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I’m very
much a non-technical photographer. I know this about myself,
so I felt right from the beginning that I needed to focus my tools
(camera, lens, light, film, paper) and streamline the choices so that I
could concentrate on creating the work, and not get bogged down with
the
process. I spent several years researching 19th century toning recipes.
The challenge was that the chemistry was essentially the same, but the
papers are different today. So it took much trial and error to find the
right chemistry combination to work with modern day paper. Toning,
especially split tones where I can achieve more than one color within a
single image, became my forte. All of my images are black and white,
but quite colorful in that 19th century way. This is all analog
photography, there is no digital darkroom work in my photographs.
As an an analog photographer, I'm
confronted daily with the reality that my process and materials will
not exist in the near future. Within the last year, both my paper and
film have been discontinued. As the world goes digital, there's
something very interesting I'm finding about the 19th century, and the
alternative processesj. I'll just make my own film, and coat my own
paper
to give value not only to the image, but also to the physical object
itself. This is something digital cannot do.
Golden Berries
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