Youth in Focus
Youth in Focus
March 5, 2011 1:00 – 3pm
Phone: 206-407-2124
2100 24th Avenue South, Suite 310, Seattle, 98144
I will be demonstrating wet plate collodion process at Youth in Focus and showing the students some of my work from the Seattle Artist Portraits. This is a free event brought to you by the generous contributions by 4Culture.
Patrick Richardson Wright makes a Video
Many, thanks to Mr. Patrick Richardson Wright for all his work on this video which he made about the Seattle Project.
No CommentsThe Front Page of the Seattle Times
In November of last year, I while out shooting the Davidson Gallery crew, Alan Berner from the Seattle Times took notice and began taking pictures and asking questions. Alan Berner is the Seattle Times staff photographer and does a regular feature in the paper called “Northwest Wanderings”. He has done numerous stories on various Northwest people and happenings.
He was very interested in what I was up to and asked me about my camera and what I was doing while did my shots. When I brought out the first glass plate for him to see, he was fascinated by the process and I invited him to a shoot with the lovely Miss Ashley Siple who is the director of education at the Photo Center Northwest. He came in and sat in on the shoot, took some more pictures, and asked more questions. He let me know when the story was to be in the paper so when the day came, I was not expecting to be on the front page of the Seattle Times. I couldn’t believe it. I was on the front page with the officer who shot the native american fellow.
Photo by Alan Berner, The Seattle Times
Here is the link to the article and there is a small gallery link that has the pictures of the Ashley shoot.
No CommentsNew Stand, New Lens
Early December, a flickr friend tipped me off to an estate sale on Camano Island. He sent me a link and commented on the huge camera for sale. A Scientest holding many patents for optics had recently died and he collected cameras and lenses. I talked my wife into going and I managed to get the day off to go on a mission to get that camera. The camera was a 1930’s Century 8 x 10 Master Studio Camera on a Century Master Studio Stand. The Camera had a very large and very desireable brass Taylor-Hobson Cooke 18 inch Anastigmat series II f4.5 lens on it. The camera outfit was in mint condition and it looked barley used. The solid mahogany stand and camera were so beautiful and the lens was so clean and shiny. I haggled with the lady selling the camera and settled on a price. My wife managed to bet a sweet teak table and chairs too- there was so much cool scientific stuff!
When I got the stand back to the shop I quickly put the 11 x 14 Deadorff on the stand and the bed fit like a glove. The new stand is much more solid and has much better gears than the old one and had the ability to apply more tilt to the camera bed. This one still had the original wheels and cast iron but it was missing the floor stop handle. I managed to take the one off the old stand install it on the new one. The Century 8 x 10 was modified to take my 8 inch rounded Deardorff boards and I also modified the back to accept the Deardorff 8×10, 5×7, 4×5 and 5×8 sliding 8 x 10 backs.
Davidson Gallery Group Photo
This year I had the pleasure of shooting Sam and the rest of the Davidson Gallery employees for the Christmas Card. Shaun and Emily are leaving before the new year and Cara is expecting her first child soon so there are many changes ahead for Davidson Gallery. I rarely shoot outside due to our unpredictable weather but I got really lucky on the day of the shoot and the sun was shining. I used the bathroom at Davidson as a darkroom and fortunately, they have a really big old sink there and a shower with good ventilation so I set up my silver bath and fixer inside the shower stall. Shaun helped me get set up and he kept an eye on the camera outside while I was in the bathroom getting a plate ready. I set up the camera outside right in front of Davidson Gallery and proceeded to shoot a test shot of Shaun in front of the gallery window.
The lens I used was the 16 inch Bausch and Lomb Tessar f4.5 and I shot the thing wide open at about 1/3 to 1/4 second. Outside exposures get a little tricky because the shutter is a very primitive pnuematic mechanism called a packard shutter. There is a small piston that opens the shuter with a rubber hose attached that leads to a rubber bulb. The bulb has the hose on one end and a hole on the other. To trip the shutter, just put your thumb over the hole on the bulb and squeeze. The sqeeze opens the shutter and when you let go the suction closes the shutter. The hole is there for when you want to leave the shutter open for a timed exposures. Just squeeze to open the shutter and then take your finger off the hole and the shutter stays open. The reverse procedure closes the shutter when the time is up.
The shot was very a bit under exposed so I figured a full second was in order. The gallery facade was also extremely dark so I decided to shoot facing south down to Occidental square. There were two rows of trees down either side of the shot and they were completely out of focus because I was shooting wide open. The first shot was at one second and was very well exposed. Standing shots longer that a second are troublesome and it can be difficult to get everyone without some motion blur. For shits and giggles, I shot another one but the light was fading so this one came out a little dark and Emily had a bit of motion blur but I like the shot.
The second shot was my favorite but Shaun used the first exposure for the card.
No CommentsKiki Smith
Greg Kucera deals with some very big names in art and will sometimes bring artists by to visit Larry and show them the frameshop and Art Resource(also owned by Greg and Larry) upstairs. So I was out front putting away samples and in comes Greg with a women with some wild grey hair. This women turns out to be Kiki Smith. Greg introduces her and asks me to show her some of my plates and the big Deardorff camera I keep at the shop. Greg suggested to Kiki that she should get her picture taken and I happily agreed. She thought about it and said I had ten minutes. Greg and Kiki go upstairs and visit Art Resource upstairs and frantically set up a make-shift backdrop with some black gator board and a chair next to a tall window in the wood shop. I had enough light filtering in but set up a big soft box for insurance and then set up my impromptu darkroom in the employee lounge. I cut and cleaned an 11 x 14 glass plate then quickly poured on the collodion and then dropped it into the silver nitrate bath. Unfortunately, there wasn’t enough silver to cover the entire plate so I had to adjust for this on the ground glass. so then Kiki comes down sans Greg and I show her where to sit. When she sat down, I was struck by her hair and her tattooed. I asked her to look out the window and explained that exposure was going to be 4 seconds and that she could blink and just relax.
I ran into the “darkroom” and loaded the plate into the holder and ran back to load the holder, told her I would give her a countdown and proceeded to expose the plate. I asked her if she wanted to watch the plate develop and she agreed. I led her into the ether filled room and poured on the developer. I prayed to the collodion gods and the image developed with a sweet amount of exposure. My anxiety lifted as the image appeared. I remember Kiki being very concerned about how I was not wearing gloves and that she warned me “You will fuck yourself up”. I just laughed and tried to explain that the silver nitrate would only stain my fingers for a week or so. She became concerned and told me she had some permanent lung damage and other issues from exposure to shit like acetone and other nasty stuff. I told her that the only reason I wasn’t wearing gloves was that I had just run out- I always wear gloves and the breakroom is well ventilated and the back woodshop windows are always open when I shoot there-
She really freaked out when I dunked the plate into the Cyanide bath. She held her nose and took a few steps back and snapped a few shots of me clearing the plate. After the plate was washed I threw it on the small electric griddle and invited her to watch it dry. Once it was dry she told me about how different races age differently and how white women lose fat above their mouth which causes it to fall slightly. She said the plate was beautiful and I was glad the plate had made it to the hotplate and was now fixed and dry. After it was varnished I asked Kiki if she would like a print from the plate and I offered to give her one of the plates if she sat for another one. She thought about it for 2 seconds and said she would but she was hungry and asked where she could get something to eat. Larry suggested Cherry Street Coffee so she went across the street and got a bowl of soup.
I prepared another plate and mixed some developer waited for her to get back. She came back and told me she had a friend picking her up soon so I need to be quick. She sat again but this time I asked to turn her head and look to the right. The window light had faded and the Softbox was the safer light source. I wanted to get a straight on shot of her face but to not have her look into the camera. I took the shot, processed, and varnished it. SAFE!!! two frickin shots of Kiki on the quick!! with no warning and no preparation…………eesh!
After the plate varnishe had hardened we looked at the plates and she said that she would take the plate that I didn’t want. I liked the second shot and she took the first. We exchanged info and I packed her plate for a safe trip back to New York.
No CommentsRobert Hardgrave Rapture Suit
So Robert Hardgrave mentioned this suit he made to me a few months ago. He brought it in for me to look at and we set up a date to photograph him wearing the thing. I shot him against a white backdrop I bought from the home depot. There was a lot of negative space so we ran outside and ripped off a bunch of Ivy from a nearby building. I draped some Ivy here and there and threw down a few leaves in the foreground. I even used some of the potted plants hanging out at the frameshop. It all helped and helped top break up the white a bit. I shot the front a back of the suit with him standing up. It is difficult to shoot someone standing for 6 second especially wearing an uncomfortable and hot suit made of canvas remnants. The fact that Robert could not see anything didn’t help either. The first shot came out way to soft from the motion blur so then I used the head held down with a sandbag and had him steady himself against it. I wrapped the base with white linen so the legs would not appear in the shot. Exposure was at f/8 for 5- 6 seconds using the big brass Bausch and lomb Tessar f4.5. The second shot was sharper but over exposed to be a positive but should make for a great negative. There was a total of 5 shots and with good exposure and good sharpness. The back of the suit was the last shot and I developed it unevenly on purpose. Robert mentioned he like the artifacts left by letting the developer pool and sit on certain areas longer so that is why is looks so wild. The suit is for a new show in Denver.
rapture suit front
rapture suit back
David Harms
There are a handful of people that practice wet plate in Washington state and David Harms is one of them. We met up one day at my studio in Georgetown and proceeded to geek out!! he brought his handmade ultra large format camera (12 x 20) and he set it up for me. He mentioned that he would be getting some instruction on making Daguerreotypes from a guy in Oregon. He said he would be willing to share information and possibly work together in the future to create some Dags. There is nothing more beautiful than a finely crafted Daguerreotype and someday I WILL have the knowledge to make them.
David was cool about being photographed so I shot a couple of 11 x 14 inch plates. The exposure was 1 second at f/22 and it was shot with the big Hawkeye 14 x 17 RR lens. The bigger plates take a lot of collodion and they are absorb a ton of silver nitrate so I shoot them rarely. I think this called for the bigger plate. There is a chemical fog on this plate from the heat. I suspect the developer but I had a very weak cyanide bath and the batch of collodion may have been a little off. It doesn’t take much to run into trouble and I was happy I got this image that day.
No Comments