Mediterranean Pigeons

So I mentioned that I had alot of inventory that I've never done anything with. I selected a color photo that I took in St. Maxime, France, along the mediterranean. My sister Pat and I were wandering around the little village and there were two pigeons sitting on a window sill. Well, I painted it in acrylics this week. It came out pretty cool, but I'll let you decide.

Also, I will be in a group show of photographers in February 2011 at the Blue Moon Gallery. So I've been spending time selecting photos for that show. I will submit most likely all black and whites. And I'm hoping to print them in the darkroom and maybe have a couple of giclee prints. We are left to our own selection of what to submit, so I'm thinking it would be a good time to select some of my own favorites that haven't been shown.

I'm also thinking since this year has been so slow that I thinking really hard on having an Open House. People can come view my studio, have refreshments, and possibly purchase some art for holiday gifts! That's the ticket!

Busy in the Darkroom

Yesterday afternoon was quite fun developing black and white. Because the majority of the time I expose my 400 TMAX film at the same shutter speed setting makes it fairly easy to come up with the same developing settings in the darkroom. Needless to say I was on a roll printing out some of my past favorites that I've never done anything with. Before I had my own darkroom, I had another lab develop the film for me, and then scan the film and put the images on a CD. I can appreciate the work that went into that process. At first I thought $10 was rip off, but I take that all back!

I have probably enough processed film to last me the rest of my life - in other words I wouldn't have to go out again. But we know that won't happen. I have so much that it would take months to go thru - some that I thought were never that good
but when in reality they were bad scans (since I was looking at the finished product and not the negatives). So, I was going thru alot of my old stuff yesterday. There was one that a gallery owner wanted me to do, but I could never get a good print from a scan someone else did. Although if I remember correctly I did my own scan and tried again, but maybe I was having an 'off' day, because it came out superb!

I also spent some time creating my own processing times for the fiberbase paper. I'll be using Ilford Multi-grade IV fiber paper. I've only been developing 8x10s on RC paper for now. But I think I have that down now - I didn't want to waste my fiber paper! Moving up to an 11x14 will be fun!

Barstow in Black and White

We put about 1,000 miles on the car last weekend. Big event in Barstow: our 45th high school reunion. We really lucked out with the weather being in the low to mid 70s. Thank goodness! It was a great weekend visiting with ol' school friends. I think my husband and his siblings hit the jackpot with alot of their friends from Yermo showing up. I'm from Newberry (now called Newberry Springs), and no one ever shows up from there except the Bowdridges and Atilanos (the latter being me).

We all met at the Idle Spurs on Friday nite for dinner (for some of us), then cocktails and hors d'oerves. We even danced later - and I'm still recovering from foot surgery. My sisters were there and it was just alot of fun. Saturday was a tour of the Santa Fe RR station, where my Dad worked as well as alot of high school friends including my husband; then visited the Route 66 Museum as well as the Santa Fe Museum. Had lunch at the high school gym hosted by Del Taco. Barstow was the home of the original Del Taco in case you weren't aware of that one! Then Saturday nite was the big event for dinner and more visiting and picture taking. Five more years and the big 50th. I think I can wait for that one!

This picture I'm posting are the letters that spell out B-A-R-S-T-O-W. They were under a table in the museum, hence the title, "Barstow under the table...".

Morning in the Darkroom

Yesterday morning I went thru my recently developed negatives and noted the ones I felt would be worthy of printing. There were several that I found to be of interest. I started with a picture of a grove of young oak trees on the side of a hill that was taken in the early to mid-morning on a drive on Rattlesnake Bar Road in 2005. That was when I first got together with my husband-to-be at the time, and since he was into photography too, we took many of these types of day drives.

Because I have new equipment that I'm not familiar with, I took it slow and easy but steady, in determining the exposure time for this particular picture. It's always a good idea to keep a log of the timing and f-stops for each negative, so as not to have to recreate again in the future. It's just common sense to save oneself some precious time!

I did have one bit of a slow down. One of my timers went out on me, but luckily had an 'antique' version of the GraLab timer that a friend of mine had given me - and it works! So I will use the antique for the time being. I'd love to break down and get one of those fancier modern timers for the dry side of the darkroom - soon though.

After a couple of tries, I was able to print out a pretty good version on RC paper. I'm still practicing, but will switch over to fiberbase when I get the whole print processing down pat! Needless to say, I had fun and I felt like I was accomplishing something very important!

Win some - Lose some!

But it's all for a good reason too! No I did not get juried in to the latest gallery. Apparently they do have two other photographers and in regards to the pillows, they already have someone who is doing fabric art! And that's okay with me too, as I wasn't really crazy about making more pillows with my photography on them. It's alot of work too.

However, yesterday I sat down and started painting from a photo that my Granddaughter photoshopped of herself. I needed to get the painting out of my system. It is actually almost finished - I still have to finish with the highlites in her hair. I guess there's no crime in how 'fast' one completes a painting. But my husband's words are always brewing in the back of my mind, "...I wonder what you could do if you slowed down!?" One of these days maybe I will.

Next week I plan on putting myself on a schedule of spending at least half a day in the darkroom perfecting fiber based gelatin silver prints! (This term is interchangeable with silver gelatin.) By the way, for new photographers, if you've wondered what process that was, it's actually a fancy way to call black and white prints made in the darkroom. Then you have 'giclee' prints that are high resolution scanned photos (film and digital) that are printed with archival quality inks (8 - 12 color inkjet printers).

That's the lesson for the day!