Week 51: Two more from Speyer ...
So, here are two more images I took on the trip to Speyer with our American guests. The first is a little tower near the cathedral. I do not know what its initial intend was, since it does not seem to be used as a defensive wall. The second is a Kiosk in the park around the cathedral. At least I think it is a kiosk kind of thing and you probably can sit there and get something to drink in the summer. But I am not sure, since I never was there when it was open.
Both images are straight prints on Adox MCC which I toned in selenium an sulfur.
Have you realized, Week 51, so there is only one more week to come and then this little project is over, and maybe the blog will get closed - or not, I am not sure yet. Well, it is still another week to decide.
Postcards ...
I love postcards, I love sending them and I love receiving them - if they are self made. I am just back from the post office. I showed up there with a pile of more than 50 postcards I printed last weekend for the APUG postcard exchange.
You may ask, what has it to do with pinhole photography? Well, at least I sent a pinhole image. As you can see above, another view of Alte Brücke in Heidelberg. And it has something to do with sharing photography over a large distance without going the electronic route, like email, the web, or e.g. this blog. It is just more fun. I do not claim that sharing images over the network is something bad, but I think sharing real prints is even better - many times better in my opinion because there is a difference between virtual and reality.
I thought a bit about this and found, that first of all it is because I myself like to have a print in hand. Looking at a print in my hands is so much more fun than looking at an image on a computer monitor. Maybe I am a paper addict and maybe haptics play a role. It is funny, I work in IT and there you often hear about Look&Feel. I think sending an image via email provides the look, sending the real print adds the feel.
Then, and this might be even more important - now I make my point - when I send an image via email, this is just a one click action. No matter to how many people I send this email, it is just the case of a few seconds. It is a few seconds invest of my time. Very efficient one might think. And here is the difference - when I send a real print, what I send is not only an original - a one of a kind, I also send time, some of my time. I send the time I spent with this particular print in the darkroom, maybe the person this print will be sent to already in my mind. And that makes the difference - at least for me: With a real print I send some of my most important goods - my time.
PS: This is kind of the follow-up to this blog post which I wrote in April this year. So you see how long it took to follow up on it. Reading this blog you better have a pinholers patience.
Week 52: Dresden Frauenkirche ...
This is an image I took last year during a visit to Dresden together with friends. It is one of the images I found in my drawer (see an earlier post). And I added this image specifically for Craig, who was with us in Dresden. It shows the ramp up the dome of Frauenkirche. You will find more about it following the link. So no history lesson here.
Hey this is also the last image of my one-pinhole-image-a-week project. I thought about using a more current image - we have a lot of snow right now, that would have been a possibility. But then I decided that I already showed too many snow images at the beginning of the project and then this image came to my mind. I think it is a good image to end the project as it shows somehow a way to leave and on the other hand it shows some light coming. That means I will definitely end the project with this post, but there is more to come. Not every week but every once in a while.
The image is printed on Adox MCP 310 and sulfur toned in the highlights. One of my projects for 2011 is to simplify my darkroom. That means not as many different papers as right now. And for regular prints this means I will only use one paper which is Adox MCC. This is a paper I like, it reacts good to different toners and also reacts a bit to warm or cool tone developers. And I add another one, MCP which is the same emulsion but on a different base, it is an RC paper. But the exposure times are nearly the same. So I can use the RC paper when I am lazy and the fiber based paper when I want to also have a good feel in my hands.
Dresden Frauenkirche (again) ...
So this would have bee a good side print for week 52. But I printed it yesterday evening and toned today. So definitely too late for 2010.
The image shows Frauenkirche in Dresden. I was able to take this image before we had to escape from the rain. So we went into the church where I took the image I showed last in 2010. You can already see that the ground is wet. So I had to take care of my little wooden Zero2000 a bit.
The image went through some toner. First into sulfur to get a bit warmish highlights, then into an iron blue toner which cools down the shadows, but due to the sulfur the tones went rather greenish and very saturated. So I used selenium toner which desaturated the shadow tones and brought them back to a blue again.
Over and Out!
Hey, although it might have been clear to everyone already, this blog is closed. If you are interested in my images, this is where you should go: ZoneV
There you will also find all the pinhole images from this site and much more.
Have a good time.