"Hot ashes for trees"

Exp: 28mm @ f/2.8 - 1/60th

Film: Kodak TMax 400

File: 7-2

At: 1/1m

On: RC Ilford Warm Tone 8x10

This is a photograph of a sculpture which contains some of my dad's ashes - printed on trees - aka warm tone paper. The title and composition are a mix of metaphorical and literal interpretation. I decided one day in September that I wanted this picture and when we happened to visit my mom I got it in one exposure. I visualized the light from the middle of the metallic reflection on zone V, which gave the dolphins nice contrast with the darker base.

One of several of prints of this negatives is above my son's crib - which is what I wanted it for. His namesake is someone he'll never meet, but my dad is someone we'll make sure he knows. This picture is there more to remind us of that; he's just a baby!

I made a lot of "work" prints to get this just right, and I finally achieved the desired effect with "warm tone" paper. It was the first time I used warm and cool tone paper - which changes contrast and exposure time by about a stop. Warm tone paper is a full stop slower than the regular multigrade paper, so a "strait" print would have been 30sec, and a cool tone print took only 15 seconds.

"Hot air for a cool breeze"

Exp: 50mm @ f/4 - 1/500th

Film: Ilford Delta 100

File: 8-31

At: -/ 55

On: RC Ilford Grade 4 pearl (matte) 8x10

This is a picture of Great Falls park in Maryland from earlier in the fall. Claire and I decided to go for a hike there on her due date. Little did we know it was going to be another 12 days before our little guy came.

Anyway I really liked the symmetry of this composition, and the brightness of the sky and water almost makes it look orthochromatic. After I printed this I went out and got a #25 and #58 wratten number filters by Tiffen, these are red and green filters respectively. They pull down the overexposed sky for cloud details and mess with contrast and different tones - in the case of #58, foliage can be drastically affected.

I learned from reading my books on Ansel Adams that when photography was still immature, it was common for photographers to use a second negative with clouds on it to add to pictures like this. Apparently people just didn't notice that the same clouds seemed to follow these photographers wherever they went!

"Cold comfort for change"

Exp: 50mm @ f/8 - 1/250th

Film: Ilford Delta 400

File: 11-12

At: -/ 1.30

On: RC Ilford Grade 4 pearl (matte) 8x10

They say that it is the job of any artist to to document their place in history, which is what I had in my head when I decided I wanted this picture. This was the first of these I've seen in our neighborhood in a long time, and I was intrigued by this story. How much did they have to concede in order to sell? They obviously were happy at this house, who puts a statue and a plant out if they aren't? We're happy where we are right now, so like most people, we feel like it would be crazy to move, and give up so much potential future equity while the market is only just recovering. And recovering it is, slowly but surely if this photo is any evidence. But people will always desire to move ahead and forward, even if it means giving up that which was familiar and comforting.

As I go it's becoming easier to visualize what kind of a picture I want, and get it on a negative with one or two exposures. This was my goal all along with film photography, and I'm still finding that the added expense of film doesn't justify a much more expensive digital camera.

It took me a while to get to making this print, even though I've had the negative for a while because I took some extra time to construct a light trap for our bathroom (my darkroom) door. This is just a frame with handles on it that fits around the door. It's covered in a special black-out cloth to keep out the light. This worked great, except for one unexpected side effect. When you set up a trap like this, it also makes a pneumatic seal around the door. When I fired up the bathroom fan for ventilation, there was enough negative air pressure to cause the frame to fall inward, on me.