Westchester County, New York, 5x5 Platinotype

Westchester County, New York, 5x5 Platinotype

It has been an amazing fall in New York. Although these photos don’t give a sense of the phenomenal colors we’ve been having, certain structural aspects of the woods begin to show themselves as the leaves fall, creating opportunities for new compositions.

Sortino, Sicily, 5x5 Palladium Print

A very long day on the road outside a small town in Sicily.

Sortino, Sicily, 5x5 Palladium Print

Sortino, Sicily, 5x5 Palladium Print

Van Cortlandt Pond, 5x5 Platinotype

OK, I know I said that I’m on vacation, but people on the flickr seem to like this one, so I am officially making this my vacation post. So long!

Van Cortlandt Park, New York, 5x5 Platinotype

Two more photographs from the Bronx/Westchester border. In the 17th century, this area was part of a huge estate owned by Adriaen van der Donck called Colen Donck. It began just north of Manhattan and ran well into what is now Westchester county.

Westchester County, New York, 5x5 Platinotype

I am going on a short vacation, no new photographs for a week or so.

Saw Mill River Parkway, 5x5 Platinotype

Now that I have finally caught up with printing and shipping the prints from my recent print sale, I am able to continue with new work. These photographs are from a recent trip to Westchester. The Sawmill Parkway cuts through a gorgeous swatch of the lower Hudson Valley, creating very interesting scenes that would not normally be visible as the woods suddenly end at the road.

Sawmill Parkway, 5x5 Platinotype

A brief technical note, these are my first true Platinotype prints. My Sicilian prints were all Palladiotypes, printed with Palladium and just a splash of Na2 Platinum as a contrast agent. These prints are 30% Platinum, 70% Palladium, which results in a more neutral tone. I am absolutely in love with this process.

Lo Zingaro, 5x5 Palladium Print

I have been having a lot of success with palladium printing and I am happy to announce that I am ready to sell a few limited-edition prints from my new series of photographs from Sicily. Each 5×5 print is hand-printed in palladium and limited to an edition of 15. I am keeping the price for this series quite low just to test the waters, but will most likely have to raise the prices in the future because of the high cost of palladium and the amount of work that goes into creating each print.

A note for collectors: I may be making a smaller edition of larger-sized prints from one of these images in the future. Please let me know if you would be interested as I am putting together a waiting list.

My online store can be viewed here. Thank you for your support and interest in my work!

Siracusa, 5x5 Palladium Print

Prospect Park, 5x5 Palladium Print

I got a chance to try out my new 4×5 pinhole camera in Prospect Park this weekend. I think this is a nice counterpoint to the sharpness of the photos I take with my Hasselblad. It’s also a good complement to the palladium printing process, which lends a soft and dreamy feel.

I’ve sometimes thought of pinhole photography as a bit of a gimmick; more about the technique used to create a photo rather than the photo itself. But, as with every photographic instrument, the real challenge is in the hands of the photographer to transcend equipment and technique to create something representative of a personal vision.

I have been spending a lot of time in the woods lately, but there has been something off with my photographs. They are too sharp, almost hyper-real, and not at all representative of the way I feel about being out there. So I’ve decided to go retro and see if I can capture that feeling in some other way. This image is almost a bit too soft and indistinct, but there’s definitely something there. Clicking on the image for a larger view helps quite a bit, as would a bigger print, I think. I am going to continue working on this for a while and see where it takes me.

Field Study #1, 5x5 Palladium Print

I have been thinking a lot about generalization in my photographs lately. In the case of landscape photography, the natural tendency is to become focused on specifics; a particular tree, a river, a configuration of stones or stumps. I can spend countless hours looking at a scene and reconfiguring it in my mind into something very composed and clear. I enjoy this process and I have been very happy taking these kinds of photographs.

There is another side of me, however, that feels trapped within this traditional view of the landscape. These scenes have been done before; first by painters, and now by countless other photographers. No matter how unique the view, how strong the composition and technical skill, it can feel a bit stale and irrelevant.

These photographs are some of my first attempts at a codifying a more generalized, less heroic view of the landscape. By overwhelming with detail, I am removing the importance of any single detail within the image. I am much more interested in what it feels like to stand in the full daylight sun, mosquito bitten, and experience the smell of the early fall air than to worry about a particular arrangement of facts.

Field Study #2, 5x5 Palladium Print

Are they successful? I don’t know yet. I need spend a lot more time on this before know if I’m on to anything. I just thought I would share some new work and see if anyone had a response.

This is an old favorite (taken in February, 2008) that I’ve reprinted in palladium. I am working on a selection of images for a portfolio review and possible entry in a juried show and I think this might be one of them.

I discovered the work of a photographer named John Pfahl on Amy Stein’s blog this week. The photos piqued my curiosity, so I bought a used copy of Pfahl’s book Altered Landscapes online. Transformations of the landscape, both man-made and natural, have interested me for quite a while, and are something I would like to incorporate into my work more often. I prefer to come upon these scenes by chance, but it happens so infrequently that I am going to try making a few of my own and documenting them. For starters, I’m thinking of paying a visit to Darwin, Minnesota, and mischievously unraveling the World’s Largest Ball of Twine.

Archaeology, Siracusa - 5x5 Palladium Print

I had a productive weekend in the darkroom. Now that I’ve had a chance to do a whole bunch of prints, I am going to go back and do some fine tuning. I’m also excited to try some larger prints. I’ve been printing at 5×5 so far, which looks great, but I am very curious to see what some of these images would look like at 8×8 and larger.

I’ve also been going through my contact sheets from Sicily and found a few interesting photographs that I didn’t notice on my first pass through. I think I now have about 30 photographs in the Sicily series altogether. Isn’t it nice when that happens?

Side street, Siracusa - 5x5 Palladium Print