Monday, May 31, 2010
Sunday, May 30, 2010
Thursday, May 27, 2010
Blog Notes: Cat Toys
Marshall, our young Maine Coon Cat, is unhappy with the amount of time I'm spending in the darkroom, printing. It is a place where cats with luxuriant long fur are not welcome. To make his case he contrived to move a number of objects from a sideboard in the kitchen to the floor, and then to do some expressive deconstruction of a phone book.
Tuesday, May 25, 2010
The Printing Continues
Somewhere near a third of the orders from the TOP Platinum Print Offer have shipped. Early orders ran so heavily to The Pike that I've gotten behind on that picture and have to do several Pike-only sessions so we can get back to shipping the orders in sequence.
If you take a close look at this shot you can see the clearing process, where the iron image is removed to leave only platinum-palladium in the paper. The foreground print has just entered the first clearing bath after development and first water wash, the middle print is partway through the second clearing, and the far print is in the wash phase, completely cleared and just rinsing the clearing agents out of the paper fiber.
Sunday, May 23, 2010
Sad and Happy Event
This afternoon we went to a memorial get together for a couple, Bob and Shirley, whom Tina had known literally all her life, and I'd known for a mere 40 years or so. It was a lovely gathering with food and drink for friends and relatives. Bob was a wonderful photographer who worked in the alternate processes—gum, bromoil, manipulated negatives—calling himself an "unregenerated Pictorialist," through decades when that sort of work was very much out of fashion. Much of his archive would today look very up to date with the revival of alternate processes.
So a memorial, but a happy one, a party they both would have enjoyed.
A happy surprise for me was that photographer Bill Eppridge was there. I've known his work forever, but had never before met him. We had a fascinating talk for a couple of hours, ranging from photography to politics and society and back again. He kept spotting something and taking pictures from the hip, shoulder, and at arm's length with a little Canon minicam.
Saturday, May 22, 2010
Friday, May 21, 2010
Thursday, May 20, 2010
Wednesday, May 19, 2010
Blog Notes: Shipping
The earliest orders received in the Platinum Print Offer have been shipping. Once you get past a number of bafflements in the software, the USPS online shipping system for Priority Mail packages does work a lot better than stamps and hand-done customs forms. Still it just doesn't seem possible to build the packages and produce the mailing labels in much less than 15 minutes per shipment. So it looks as though all of May and June will be devoted to filling these orders.
Working Pictures is going to have to go intermittent during this interval. The idea has always been for WP to come from very recent pictures, not a big long-term archive, and I just won't be producing much new work in the coming weeks. I hope to be back with lots of new work just as soon as this very large job is finished.
Tuesday, May 18, 2010
Monday, May 17, 2010
Sunday, May 16, 2010
Saturday, May 15, 2010
Blog Notes: Change of Pace
After two solid weeks of platinum printing, it's time to switch over to the digital darkroom and make the digital prints that will accompany some of the Pt/Pd prints as the first batch of orders begins to ship this coming week.
Juried Show Opening, II
The internet connection here was down all morning (along with phone and TV) but we seem to be up and running again now.
Friday, May 14, 2010
Thursday, May 13, 2010
Wednesday, May 12, 2010
Tuesday, May 11, 2010
Monday, May 10, 2010
Sunday, May 09, 2010
Blog Notes: Platinum printing
Just thought it might be interesting to see what $375 worth of platinum salt looks like before you dissolve it in 50ml of distilled water. The crystals are a beautiful orange red color, and the mixed solution is sort of a pale ruby-red clear liquid a bit like some sort of fancy liqueur.
Saturday, May 08, 2010
Friday, May 07, 2010
Thursday, May 06, 2010
Blog Notes: Platinum Printing
Ye Olde Platinum Printing Factorie is operational, working on fulfillment of the Platinum Print Offer at TOP.
Wednesday, May 05, 2010
Tuesday, May 04, 2010
Monday, May 03, 2010
Sunday, May 02, 2010
Saturday, May 01, 2010
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