Shooting:
I am fortunate to have been introduced to photography
at a young age. Further, for a modern shooter, to have discovered the wonders
of large format cameras while still in my youth. The camera is no longer just
an excuse for me to get into the great outdoors, it is a meditative tool for
me to experience nature at her pace. While I'll readily admit that I'm a gadget
collector, there is little that makes it into my backpack without proving
itself first. I use a ShenHao 4x5 field camera supported by Bogen tripods.
A LowePro backpack gets the package comfortably to whatever location I can
hike. Nikon and Schneider lenses are my choice, including a 58mm mounted permanently
on a Cambo Super-Wide body.
Printing:
This took much longer for me to sink my teeth into
than shooting. While I have considerable experience in the darkroom, my workflow
currently is largely dependent on digital technology. While a digital workflow is ironically
not necessarily faster or easier, it does enable me to better achieve the image I experience.
It also provides extraordinary quality. I print using
carbon ink in varying dilutions, very similar to the ink used in spot toning
silver prints, on very heavy cotton rag paper. The print itself is barely
distinguishable from a traditional silver print in that the tonal separation
in the shadow areas is superior and the luminous value in the highlights is
more like a platinum print than silver.
Archival Statement:
It is impossible to honestly say that a technology as
young as this one will produce prints lasting hundreds of years. However,
the paper I use has been proven for the hundreds of years it has been manufactured
in Germany. The ancient Egyptians proved inks similar to the ones I use chemically sound.
Please be careful of those who claim archival longevity based on the
RIT and Wilhelm tests, they allow for a 30% density fade in determining the
archival life of a print. The human eye is capable of perceiving around 5% density
fade, leaving visible fading even for those claiming archival longevity based on those tests. In a rigorous
experiment done using xenon instead of fluorescent light,
the carbon inks faded three times less than UltraChrome inks purported to
last over 100 years by Wilhelm Imaging Research.