July 21, 2009

Today is the second day of the workshop... and just as full as the first. We began our work at 8am exploring the Salt Paper Print process, which was introduced in 1834 by William Henry Fox Talbott. It is a beautiful process that produces prints of varying tones from brown to reddish purple. I was able to produce a couple of nice images in the salt paper print process and feel quite accomplished. I will try to create a few more later this week when we are able to play with all of the processes again.

It has been a perfect day for making prints as the UV light needed to expose these processes needed to be diffused light- it was overcast and foggy all day until it began to rain late in the afternoon. No one complained.

During the second half of the day, we explored the Kallitype print process. It's name literally means "beautiful print". It provides tonalities of sepia-brown, red, and chocolate black. The Kallitype is a iron based sensitizer that is chemically developed, unlike the Van Dyke Brown prints that are processed in water. The Kallitype and Van Dyke Brown processes have been confused over the years. They have different chemical properties and development requirements. I had a few challenges creating my Kallitypes, as my negatives were too contrasty, and made for a print with unrealized information in the highlight areas. Being the tenacious person I am, I skipped dinner and worked till 8pm in order to get a good print. I did succeed and was rewarded with a lovely image of the greenhouse door.

While I waited for my prints to wash and line dry, I grabbed some dinner and sat on the porch of the photo lab and listened to the rain hit the tarp above me. I was greeted by a sweet little cat who lives at the Workshops. I do not mind, as I am missing my three cats and my dog and needed a little "fix".

July 20, 2009

Today is the first day of the Alternative Photographic Processes workshop at the Maine Media Workshops.

I have just returned from a long day. We began at 8am this morning and went non-stop till 6pm. Stopped for a bite to eat then went to a lecture about Robert Frank's book The Americans, which is celebrating its' 50th anniversary in print. Interesting behind the scenes look into his life and art. Great photographer!

We studied the cyanotype process all day. It is a non-silver iron photographic process that uses UV light to expose, and water to process the print. It is a blue toned print and quite beautiful. The class made a 9 foot by 18 foot fabric mural print together. We all laid on the cloth during the 22 minute exposure with foliage and other objects to create the image.

July 1, 2009

In retrospect, I had grandiose ideas about how the Creative Renewal Fellowship would begin. I anticipated my life being less hectic and there would be an opportunity to wake up to a new approach to each day. Life with less stress, more art. But, life has been as usual...busy.

On July 1, the first day of the CRF, I spent my day running errands and preparing to teach class that evening. I teach a beginning photography class to a mix of photography majors and non-majors. My husband and I spent time looking for sparklers, smoke bombs and light sticks for my students to use during class that evening. I was going to lecture and demonstrate light painting in photography. It seemed appropriate since the students would be working on the assignment over the fourth of July.

We spent the beginning of class with the usual question and answers about homework and technical issues regarding Lightroom2 editing. Then we began our lesson. The students were very excited and eager to explore new ideas. We had a model (a student's friend was in town) who helped us out, and she was great. We shot images in the studio, and then went outside to explore the fireworks that I had purchased. The sparklers were fantastic, the smoke bombs were not. The smoke lasted only about 30 seconds, not long enough for me to set off my flash enough to see the smoke moving through the air. We were still able to get some interesting effects.

We were so involved in our work that we did not finish our explorations till 10:20pm (class ends at 9:50pm). At this point, we found that we were locked out of the building and had to track a security guard down to open the doors. For once the students did not mind staying after class...and neither did I!

We were all excited about our endeavors that night. So much so that I couldn't fall asleep till 1am. I found that at the end of the day, I was renewed in my excitement about teaching and photography. So, maybe my grandious plans weren't so far off, just different.


If you want to know more about light painting go to http://www.diyphotography.net/painting_with_light or http://digital-photography-school.com/tips-on-how-to-light-paint-video-tutorial. You can google light painting and many, many more sites will be available.

Starting on a new Journey

Beginning July 1, 2009, I will begin the Creative Renewal Fellowship sponsored by the Arts Council of Indianapolis and underwritten by the Lilly Endowment. This fellowship period will end on December 31, 2010. I will have the opportunity to study historic photographic processes with Christopher James at the Maine Photographic Workshops in Rockport, Maine this summer. Next summer I will travel to Budapest, Hungary to explore my heritage. In the interim, I will spend many hours in the studio and darkroom creating new works of art in photography, printmaking and bookarts.