"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.