Trouble Sleeping

I always seem to have trouble sleeping these days. Don’t know what it is really. Active mind possibly. I was looking at a print I had made earlier in the week or so, possibly last week, my mind doesn’t function well with time these days. It was a roll that I had developed when I was first getting into photography. It clearly shows my lack of understanding of depth of field and aperture relation.

I suppose I printed it because I like the way the light was on it. How it moved through the trees. I then began to think about the magic of it all. It gave me a good bit of pride to realize that I have done everything to it; it was my creation, every last part of it. I crawled down into the dry river bed, I set up the shot, I rook it, and once I found the cassette again, I developed it and then made prints from those negatives. I suppose it’s not in the magic of seeing the print develop on the paper but more of the magic of making everything from start to finish.

I don’t know what drives other people to do what they do in photography, I don’t. I was reading a book lately called Photography A Crash Course and it seems all the young bold photographers either was killed or committed suicide. Not exactly a sobering moment, but it does make one wonder. Or in my case makes you wish you could slap them and say stop being emotional like a poet, their suppose to be all tragic and like wise of that bullshit nature, you are a photographer, snap out of it! But you cant do that. You wish you could but you cant.

I have a lot of thoughts about photography and the way it plays out in my head. Various thoughts of this and that mainly. Late night spend up thinking of if I did this, or that really. Finding a new vocabulary word and finding out what it means and reading up on it, things of that nature, now I’m just petering around with words.

Eat, Sleep, Shit Silver Prints

Thats basically what I have been doing today. I woke up today thinking about silver prints, When I ate dinner I was thinking about then, and subsequently... You get the point. So I stepped back into the darkroom today to do some good old fun printing. Had a blast too.

I made to prints with vingettes around them, one for my Jessica and the other for my mother. Then I did some prints for myself. Redid Gallery Books for myself, and Chair, Vines, which I sent the original to Jessica, then I did Statue, Rose, and Dry River Bed. For the vingettings I did Rose. And they look absolutely awesome, very delicate and romantic. Which leads me in away with something I want to talk about.

The way I do my prints. I dont know if I do it different from a lot of you silver print makers out there or not but I do it my way and I do it the best that I can. Once I make my exposure and go to develop it, instead of developing it emulsion side up, I do it down. That way developer get on the emulsion evenly. Or at least thats my reasoning. I also agitate them slightly differently, I move them back and forth in the developer and then side to side, do the same with stop bath and fixer.... then wash them and hang them to dry. I just think Ive never heard of someone developing the print upside down because they want to see the print appear before their eyes. I care less about it apprearing before my eyes, I want it to be developed the best it can be etc. Anyway, thats all I got for the moment. If anyone knows of a place I can get Kodak Panalure Select papers either in 5x7 of 8x10 size let me know.

Day O' Darkroom!

Today was a bitter sweet day. I went to Pattersons and got some more stuff, but the downside, Jessica was in Brisbane for chemo when I made my first truely successful print, looks just like the picture in the previous post, Im happy, but sad. On an up beat note, I decided I would do some late night film developing, mixed my own chemicals and whatnot, and the negatives turned out much better looking when I was abandoned by Hudson the first time, but really I guess its just too easy to do it, and I think he did the right then, taught me to really pay attention. Hes a really kick ass boss.

I kept the test sheet for the Gallery Books, Mount Vernon print so I know exactly what it was done at and everything. And I think I will keep a catalogue of them , less hassle in the end. The first print of the Gallery Books will hopefully be mounted and framed for Jessica and shipped soon enough, and hopefully I can get enough money to get a package of some polycontrast 100 sheets.

Im hoping I will be able to make her quite a few nice prints to hang on her wall. All in all a pretty decent day

Printing

Today after while at work my boss asked me what I had planned, I told him try and get a sucessful print of the ones I worked on the day before. Well, it worked out. I came home, bullshitted with my mother for a little bit and then decided once my girlfriend went to work I would do some more printing. So I set up my stuff, measured my chemicals and got the temps right, and went to work on getting a print. Two tries. First one, slightly under exposed, and the second one, even though I didnt do any dodging, was a success in my book.

_{Gallery Books, Mount Vernon
© Copyright 2006 Thomas Simpson}

The image you see above, it taken straight from negative, with minor dodging done at the lower half of the image, I need to make some dodging tools for later on and when I do a much larger print of it I will use them to dodge in the bottom section. The specs on the image, are 12 second exposure at ƒ8 developed 1 minute in Dektol 1:2. I feel pretty proud of myself now I suppose. I feel that I can finally say I am a true photographer, I shot that image, manually, none of this autofocus, auto exposure bullshit, I developed it myself, and I printed it myself. Imma happy dude right now. Thats pretty much all I have at the moment.

Night Photography

There are many photographers that tend to stay away from night photography, and by night photography I do not in anyway mean pictures of the moon. Thats Astrophotography at its basic level. I mean night photography in the general means of producing pictures of landscapes and possibly cityscapes with the key factor being night, many are medium to long exposures.

There are some photographers that pack it in when night falls, for myself I see a whole different side to the landscape. There are always two faces to everything, a coin, the truth, an event and even the landscape.

_{TXU Power Plant, Night
© Copyright 2006 Thomas Simpson}

This shot was done with a cheap digital camera, Fuji s3100 with a shutterspeed of 20/10. I perfer the night, it brings me more challenges than say day time would. With day time, you merely shoot different things at different times to better function with the sun as it makes its way across the sky. With night work, one has to know what the moon is doing and how to adjust accordenly. I'm not saying its completely hard, it's not, but its not one of those things you just go out and do. So far the longest exposure that I have produced is up to 8 minutes long. Unfortunately I didnt compensate well enough and nothing was produced on the negative. But that wont stop me from trying it again. Just remember, get your materials together, learn what you have to do and do it. Never shy away from something because not many people are doing it, remember photography is about having fun to start with.

First Two Rolls Developed

Earlier this week I finally stepped into the darkroom at The East Texas Journal and developed two rolls of 400TMY (T-Max 400) I got some pretty decent negatives out of the deal, granted first time developing, so I had a few shite spots but the majority of the negatives were good, out of 56 exposed frames only 3 were damaged because developer wasnt allowed to get to them. It was completely my fault as I had never loaded a spiral from a canister before, but nevertheless, not a bad show on my part.

Coming next week, once I get paid on monday I will go and purchase some materials to light tight my temp darkroom and then make some 5x7 prints of some of the gallery work I did that was produced on those two rolls, a few good pictures I liked, not to mention I have a roll of 400TMY 135-24 in one of my cameras at the moment. Hopefully I will shoot that up over the weekend and develop it once I mix up my d-76 and fixer and stop bath and place them in storage bottles. We shall see.

As for this coming Monday, I have about 37 Ad calls to make around the Titus area here. Work work work, I am a work-a-holic and I know it.

Earlier today I ransacked Kodaks Datasheets, got detailed print outs of the developer I use at home and the developer I use at work. As well as but not limited to 6 other detailed sheets to read over and print out and make notes over. I think personally the greatest photographers are those that put stock in their craft and never ever stop trying to learn something new. Those that stop learning and think they have reached the pennicle of their abilities and look down on those whom have not reach the same heights yet, well, simply put fuck 'em, dont need 'em.