Back in Printing Wonderland

The journey through Florida over the past almost two weeks was most enjoyable, as expected, with the view to view coverage of thick green, and water, lots and lots of water. The simple of it was six days in our favorite little town of Gulfport, Florida, the spit of land at the edge of St Petersberg, on the water. Our spot was on Madeira Island, one long, powder soft, white sand beach stretching for miles, uninterrupted along the waterline. Sand Pipers, White Egrets, Blue Herons, Pelicans, Gulls.... all diving and weaving and running about the shoreline eating along the way.

I did of course collect images. Lots of images of beaches and palm trees and funky structures still intact from times way before me, and well, beautifully funky. Doesn't fit well with the thread of this blog. No need to tell photographers the shooting gallery of images available the lens at any given time. For the flat field shooting of snapping a view, it's hard to beat the digital automatic form now. One of the ones I take with me is a Nikon 20meg 50X lens setup that is something like 75% or 80% efficient to grab a desired shot before it gets away. That's figuring in turn on time, hold shutter button for the metering/focusing function before capture. If it's a Dolphin all of a sudden leaping out of the water... don't even try. But if the shot is down an historical street or building, that's what it's good at, with exception to the normal parallax issues.

Which takes the issue back to an earlier post concerning the wonders of digital negatives. The photographic input can come from film or digital recording. It all goes through digital manipulation before final output onto the acetate sheet. PJ informs me his Fomapan 4x5 sheet film is on the way, as is the Inkpress acetate sheets, and Revere printing paper. Having stocked up on silver, palladium and supporting chemistry recently, it is printing time. There could be a time when I will call upon the images from the Florida trip, working on a beachy type portfolio. But for now, I have at least one portfolio worth of images of historical sites and activities from the Old West, sans any (almost) modernity showing, and worthy of being candidates to become a palladium print. Coming soon.