th annual celebratory reception,
by Manitowoc residents,
welcoming this National Historic Landmark,
after steaming its way from its home port of Ludington, MI to Manitowoc, WI.
(click image for larger view)
Art as Poetry / Poetry as Art, presented by the Lakeshore Artists Guild,
and hosted by the Rahr-West Art Museum in Manitowoc, WI, May 14 — June18, 2023
did what I hope to each art experience does: gave me goosebumps and tears.
Don’t miss this exhibition. I don’t remember when I fell in love with the combination of words and pictures. But I was quite young; seven or eight. Life magazine, Look magazine, National Geographic… showed me different views of the world. This exhibition demonstrates both power of words and pictures working together and independently. The “Call and Response” nature of the show resonates like a fine musical instrument.
(the right to use and/or copy these poems and works of art belong the creators)
(click image for larger view)
Tanya Steele, Peter Sherrill, and Anneliese Finke “calling and responding”
George Lottermoser and Jenna Rindo “calling and responding” 
As I approached the Sconza Lemoncello Almonds sample station at Costco
the young man filling the little cups said, “Out fighting monsters today?”
Puzzled, I asked what he meant.
“with that vest and that hat you must be a super hero hunting monsters.”
As I walked away munching my almonds and considering the price,
as I do enjoy them, I thought about his comment.
He was not wrong. Though ‘aging’ seems the only monster I’m struggling to hold at bay.
(click image for larger view)
…the working title of this recently completed encaustic painting.
Though words seem to interfere with visual aesthetic experience:
(click image for larger view)
Encaustic paint, on stretched fabric, and RC silver print, ruined by flood.
I found myself unable to throw away this particular scratched and ruined print,
with the others which were laminated to it by moisture.
I’d soaked the stack for days; hoping to separate and save the memories.
This photograph was made on the Eastern shore of the Great Lake Michigan;
sometime around 2005; give or take a few years.
This encaustic painting was created on the Western shore of the Great Lake Michigan in 2023.
I remembered this quote as I grabbed the little Fujifil X20
pointed it into the darkness, where I could barely see the dear deer,
and knowing two layers of glass in the storm door would further degrade the images.
I truly enjoy the beauty of these images. They “feel” like memories, to me:
(click images for larger view) 
This phrase apparently originated as US Army slang towards the end of WWII.
My backyard, all-you-can-eat buffet,
while “strictly for the birds,” also serves at least 3 species of squirrels;
though I have finally managed to restrict them to only ground cleanup.
(click images for larger view)