A catalogue of my images from the Edinburgh Pinhole Photography Festival is now available from my online bookstore.
It comprises thirty-eight pages showing all eleven images plus an additional section with photographs and technical information on paper negatives, cameras, materials and studio set ups. The purchase price is £7.99.
To preview or purchase, click the image below:
The festival exhibition at the beautiful Botanic gardens venue is now open and runs for the next two weeks. This excellent video by Alexandra Wingate of Edinburgh Napier University gives a flavour of what to expect.
Pinhole Photography Festival launched today from edinburghnapiernews on Vimeo.
Coming up in March is the Edinburgh Pinhole Photography Festival featuring work from Minnie Weisz, Justin Quinnell, Katie Cooke, Kenny Bean, Bethany de Forest and myself as well as beginners’ and advanced workshops and open darkroom sessions. The event runs from 5-17 March 2012 at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Edinburgh.
More details available at the festival website www.pinholephotographyfestival.co.uk
A couple of weeks ago I spent a day at the Leicester Print Workshop learning the fundamentals of solar plate photo etching. The photos here show a print made shortly afterwards using my own press. This is much more prosaic and less stylish than the huge, gorgeous Harry Rochat press at the workshop but has given some excellent results. In fact I found the prints to be equally as good as those made on the big press. Surprisingly the Akua Intaglio water-based inks I use produced far superior, deeper blacks than the oil-based ink used on the course.
This is such a beautiful, tangible method of printing. The smell of the ink, the texture of the paper, the weight of the plate in the hand whilst inking and wiping, the turning of the press handle, the scope for altering the mood of the print by over or under inking. the sensitivity required to produce a correctly balanced print: all these elements make this a fascinating and viscerally engaging process.
The plate after removal of the print.
The resulting print on cartridge paper.
Detail of the print corner showing the tonality achievable from an aquatint=screened (but not half-toned) plate.
A favourite book photographed by a favourite 10×8 pinhole camera using a favourite medium – paper negative.
Paper negatives often surprise in the amount of detail and tone they are capable of reproducing. Of course, their inherent slowness also gives a beautifully extended exposure which allows one to not only render effects of movement and stillness but also to fully enjoy the moment of the creation of the photograph. Quite the opposite of the drive-by-shooting, hit-and-run type approach that the speed and ease of modern digital electronics can so easily engender. I had some concerns about the result I might get from this particular batch of paper which had been pre-flashed several months earlier and left unused. My normal, somewhat untechnical and fatalistic approach of experimentation and acceptance of total failure produced quite unexpectedly good tonal negatives! It has also answered a long-standing but untested doubt about how much paper can be pre-flashed in a preparation session. I feel happy now that making larger batches of negatives is viable.
Ilford Multigrade resin-coated satin paper preflashed.
Earlier this year I spent a week at the coast, the Welsh west coast which with each visit feels more like home. One warm, sunny evening I packed a sleeping bag and a stove and headed for a remote, inaccessible beach to spend the night alone under the starry Spring sky. It was necessary to pick the evening with care to fit with the rhythm of the tides which with an almost 6 metre range at that time of year left precious little beach between the surf and the cliff at its daily peak. The night I chose to make my home on the beach high tide came at around 11pm and, although I had checked the tide tables many times, I still waited a little nervously, watching the stars and listening to the alternate sibilance and bass of the incoming waves, half expecting an unusually large surge to swamp my tiny encampment.
Before nightfall I wandered up and down the undercliff seeking out driftwood and jetsam for a campfire but strangely for me I felt the disturbance of fire to be inappropriate on such a peaceful, sun-bathed evening. As I strolled across the smooth, hard sand at the edge of the surf it struck me that I would no more dream of lighting a fire here than I would in the nave of a great cathedral, that in some respect I was here on sufferance, a welcome guest; a guest with the responsibility of the pilgrim.
As the light faded, I lay on my back listening to the music of the ocean; the stereophonic symphony of deep booms from the sea cave to my right, and the higher, splashy, sweep of waves running up the sandy expanse to my left. A sound track to the dazzling vista of the Milky Way overhead with the familiar and reassuring constellations: Cassiopeia, The Great Bear, Auriga, Gemini. In my peripheral vision the soaring cliffs behind me framed the sky and stars and linked the just visible sea-horizon with the land mass I felt beneath my back. I lay there in an epi-centre of wonder at the vast, unfathomable beauty of the heavens, the land and the water.
I eventually drifted off to sleep, soothed by the sounds of the sea, to awake in the paleness of dawn, alone, or apparently so, on a new wave-smoothed beach. The sound track remained the same, just a little more distant now that the surf edge had retreated from the narrow strip of sand which separated the cliff from the high tide mark of flotsam, the sliver of earth which held me dry.
On rising, I noticed with a thrill of rising hackles that the beach had been recently crossed by a four-legged, clawed animal. It took a little while to work out that the prints were those of a fox and I cursed that I had not been awake to see this passing visitor. Nevertheless, amongst my store of beautiful, remembered mornings, there are few which equal the deep sense of belonging and harmony which this near meeting inspired.
Vivant!!! from TERRA de NINGÚ on Vimeo.
An excellent video of the exhibition opening night by Patri Rodriguez.
A couple of the best castings from yesterday. Much less formal and more uncontained than I envisaged, these initial attempts are encouraging. I need to find a way of casting them thinner or reducing their thickness once cast, maybe by filing (in order to make them lighter and less prominent). This will allow me then to fix them to an inlay on the book cover.
