WaterWoman Profile and Low Tide @ Goose Cove

 

In a documentary portfolio, how do you introduce different styles of photography and make them work? In this case a solarized portrait and pinhole, lith printed, landscape? In a recent comment Annie pointed out to my that there was a link between these images, and it opened my eyes to the possibility of developing this further. A visual puzzle to be solved.

 

 

Introduction to Alternative Photographic Processes: The digital negative and the Cyanotype and Vandyke Brown print.

That’s the title of the workshop I will be giving at the Harn Museum of Art in Gainesville, Florida on 5 and 12 January, 2008. The plan is to concentrate on the making of the digital negative during the first session, and do the actual printing during the second. The technique for making the negative is going to be Dan Burkholder’s as explained in his book: Making Digital Negatives for Contact Printing. If you are interested, there will be more info on the Harn’s web site, or you can drop me a line.

Hybrid

The digital versus film/darkroom discussion does not much interest me. I thoroughly enjoy having both, working in one or the other medium, and combining them when it suits my purposes. This ‘Tarnished Mirror’ piece started out as a lith print from a 35mm negative. I then combined it with a texture layer in Photoshop. It was subsequently published as a black and white image in B&W Magazine, although in its ‘portfolio’ state it is a color image. It looked good in b&w so I made a digital negative from it and printed it on Foma paper. The paper is extremely textured, like cold press water color paper, so it does not scan too well. However this back and forth between film and digital is what excites me and I enjoy it tremendously.

WaterWomen-working

WaterWomen and Darkrooms

Finally I am getting back to having a darkroom routine. After a long absence it felt good to get back into the swing. Although the chemistry had been sitting there for eons, it all worked fine, and other than putting the spindle to the developing tank in upside down, I mad no significant mistakes, and the negatives [from the Zone Zero pinhole camera] came out looking great.

The printing went equally well, making lith prints is most of the time a joy for me. Seeing the print come up in unexpected ways is a challenge to my creativity and way of seeing.

So here are a couple of small prints – part of the WaterWomen project [thes are not pinhole images] on which I am working. For the documentary project I print them the regular way; at the same time I make small lith prints which I stick up on my living room wall to track my progress and to visually digest my work.

Here is a brief blurb that tells what the project is about:

“The WaterWomen photographs document the lives of commercial Cedar Key fisherwomen. Though I spent a lot of time on the water, I rarely encountered them on the Gulf. I would only catch a glimpse of one or two of them as the scooted by on their skiffs. They do not think of themselves as being unique, or being special. Growing up in Cedar Key, they are connected to the water and laboring in this way was “no big deal.”
Photographing these women out on the water ‘driving their boat’, racing by obscure channel markers, turning at the last second, one hand on the wheel, hair flying in the wind, one hand around a coffee cup, and perhaps a cigarillo between the teeth, was an incredibly “big deal” for me.”

Patience please.

Till I get this blog straigthented out, I will continue to blog on LJ
http://chrislh.livejournal.com/

Also, check my web site for news and more info:

http://christianharkness.tripod.com/