My New Site

This hasn't been updated in a long time, but that doesn't mean I haven't been going full tilt for the last few years. I have been doing more personal work, working more with Lodima, and teaching privately.

Based on my background scanning, retouching, and printing for some pretty demanding artists, people have asked me to write about and comment on how to make the best possible black and white digital prints. This has lead to my forthcoming book, three different workshops, and my new website dedicated to Digital Black and White.

I am calling it Black and White Mastery, where I write about the creative and technical aspects making outstanding work. The site will be dedicated to aesthetics,  teaching, and the process of organic visual discovery. I will focus on blog posts and video tutorials, with options for in-person workshops, and one-on-one personalized instruction—in-person or online.

Click the picture or link below to check out the new site, and be sure to sign up to subscribe to future posts and updates at bwmastery.com

2012 Lightroom Holiday Showcase!

Photograph by Erin Yard

Join us Friday, December 7th at theLight Room Gallery for a showcase of fine art photography.Light Room Holiday Show December 7th – January 5th Opening Reception: Friday, December 7th,  5 – 9 PM Located @ The Light Room Gallery: 2024 Wallace Street, Philadelphia PA Gallery hrs. Saturdays from 12-4PM Participating Light Room artists include: Richard Boutwell Ron Corbin Annarita Gentile Richard Gretzinger Josh Marowitz Ranjoo Prasad Tony Rocco Al Wachlin Jr Erin Yard

New Remote Sensing Work

I started an off-shoot of my Remote Sensing a few weeks ago. The work in the new series looks at development along the Eastern Seaboard, which has been something have been wanting to explore for the last few years.  Here are a few that I just finished, Atlantic City, and the Outer Banks. I will hit the darkroom this weekend to print in platinum/palladium to show at the portfolio reviews at Atlanta Celebrates Photography and the Philadelphia Open Studio Tours.

Sol Invictus—Installation Views

For the past few years I have been altering satellite images appropriated from scientific and mapping applications, first with Google Earth, stitching hundreds of images and altering them to be printed in platinum/palladium, and now compositing images of the sun from NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory satellite.

With these new large-scale photo-based installations I manipulate appropriated images of the sun and print on clear film backed with gold leaf. The series stems from origins in ancient sun worship and its evolution to the worship of gold and to what could now be seen as the worship of technology. Dependence on technology, and the potentially devastating effect this year’s solar storms could have on it, caused me to look more closely to the sun, and reexamine that original idea of the Invincible Sun.

The nature of the gold leaf makes photographing them difficult, and I am working on scanning some of the larger ones, and will update my website with more from the series soon. Until then, here are a few installation views from the August show at Philadelphia's 3rd Street Gallery.

Closing this week—Sol Invictus

A group show with work from my new series, Sol Invictus, will be closing this Sunday, August 26th at the 3rd Street Gallery on Second Street in Olde City, Philadelphia (58 North 2nd Street). There will be a closing reception from 2-5PM with drinks and light fare. If you can't make the closing reception the gallery hours are Wednesday-Sunday noon–5PM.

This new work is more of a departure from my beginnings in straight landscape photography, but stems from my recent work altering satellite images appropriated from scientific and mapping applications, first with Google Earth, stitching hundreds of images and altering them to be printed in platinum/palladium, and now compositing images of the sun from NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory satellite.

With these new large-scale photo-based installations I manipulate appropriated images of the sun and print on clear film backed with gold leaf. The series stems from origins in ancient sun worship and its evolution to the worship of gold and to what could now be seen as the worship of technology. Dependence on technology, and the potentially devastating effect this year’s solar storms could have on it, caused me to look more closely to the sun, and reexamine that original idea of the Invincible Sun.

Openings in Philadelphia and Portland

I am thrilled to have a large platinum/palladium print from my Remote Sensing series in Philadelphia Photo Art Center's 3rd Annual Competition and Exhibition. The opening is tomorrow, July 12th, from 6-9. The openings at PPAC are always a blast and you can bet I'll be there all night.

Also currently on view is another large platinum/palladium print from the same series at Portland, Oregon's Newspace Center for Photography. The opening was last Friday, and I regret that I couldn't make it out West for it and catch up with old friends in the area.

Print of the Month — June

This month I am featuring a print from my 2009 trip to Spain, where I photographed along the Costa Brava north of Barcelona. It was a fairly short trip, but the most stunning stretch of road was the Cap de Creus National Park just outside of the resort town or Roses—I could go back for weeks and weeks and never tire of the white cliffs that fall right into Mediterranean.

About the Editions:

Since most of the work I regularly show is project-based, there are hundreds of images in my files that are never seen, or that I never made a priority to print. Now that I have been scanning and making enlarged negatives for platinum/palladium printing, I have been returning to some of the older work, and, in many cases, printing negatives for the first time.

As a way to bring some of these images out into the light, I will feature a new print each month as a limited-edition platinum/palladium or non-editioned inkjet print at a greatly reduced price to make my work more accessible to friends, new collectors, and fine-art photography enthusiasts.

—

The platinum/palladium edition is limited to 10 signed and numbered 7.5″x7.5″ prints on 11″x13″ 100% cotton rag Revere Platinum, mounted and overmatted on 4-ply 16″x18″ Artcare Alpharag for a price of $200.

The inkjet edition is a signed 7.5″x.7.5″ print on 8.5″x11″ Canson Rag Photographique for a price of $25. I am now printing with custom-mixed Jon Cone Piezography quad-black inks, which allow for more subtle gradations and because they are pure pigments, without the use of additional color to form the image, are more archival.

If interested, please email me to arrange payment and shipping.

New Work — Remote Sensing 2008-2012

I just updated my website with recent prints from a series I have been working with on and off for the past four years, which I first posted about two years ago in response to Gursky's Oceans series.

This body of work evolved as an extension of my conventional photographic work looking at man's relationship with the environment and landscape. While I continue to work in the mode of direct connection and interaction with the world through the camera, this series uses appropriated satellite and high-altitude aerial images from Google Earth as source material for making high-resolution files images that I digitally manipulate and then print in platinum-palladium. I chose the platinum-palladium process primarily for the rich depth of its beautiful, warm tonal scale, and its unsurpassed stability and archival properties. In these photographs, beauty and permanence stand in juxtaposition to the impermanence of the purely digital source material, the nature of the subject, and the changing world itself.

Tree Stands on Kozo

I just started printing the new tree stands work in platinum/palladium on thin handmade Japanese paper, and they are turning out better than I imagined (as soon as I got used to working on something with the texture and strength of wet kleenex). I have been wanting to make platinum prints on Kozo paper for a few years now due to the rich blacks and silk-like reflectance of the darker tones, but never felt like I had an appropriate reason or subject matter for it. I am working on more throughout the Spring and Summer, but here are a few from the printing session last week.

Print of the Month—May

This month I am featuring another older image from an early to Europe—an abstraction from the Jardin des Tuileries, in Paris I made outside of the annual Paris Photo show held every November. 

About the Editions:

Since most of the work I regularly show is project-based, there are hundreds of images in my files that are never seen, or that I never made a priority to print. Now that I have been scanning and making enlarged negatives for platinum/palladium printing, I have been returning to some of the older work, and, in many cases, printing negatives for the first time.

As a way to bring some of these images out into the light, I will feature a new print each month as a limited-edition platinum/palladium or non-editioned inkjet print at a greatly reduced price to make my work more accessible to friends, new collectors, and fine-art photography enthusiasts.

—

The platinum/palladium edition is limited to 10 signed and numbered 7.5″x7.5″ prints on 11″x13″ 100% cotton rag Revere Platinum, mounted and overmatted on 4-ply 16″x18″ Artcare Alpharag for a price of $200.

The inkjet edition is a signed 7.5″x.7.5″ print on 8.5″x11″ Canson Rag Photographique for a price of $25. I am now printing with custom-mixed Jon Cone Piezography quad-black inks, which allow for more subtle gradations and because they are pure pigments, without the use of additional color to form the image, are more archival.

If interested, please email me to arrange payment and shipping.

 

New Work—Tree Stands

I started photographing tree stands used during deer season on a few properties around Bucks County, PA a few autumns ago, and wanted to turn it into a larger series. I knew there was something in the idea to be explored but the photographs I was making were missing something. It wasn't until last week I finally sat up in a few different stands listening and watching the woods for a good while that I thought about how to approach it differently. Photographing from twenty feet up in the tree stands offers a much different view of the woods than we normally have as non-hunters, birds, or squirrels. Here are a few of test shots from earlier the week that I printed in platinum/palladium yesterday. I have been wanting to print on Japanese Kozo or Gampi papers for a while now and think this will finally be an appropriate subject.

Print of the Month—April

Between the trip to California and lots of other general busyness I haven't been able to put up a new Print of the Month until now. This month I am featuring an architectural detail of the Duomo in Milan from a visit back in 2008.

About the Editions:

Since most of the work I regularly show is project-based, there are hundreds of images in my files that are never seen, or that I never made a priority to print. Now that I have been scanning and making enlarged negatives for platinum/palladium printing, I have been returning to some of the older work, and, in many cases, printing negatives for the first time.

As a way to bring some of these images out into the light, I will feature a new print each month as a limited-edition platinum/palladium or non-editioned inkjet print at a greatly reduced price to make my work more accessible to friends, new collectors, and fine-art photography enthusiasts.

—

The platinum/palladium edition is limited to 10 signed and numbered 7.5″x7.5″ prints on 11″x13″ 100% cotton rag Revere Platinum, mounted and overmatted on 4-ply 16″x18″ Artcare Alpharag for a price of $200.

The inkjet edition is a signed 7.5″x.7.5″ print on 8.5″x11″ Canson Rag Photographique for a price of $25. I am now printing with custom-mixed Jon Cone Piezography quad-black inks, which allow for more subtle gradations and because they are pure pigments, without the use of additional color to form the image, are more archival.

If interested, please email me to arrange payment and shipping.

PhotoReview Annual Benefit Auction

The PhotoReview's Annual Benefit Auction catalog is now online with over 250 photographs ranging from the mid 19th century to the present. Here is a link to an alphabetical list of photographers. I will be making my shopping(wish) list in the next few days.

Please take a look and bid generously to help support one of Philadelphia's best and longest standing photography resources.

Here is my contribution to this year's auction. It is from a new ongoing series of platinum/palladium prints I am making from older images that are not part of specifically defined projects.

POST — This Weekend

  Getting the final preparations together for this year's Philadelphia Open Studio Tour.

There are two Lightroom locations this year.

The Gallery Space is at 2024 Wallace. The Darkroom is 1909 Wilcox, between Green and Brandywine.

Project Basho Fund-Raising Print Sale/Silent Auction

Don't miss out this Friday (Dec. 11) for what is sure to be one hell of a party and your chance to get to some great photographs at some incredible prices all while helping raise money for Philadephia's Project Basho and their ambitious plans for the new year. It all starts at 7PM at 1305 Germantown Ave. Philadelphia, PA.

In 2010 you can look forward to the expansion of their already diverse range of workshops, larger studio exhibition spaces and more frequent visiting artists and lectures. Take full advantage and become a member.

Aerial in Platinum

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The idea of combining the artistic controls of digital imaging with the inherent beauty of a historical process like platinum palladium has been both exciting and technically daunting. The best I have seen are prints made by the Salto Atelier in Belgium from five negatives up to one meter wide made on an image setter with a resolution of upwards of 10,000 dpi. The cost of equipment like that, or having Salto make the negatives for me, is prohibitively expensive, but I have been using their prints as a standard to work toward.

The practice of using inkjet printers to output the negatives has been around for some time (Dan Burkholder wrote the book more than ten years ago) but to me the quality has always left something to be desired. It is only in the last few years, with the progression in the quantity of inks and media, that inkjet negatives can, while they still don't stand up to negatives made in camera, yield truly exquisite prints.

New Aerial Photographs

I feel like I have been working non-stop the last few months and have a huge back log of negatives piling up. I'm really looking forward to spending a few weeks in the darkroom this summer getting all the new work printed. Thankfully I am able to get an idea of what I have done from quickly scanning the negatives. There is no substitute for having a contact sheet though. Here are a few from the first edit of four rolls of my aerial project I started when I was out West a few weeks ago. It was my first time photographing from a plane, and it was exponentially more difficult than I could have imagined. Outside of all the technical considerations, my real concern was being able to photograph knowing that there have been so many great aerial photographs made in the last 100 years. How can you photograph over the desert without thinking of Wlliam Garnett's or Emmet Gowin's or David Maisel's photographs. The only thing you can do is acknowledge them, and trust your vision.

New Baby

Of the drum scanner sorts that is . . . We just bought an amazing Dainippon Screen SG 747 and I am flying out to California to early tomorrow to oversee the loading onto the truck and make sure nothing can possibly get damaged in transit.

So, my dilemma: I will be there for 5 days. What cameras do I take, and where do I go? I will take the Hass; it goes everywhere with me. And I have an 8x10 on the West Coast but do I really want to bother packing holders and picking up some film? Thinking about making a trip up to the Owens Valley—make a few pictures, maybe do some fishing . . .

New Platinum Print

I want to remember reading John Szarkowski saying something about Atget know when was best to photograph certain places—the time of year when the trees first start budding, but still allow the light to fully illuminate the scene. I am probably wrong about the direct quote, but that idea has always been in my mind.

Driving along back roads here you can still see deep into the woods but they have that chaotic energy that I have loved photographing the last few years. This is one of the first years I stopped long enough to set up the 8x10 and really push to see what could be made out of the jumbles of branches

The print is an 8x10-inch contact print in platinum/paladium. I have been trying to get the process to work with how I like my prints. Nice rich blacks with no blocking up in the subtle light and dark tones. Something not so easily done, but some negatives are worth the trouble. Making a contact print on Azo that would do all that in 1/10th of the time spent in the darkroom and with 1/10th of the expense, but there is something about the alchemy of platinum process that I love. The coating of the paper and watching it instantly appear in a flash in the developer. But it is the overall simplicity of the process—raw chemistry and light—that has made me keep going with it.