#OpenParksNetwork hashtag - Bluesky

4️⃣ I could say it began as an idea born of a promise to my parents; it was and is that. Beginnings though are manifold. Every beginning of course has an end.

🎞️ All of these sequences, artworks, words and illustrations, accompanied by vintage #NPS photos from the #OpenParksNetwork will have their...⬇️

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The Parkways Projects 1934≈2025

@parkwaysprojects.bsky.social

1 year ago

This soft and gently silvered image is scanned at around 3000dpi from an original glass plate negative of the CCC era photography in the formation years of The Great Smoky Mountains National Park. It is a classically framed scenic; a tree trunk rising from the lower left corner, then angling into the left frame. The leaves of another species of tree frame the right side of the image. Before us, in the open area is a foreground of foliage below the viewer's eyes in the medium shadow cast by the trees. Beyond that is a ridge, and then, if the further distance a very large mountain ridge of the beloved Blueridge Appalachian chain. #OPN is what we call this treasure trove of over 1.3 million extremely high resolution scans; usual live image areas averaging 5x7 to 11x15 inches, some much larger than that still—with some scans at 6000dpi, which is phenomenally impressive! The National Parks Service has collaborated with Clemson University's Archival Librarians to tackle the entire National Parks archive of all known photo prints and negatives (which for years—decades—have lain in an invisible status just solely due to the lack of technology to release these images back into our world. 95% of the Clemson OPN scans are in the public domain or part of their open source network. When I learned of the availability of these treasured images, I knew then I would add them to the stories and narrative I'm creating for "The Parkways Projects," which are now in their fifth year of process and preparation as newly restored images which will provide actual photographs for illustrations illuminating The Parkways Projects articles, stories, poems, sidebar information and other topics along the way. I'm referencing the history of the Parkways formation alongside the work to bring the Great Smoky Mountains and the Shenandoah National Parks into being. The idea to build the Parkways emerged from that great initial dream of building our National Parks using the Public Works Projects.

“A soft landscape” #OpenParksNetwork #DigitalArchiveScan from the #ClemsonUniversityArchives #Photography

#Stunday 🦋 #Landscapes #BlueskyPhotography
#Skyart #BlueskyArt #Art #NPS #StateParks #Nature
#GreatSmokyMountainsNationalPark #ShenandoahNationalPark
#TheParkwaysProjects by #TomOgburn

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The Parkways Projects 1934≈2025

@parkwaysprojects.bsky.social

1 year ago

Handbuilt lean-to with nothing to lean on. Slate walk across timbers and split-shake shingles. Nice build. I'll never walk over this bridge, no matter how hard I search for it; no matter what amount of time I invest in trying to locate it. I doubt, maybe 100 years later, that it still exists, considering it's construction. Most likely it was a passage between properties above a branch, or maybe a spring (which I sort of considered in naming it as you might guess) but the predominant feature I'm enamored by is that it seems to be paved with slabs of slate. Think on this. Why? Not just for resilience. not just for stability, nor just to anchor the footfall portion of the bridge. But for shade. For what is immediately below. Consider the coolness of slate on your back were you to lie upon it. Was it possibly used for collecting crawdads, salamanders or even wearied trout? The shake shingles... more for humans than wildlife I'd surmise. A meeting place for neighbors? Or a spot for a well-tended nap? or a look at the Moon in a private hollow? But most of all, a garden, just downstream of the flow, if indeed it is by a spring. It looks more to be an herb garden, or possibly a few edibles for later in the season. A bridge in the middle of a wilderness long forgotten by those who sought to share it. Even though I doubt I'd see the structure (one never knows, though, I've found) I really want to go up there and GPS the location. The Civilian Conservation Corp and NPS would give compass coordinates on each site they surveyed, record, photographed. Why? I think there will be a spring there, and most likely there was a shallow spring pool. I'm an advocate of trying things.

Here's another fairly good neg. I began finding these "root" bridges early on my journeys into #NPS troves of images. Totally random. Words on these works in ALTtext.
#SmokyMountainsNP #EastCoastKin
#Clemson #OpenParksNetwork archives. It's a collaboration: #ClemsonUniversity & #NationalParksService

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The Parkways Projects 1934≈2025

@parkwaysprojects.bsky.social

1 year ago

A picture is worth a thousand words. This is what’s called a "thin negative." I'd call it über-thin. I really am hoping that the Clemson archival librarians have continued the practice of scanning everything the National Park Service sends them! I've been a photoshop aficianado since I received a blank CD in the mail in January 1996, a fellow artist who was also a Mac user like me. All of my digital work in Photoshop is "organically injected,” organically proffered to the incredible infinity of creativity Photoshop allows us. I am also a heartfelt fan of old photographic prints, starting when I was a child. Most of those were throwaways passed on to me by older relatives. Usually they were so faded from light leaching the silver nitrates that there was little to learn & discern from them. In 1997 I decided to try "recovering" some of those. They were rather crude efforts, but promised something, as long as I fed the digital appetites of the program designers! Like making offerings to the gods in days of old. "In the Year 2000..." (please insert Andy Richter's intonations for vibe) I tackled three family photos that we all called "the Ghost photographs." Recovering print images is more difficult than negatives but who ever had negatives from those old wandering photographer’s works left through the countrysides? As the internet emerged in 1992, I was curious about archives nationwide. I tried to find any that had negatives, glass plates & the like. As the years progressed, they began to trickle up, but for only a meager selection of negatives. I need to remind everyone of a fact that matters: I'm a painter. Full bore, classic post-modernist painter & I'm a multi-disciplinary artist now. All the merging began in college, with photography, printmaking & ceramics classes. In 1996, I took my first step into the Digital World. It's an alternate universe; has been that since 1996. By 2005, I had a broad array of media in my heart and mind. Just so you know :)

Just a peek so y'all can see what I'm doing with this particular images. They are all in the Public Domain & in the #Clemson #OpenParksNetwork archives. It's a collaboration: #ClemsonUniversity & #NationalParksService

They scan everything, so when I saw this neg; I went to work to see what it was 🔬

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