Coastlines

I'm doing much more black and white work these days, trying to understand and get to know Ilford FP4+ in Pyrocat HD developer. It's a huge amount of fun and I'm enjoying exploring the differences between shooting with roll film and sheet film. The large format images are definitely a step up in some aspects, particularly in definition and sharpness. There's nothing quite like an 8x10 contact print. But the speed and portability of the smaller formats mean that there's a great deal more subject matter available to shoot than there would be with a 15 pound camera.

A few friends and I made a trip to the California coast, specifically Point Reyes Nat'l Seashore some time ago, and while I've managed to develop all the negs I shot I have yet to print most of them.

In terms of printing you'll see, if you follow this blog over the next few months, that I've been doing a lot of what's called Lith printing (see here and here for more info) One of the most enjoyable aspects of this type of printing is that it's almost impossible to get perfectly repeatable results, so each print really is one-of-a-kind.




It's also a process that imparts it's own variants of color to the print, depending upon various factors such as dilution, temperature and paper type along with a multitude of other factors.

For those of you out there who still enjoy the smell of fixer and standing in the dim red glow of a safelight, I highly recommend giving Lith Printing a try. I can also strongly recommend Tim Rudman's books (see here). He describes methods of digital lith work, as well.