If things can happen, they will. Usually Always. This past year, now behind us, blessedly, has been crammed with demands for my time and attention. Pandemic, building projects on our house, wife's medical condition, and all the things tucked in between. Realizing a blog is to be written in a continual manner, such that the viewer has a reason to return. Shows you what kind of blogger I am. Plus I'm old, so there's that. I'm not much of an IT person; although, there was a \time.
That said, I have been working on new gum prints. I have shifted my printing attention to gums, for now. I have also begun printing flowers, beginning with images of roses I took a number of years ago. Those images have been patiently awaiting my getting to them. Gum printing takes a great deal of patience, and perseverance. That doesn't include the unexplainable things that take place, basically making the print junk. I've floated the print, hung it up to slough off the water, with a clean print finish. Then return the next morning to find a dot of dark color over a light, continuous tone area. Really! A drop, like a drip, but.... there was no chance for any such thing to take place. I have two junk prints of Capt Jack now. Both times it was the black run that made it so. Perfect while standing in front of it, then return to drips and spatters that simply cannot be explained. One would think they had pretty much seen most things gum printing ion forty years. One would be wrong about that.
"Yellow Rose" was shot in bright sunlight, and I want to keep the brilliance of the sunlight on the upper petals. The print, for all practical purposes, is finished. As originally planned. The thing buggering that up, currently, is an editorial one. The Pictorial Effect, altering the print image to arrive at "the strongest way of seeing", as Weston was noted as saying, often. The idea is to create a visual effect that elicits an emotional connection by the viewer. Dicey business, that. One person's interpretation is likely to another's annoyance. I used to worry about that. Later I put time pondering that relationship, ultimately coming to more fully realize that such a relationship can only function if the artist/printer stays true to their own vision, leaving the viewer to see what they are able.
The print will be finished, soon enough, if, I don't make a mistake in the interim.
