Thursday, October 09, 2014

Penumbra Open House

New York, New York

Just a couple snaps from the third floor studio/gallery space. There seemed to be a good crowd on all four floors.


2 comments:

Scott Kirkpatrick said...

Those are your 7x17's in the first picture? BTW, Have you tried to make digital internegatives from your superwide images? Combining two scans, I guess. How do those images look at greater than contact printed size?

scott

Carl Weese said...

Yes, the cluster is four 7x17s and one 12x20, all direct contact Pt/Pd prints from the in-camera negatives. Other instructors had pinhole panoramas printed in toned silver, ambrotype, albumen, sliver enlargements from glass plate collodian negatives, tintype stereo pairs, etc.

I've scanned 7x17s for digital enlargement for years now. I've used them in two exhibits, one from the drive-in theaters and one from my "Coal Country" series. These were printed with a 13x32 inch image area on 17 inch roll paper. Both of those subjects benefit from the large presentation, and I like them as digital prints at that size. I don't have any urge to make giant platinum prints.

As your question implies, for the most part my large and ultra-large format work is visualized specifically for contact print presentation, and bigger isn't necessarily better. Paradoxically, I really like to print my digital captures quite large, which is, however, consistent with past practice. Thirty years ago, I often printed my Leica pictures at 8x12 or 12x18 (image area) while only contact printing my 8x10 camera work. I've had the potential of making greatly enlarged prints from 8x10 scans for a long time now, but have never made any. In the two shows mentioned above I also had 810 originals taken up to, if I recall, 13x16.5.