Katelyn

I’ve been ignoring my blog on purpose. Instead of digging through old images to post daily I want to show my current work and that is totally sporadic. I also want to talk technique and make it less pedestrian.

 

So here is my latest image from two days ago.

 

Kate is an intern at the studio this semester helping with photography classes and experimenting with cameras and techniques that aren’t included in her school work. She was shooting pinhole images at the Pajama Factory with a converted Crown Graphic and Kodak  Pocket Folding Camera #1. While making a six-minute exposure she agreed to pose for a portrait.

 

I was shooting a 5x7 Burke and James with paper negatives. The exposure was f32 @ one minute. Later it hit me that the lens would have been sharper if I hadn’t stopped it down the whole way. Next time. She did hold amazingly still for that long an exposure but there is motion blur in the image. We took another frame with intentional motion that is quite nice as well.

 

By all rights this image should not have come out at all. When I got in the darkroom and opened the film holder it turned out to be loaded with Ilford HP5+ instead of paper. HP5 has an ASA of 400 instead of the ASA 12 that I rate paper so it should have been terribly over exposed. Plus I opened it under yellow safelights that should have fogged the film.

 

At that point I said what the heck and developed it in the 10:1 Dektol that I had mixed for the paper. I developed it of 10 minutes with almost no agitation because I used the time to check my email.

 

This is a scan of the resulting silver print and it does work without Photoshop. A happy ending to a complete mishap.