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January 2004
I hope you had a wonderful holiday season. 2003 has been a busy and exciting year. I was in Utah for a total of four weeks and Scotland for ten, teaching and making photographs. During my trips to Scotland I made over 900 new 5x7 and 5x12 negatives. These are processed and proofed but now comes the tough part, editing to make the portfolio prints.
On the personal side I spent a week at Camp Hinds Boy Scout Camp with my eldest son Andrew. Later in July, Andrew, my younger son Jacob and I did a two-week road trip to Alabama to visit grandparents and Civil War Battlefields.
The only "traditional" workshop I taught this year was at the Inversnaid Photography Center in Scotland. Everything I said last year about Inversnaid in my Musing column still stands for this year. It was a great workshop in terrific location. I am returning this spring to teach again for Andre in May. This year's course will be devoted exclusively to making platinum/palladium negatives and prints. (You can check the Workshops section of this site, or www.inversnaidphoto.com for more details.)
In September, I led a palladium/platinum workshop for the Scottish Chapter of the Royal Photographic Society. It was held in the Edinburgh Photographic Society building in Edinburgh. As I understand it, this is the oldest photographic society in the world. D.O. Hill was one of its founders. It was a lot of fun working in those hallowed halls. Roy Robertson of the Scottish Chapter of the RPS arranged the workshop. He also organized the fall meeting for the Scottish RPS, which included Americans Kerik Koulis, Russ Young and Dr. Larry Schaff giving lectures and leading workshops.
Later that month, I went to England and taught both a private tutorial and a palladium/platinum workshop to a small group in Brightlingsea, Essex. Colin Meyers was the organizer and host for the three-day workshop. It was a great experience for me. I was able to spend some time on the east coast of England, make a few new images and several new friends. Thanks to Colin and Saffron Branfort for making that workshop a success.
As part of my fall trip to Scotland, my wife Donna joined me for a second honeymoon and a week of making photographs. We spent several days on Lewis and Harris, waiting on the wind to calm down so I could make some images of the Callanish Stones and other sites around the island. Our last day on Lewis the wind dropped and the sun came out brilliantly. It was stunning.
Palladium Edition Prints
I am beginning a new print offering this year. For a limited time I am offering as 8x10 hand-coated palladium/platinum prints the Staircase, Portland City Hall and Wrenches. Each print is signed and matted to 14x17 and will sell for $350 each. This is the first time these prints have been offered in this size and at this price. The offer is only good until June 1, 2004 after which time these prints will be available at gallery prices. Prints will be delivered to you within six weeks of your order. They will be numbered but not editioned. My intent is to offer two different images each year in an affordable way.
As anyone in business knows, business plans need continuous tweaking and an artist's business is no exception. In the past I concentrated on large silver prints, and large platinum prints, which necessitated the making of enlarged negatives. When I began making images with a 12x20 camera, I suddenly had negatives large enough to satisfy my desire for large prints in platinum/palladium without making enlarged negatives. I began making fewer enlarged negatives. For several years I continued making both large silver prints, and contact 12x20 platinum prints. Working with the 12x20 negative encouraged me to think about "returning to my roots" so to speak and I began again to make contact platinum prints from my 8x10 and 5x7 negatives. It was a joyous rediscovery. I had forgotten the beauty and simplicity of making small prints. So after several years of doing everything, large silver, large platinum/palladium from enlarged negatives, and some smaller contact platinum prints, I have decided to simplify. Original negative size, contact palladium prints have become my production standard. That means my prints will be the same size as the original negative, 5x7, 5x12, 8x10 or 12x20. It doesn't mean that I won't make larger prints if requested, but my medium of choice will be contact palladium/platinum prints.
Palladium prints
You may have noticed in the ramblings above I have talked about "platinum/palladium" prints and "palladium/platinum" prints. You may have also heard of "platinum" prints or "palladium" prints. Are you confused? Good, that was my intent because I want to digress a little at this point.
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Prints made with platinum and/or palladium salts are commonly called "platinum prints". The term "platinum" has become associated with any hand-coated emulsion that includes some platinum salts. The truth is that there are very few pure "platinum prints". Platinum alone in the ferric oxalate does not make a great image. If a print that has been coated with a pure platinum emulsion is then processed in a developer that has traces of palladium from an earlier print in it, it is no longer a pure "platinum" print. Trace elements of palladium are deposited from the developer onto the platinum print. So the only way to make a "pure platinum" print is for the photographer to coat the paper with a pure platinum emulsion and process the print in a developer that has been used only with platinum so that the print can be exclusively a called a "platinum" print.
Most photographers work with a mixture of platinum and palladium in their emulsion. Some work with a 2:1 palladium to platinum mixture, some with a 1:1 mixture. There is no doubt that platinum and palladium together make a better print than platinum alone. If the emulsion is at least 30% platinum the print is almost indistinguishable in color from a pure platinum print. But it will have a much smoother tonal range.
Palladium, unlike platinum, when used alone in the emulsion does make a beautiful print. It has a warm brown tone, depending on the developer and the temperature at which it is used. Traditionally the primary reason for using palladium in the emulsion was cost. Palladium costs use to be one-fourth that of platinum. In recent years, however, this is no longer true. Palladium prices have soared and now equals or exceeds platinum in per-gram cost. But most printers use a mixture of the two because of the consistent quality of the print and the smoothness of tones they produce when used together.
So why am I calling my prints "Palladium Edition Prints"? Because I am using an emulsion consisting primarily of palladium in the emulsion. There is very little platinum in my prints. I happen to love the warm tone that the palladium gives when used with potassium oxalate as the developer at 90 to 100 degrees F. And I am hoping that collectors of my work do too!
Changes to the Web Site
We have changed the home page for our website. I think it will down load more quickly and be simpler to navigate. We will gradually be changing the look of the site over the next few months. In addition, new features will be appearing that may be of interest to you.
During the coming year I hope to get the text of all of the articles I have written for View Camera Magazine and other publications onto the web site. I can't promise that we'll get them exactly like they appeared in the magazine with the same illustrations but we are going to try. In the near future you will be able to go to the list of articles on the site and click on one you want to read. Anything I write in the future will appear on the site after it is published.
For the past several years I have run ads promoting my work and book in B&W (Black and White) Magazine. This magazine is aimed at photographic collectors and those interested in seeing outstanding black and white photography. The ads and articles are about images not techniques or technology. It is a nice magazine with a very different audience from other magazines in the photography genre. In 2004 I am using this ad space to showcase new work and projects. The Jan/Feb issue features the two new Palladium Edition Prints. Future ads will focus on upcoming shows, workshops, and projects. As these ads appear in B&W Magazine we will post a page or several pages of new images and portfolios in conjunction with the images presented.
The Mar/Apr ad promotes a show at the Carnegie Visual Arts Center in Decatur, Alabama. The show is called Form and Structure. This Carnegie Library was built in 1904 and is celebrating its centennial year. It served as the town library for nearly sixty years. After that it was used as a Red Cross Center, and an annex for First Baptist Church among several other functions. It was about to fall down when in 2001 a group of interested citizens formed the nonprofit organization, Carnegie Visual Arts Center, and set about raising funds to restore and rehab the building. I was given access to the building before remodeling began and many of these images will be in the show. Also included will be images from the book, Tillman Crane/STRUCTURE, and other rarely shown images. The show will be on view April 2 - May 1, 2004. If you are in the Decatur area on April 2nd, please join me at the opening.
B&W Magazine images will be showcased on the website after the issue hits the stand. Images from the same portfolio or body of work will also appear at that time. This provides me a way to show new work and will hopefully keep the website interesting for you. I am finding that keeping the web site updated and fresh is a full time job. But with the help of my web master, Kevin Bedford, we will get new writings and new images up on some sort of consistent basis. Between a new Musing every month and a new portfolio of work every two months, we will be busy.
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