Sunday, April 26, 2009

This weekend was spectacular! It has been unseasonably warm...a strong taste of summer...and brilliantly sunlit, but the humidity didn't accompany the heat, so for me at least, it's been a real treat. On Saturday morning we drove over to Iona Marsh that lies just south of the Bear Mountain Bridge on the west bank of the Hudson River. Susan wanted to scout the area for painting subjects, and I had brought along both my MF and LF kits to make photographs.

It's interesting to me that marshes seem to change very little from season to season other than the presence or absence of ice which isn't even a factor when the marsh is in salty water. The water this far up the Hudson is, I am told, a bit briny although it's quite far from the sea, because salt water is conveyed in ever more diluted quantities by the tide.

Once again (as will often be the case now) this is a PS toned negative scan that attempts to replicate a real print that will be toned as described below. The camera was the P67 with 135mm lens, and a green filter.





Monday, April 20, 2009

Living where we do, spring gets sprung a bit later...maybe a week or two...than it does closer to NYC. The early vivid green of nascent leaves and swollen buds on a warm and sunbathed day is palpably thrilling. I found myself wandering near where our gallery is located (Montgomery, NY) and drove to several places I'd thought might yield promising camera fodder, and was happy to discover what you see here. These are negative scans that I've photoshopped to resemble the toning they'll get when prints are made. The toning will be a light bleaching in a dilute potassium ferricyanide and potassium bromide solution, and then a brief bath in thiocarbamide with sodium hydroxide controller followed by selenium 1:10 with generous washing between steps. For certain subjects, I think the warmth added by the toning is very welcome. (BTW, I was using the P67 with a 135mm lens for these which I've cropped to the more squarish presentation I prefer. )






Tuesday, April 7, 2009

The opening for our show was a lot of fun! As I've written elsewhere, the show itself was totally free of anxiety...the work was done; it was as good as it was going to get, and folks would either like it or not. But hoping people would attend, that there'd be enough wine and goodies, and even maybe (by the grace of the Flying Spaghetti Monster) some red dots would appear (as if the work were getting chicken pox! ;)...well, that's what one worries about. But all the concerns were quenched with a decent turnout, adequate treats, and...yes...some red dots for both Susan and me! (in fact, today, another of Susan's large paintings sold which is a really good thing to have happened given this miserable economy). And best of all, we were surprised and delighted to have some very special people show up...friends from both our real and virtual worlds (i.e. internet buddies), and family...my two sons, who traveled a great distance to be there. So...it's been worthwhile, and I'm pretty happy about it all.

Now, since these posts almost always involve an image or two, here's one that I've not scanned or printed before. It's from a week in 2004 that we spent visiting Susan's family in Florida (north Florida...not the south Florida snowbird roost that so many from our area have migrated to. Susan's a native of the area.) It's from a road that leads to and from the Kingsley Plantation (google it...it's quite a historical treasure). I was using my big ole honkin Toyo D monorail camera on a heavy tripod with the only lens I think I had at the time, a 210 Rodenstock Geronar. I'm posting it because it's a nice reminder of where we could have been this week. It's also fodder for toning in thiocarbamide and selenium which is my current exploration.