A second print from the Grand Canyon series. Views from the eastern edge of the Grand Canyon, the past two prints view was looking east along the rim. I used slightly different colors, combinations on this print from the last one "River Overlook". I know, lame names. Sometimes I want to subscribe to the earlier photographers who simply numbered their repetitive images of scenery; Scenery #1; Scenery #2, etc.
This print, like the last one, took a bit over two weeks to complete. That's about average for a gum over palladium printing to go through the fuller printing cycle. I am also currently making a 11"x14" gum print "Lily", an image of a single Calla Lily uncurling. I have also begun using an ultra-wide art brush for spreading the gum these days, with much better overall results. That print is being layered with shear mixtures of color to build up the textural detail. A work in progress.
The view from this print image is looking east, down into the Grand Canyon, approximately a mile below the rum from where I was standing. I have changed my approach to the photo perspective using aperture. The technique of focusing 1/3 into the view area of the scene, then stopping down to f42, if you had it, or f32, if you had it. f22 is fairly common in more modern cameras. The Schneider Kreuznach Acutesar 210 lens I used on my Burke & James 5x7, had a focul length just wide enough to cover the full 5c7 image area, working as a wide-angle lens. It also stopped down to f42. That method of shooting, for all practical purposes, leaves everything in the scene focused. From the branch or boulder in the foreground as well as the mountain 40 miles away. That, is not natural. Before forty years before my time there was the f64 Club, and forty years before that there was the f126 Club, led of course by Alfred, and later Minor White. They had aspherical lenses back then like that, to compensate for the aspheric aberrations of the time, although, most excellent lenses were made at the time. Many, German made. The Acutesar I used back then was already a decade or so old, in 1984 when I used it. Old technology that worked superbly.
As I did with the first Canyon print, I developed the print in sodium citrate for the warm toned effect, before toning in palladium for nine minutes. The palladium toning sort of neutralizes the very warm tones of the citrate developer on Kallitype prints. I will likely depart from my long held preference for warm toned prints. Before I began making hand coated prints, in 1982, I made silver gelatin prints. My art photography was printed on Kodak Ektalure G, a sodium chloride silver, a bit slower and much warmer than the bromide papers. My fondness for warm images with full detail, little shadow, has now gone to the other side of the matter. Now, relishing more shadows and deeper shadows, pushing the tonal range down, a zone 3 shadow becoming a zone 2 shadow. Think W. Eugene Smith and his iconic images where over a third of the image was in deep shadow. A good portion of his work was 'light subject on dark bnackground', like old European paintings.
From the above mention of increasingly liking shadows, is also linked to a deeper appreciation of another photographic tool; the 'pictorial affect'. Not to be confused with the classic period of "Pictorialism", with the young woman in a white, flowing gossamer dress, walking in the early morning mist, around trees or water, holding a glass ball, in soft focus. That's Clarence White. The Pictorial Affect simply being the altering of the lighting, of a scene, portrait, study or other photographic image. The point, being to alter the lighting in a setting to create a mood. The idea being not to duplicate what the camera sees, but what the photographer/printer sees, pre-visualizing before snapping the shutter, then making the print.
My printing of gum, using watercolors, is done theoretically, mostly. Being very close to being color blind to red/green, leaves me bereft of seeing a good portion of the color pallet available. It is also the reason there are anomolies in my finished prints, for which I am unable to see, even when those eager to point that out, gleefully point right at it. I know what is supposed to happen within subtractive color theory, layering shear colors over each other. Blue and yellow make green, etc. The rest unfolds all of its own.
Gum over Palladium Print
"Canyon View" 8"x10"
Grand Canyon, Arizona
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