Hey, long time no speak! It’s been a while since I last posted something here – but it’s not an ‘out of sight, out of mind’ situation. Not by a long shot. Stuff has been brewing and I should really write some of that up. Here’s what I’ve been playing with and what I’d like to update on in the next few….well I dunno; when I get round to it, hopefully soon!
First of all, we’ve been traveling a bit. Italy. Roughly between Bologna and Milan. This was around 1 Sep and most of the time it was HOT! During a brief visit to Monterosso, we saw one of those pharmacy thermometers warn us that it was 43C (109F). Ouch! Still, Italy is gorgeous and we enjoyed our visit this time as well. I was carrying a trusty pair of Canon EOSes – one loaded with Kodak Ektar and the other with HP5+.
I’ve printed some of the HP5+ frames on some remaining sheets of Adox MCC112 (Mirko, fire up your paper plant again, please – the MCC papers were gorgeous!) and I’m quite pleased at how they came out. Well, despite some dipsticky fudging with the developer resulting in two rolls coming out thin – but they still print really nice on a high grade.

I have to get my hands on a new roll of color paper so I can start printing the color work, too. I have made (a first for me) some digital ‘contact sheets’ to help in selecting images to print. I might do that more often; it’s convenient.

Which brings me to the next thing – I’ve started scanning film again. I have a love/hate relationship with scanning, but in the end, the convenience factor of being able to look up a specific image seems to win out. So I try to make a point of flatbed scanning my film as soon as I’ve processed it. Let’s see if I can keep up the discipline.
Speaking of processing film – a week or two ago I processed my first half roll of Shanghai 400 color negative film. Apparently, it’s the same as ORWO Wolfen NC500. Whatever it is, I figured I’d like to try it. I hope to post about this some more later, but so far, it looks promising. But I’m withholding judgement/conclusions until I’ve printed some of this stuff. And I intend to compare it side by side with something more common (maybe Portra 160 or so) to make the difference in color rendition more concrete.

In terms of color printing, there’s some things I’d like to try out, but for this, I’ll have to depend in part on external parties. The other part is my own diligence in setting up a test or two. Basically, we’re talking comparisons here and I have to find a moment of inspiration to work on this. Comparisons are photographically uninteresting, but as I like to tinker, I’m OK with the tedious work sometimes – just not always. Anyway, I’ll leave that bit as the teaser it is so far.
Then, on the carbon transfer front, things have been moving as well. Not always in a desirable direction, although every catastrophe is of course an opportunity for learning. Remember that problem with the flaking highlights? Well, there’s going to be an installment to follow up on the solutions I have devised so far. I hope to offer some additional hints for optimizing highlight rendition and essentially expand the process envelope for printmaking from continuous tone negatives.

I’ve also been working on equipment, but it’s really too early days yet to say much about this. Let’s say that maybe, maybe I’ll follow up on this, but there’s a lot of work ahead in this area and I’m not quite sure if it’s something I’ll pull through with. But there is a very slight chance that some of the things I find convenient may end up being made available to the world at large. Maybe!
Then, I also have to admit I’ve been doing stuff that just didn’t pan out. Well, it hasn’t, yet. This is more on the software/web development front and for now, I’ve bookshelved it because I’m not quite sure if and how I want to proceed with it. It’s essentially an expansion to this website that I feel might be useful, but it also takes a heck of a lot of work to do it right. I have a kind of prototype running locally, so I know the concept works. But I’m not happy yet with how it looks and its integration (quod non) with the website you’re reading now. I’m just not quite sure how much time I’m willing to spend with my head buried in Javascript, PHP etc. instead of making images (or doing work that actually pays bills). So there’s another ‘maybe’.
So there’s all that. And there’s of course our new kittens, never-ending household chores, initiating work-related (non-photographic) projects and all those things that this blog really isn’t about, but that does of course consume the majority of my time. So it goes!
One more thing. This weekend I’ve made two visits that I really enjoyed. One was to the one-year anniversary of De Lichtkamer, which is a public-darkroom-printmaking-space that visual artist/photographer Shirley Welten set up in a beautiful spot in ‘s-Hertogenbosch, NL. If you’re into making color prints from your negatives, but don’t have a darkroom in your home, this is one of the few places you can go in The Netherlands (another notable one being CAFU in Utrecht). There’s also a selection of workshops on analog photography/printmaking offered by associated educators and artists. Highly recommended!
The other was the opening of an exhibition with photographic works at Galerie Drift by a handful of amateur photographers, some of whom I know personally (the two ‘pinholers’ – RenĂ© Vonk and Jon de Vries). It was great to hang out with them at the opening (which drew quite a crowd!) Lovely work, too – so congrats RenĂ© and Jon (and other featured artists). The show is on until October 20; recommended if you find yourself in the vicinity of Breda, NL.
Alright, that’s it for now. I hope to follow up on at least some of the things mentioned above, most likely starting with the carbon transfer stuff. But I have to finish some experiments in that area to complete the story I’d like to tell. Stay tuned!