MorseBlog

A subsequent visit to Holme Fen yielded a couple of good photos. I am working through my assigned Autumn Ritual to put me in touch with the season for my Woodlands project.  Again I found myself out before sunrise. A promise of some fog and I headed again to Holme Fen. I am trying to figure out for myself when and where to capture the woodlands when the Autumn color arrives. This means I have dusted off my 4x5 large format camera and loaded the film holders with mostly color film. This in turn means I need to recall the muscle-memory of operating the beast. So I always plan to take a few photos even if the conditions are not promising. All this to make errors early as I relearn the camera for this season.  On this particular morning there were patches of fog as I descended into the fen lowlands. I disembarked and headed out to the eastern edge of the wood. The fog as I found on the earlier visit did not penetrate the woodland well which means that aspect of the morning wasn't...

Mural at the Old Town Hall (Göttingen) [de] in Germany. Hans A. Rosbach •  CC BY-SA 3.0 The title of this post is part of a longer quotation. Not much longer; actually it is half of the whole thing. For many people, I suspect, this will be an old and familiar saying. Somehow I missed it until this week and it is a timely idea. I actually found it reading Hilary Mantel’s The Mirror and the Light . (The third in the much enjoyed trilogy about Thomas Cromwell.)  The quotation in full is...  ars longa, vita brevis Which is a Latin translation from the Greek by Hippocrates. Which is in itself the reverse of the way it was expressed in the literal translation “vita brevis ars longa”.    If you didn’t know or hadn’t figured it out already vita brevis means ‘life is short’ and ar...

Autumn nears, it is mid-September about an hour before sunrise. To the east a faint orange glow and deep blue sky above. Small clouds fleck the dark sky like sheep on the moors. The diesel engine rattles down narrow dark country roads. The trees are scattered along the horizon as black silhouettes past the expanse of stubbled fields newly harvested of wheat, oat, barley, and bean. The flick of headlights up and down as the early commute from the villages rushes past. I am not in so much a hurry and impede those impatient drivers traveling in my direction this early in the morning. They must wait for a clear stretch of road to overtake.  The radio is off only the sounds of the engine, tires and wind. Looking about the scenery in case there is something worth stopping for, the quiet morning roads are good for this. The weather was forecast as fog and though not immediately apparent the further northwest my progress the hazier the air becomes. Descending from the table flat grain fiel...

Three prints made with techniques outlined in this article.  (11x11", 5x5", 3x3") My print flow is becoming more complicated. Each print I get to the point where I really like it I may want it in any number of different sized versions. There is a pretty simple way of dealing with this however. For instance let's say I have  a print that I printed originally at 12x16 inches. So that means I now have a whole set of printing notes for that print. I try and note as much as possible so if I want to make the print again I have a solid starting place. Below is a list of notes for one print.  Name: Gnarled Birch (I give a descriptive name for the image and try to be consistent in its use.) Paper Type: Ilford MGFB Classic Matte (Different paper has different speed or sensitivity to light.) Print Size: 11x15 inches (This is the print size and not the paper size. In this case I print this on 12x16 inch paper resulting in 1/2inch borders.)  Bulb Type: 150W (I use 150 and 75 watt...

In my recent post on printing some of my woodlands project I printed on a paper I had not used in a while, Ilford MG FB Classic. I wanted to record some of the characteristics of this paper with respect to exposure, development, and toning.  The promotional material says the following Double-weight 255g/m2 fiber base Improved maximum density (Dmax) Shorter exposure time Uniform grade separation Choice of glossy and matt surfaces Exposure With respect to exposure, I could compare it directly with the MG Art 300 paper from this printing session and found MGFB Classic to be almost exactly one stop faster than the MG Art 300 paper. Probably slightly less than one stop in some of my examples. Because the paper is multi-grade it is difficult to make a general claim as each emulsion has different relative sensitivity across the range of filtration. However this rule of thumb allows you to get close without the trouble of test strips.  Development This was a real surprise in this sess...

My last visit to Holme Fen left me with some good images I wanted to get printed in the darkroom. I face a number of choices around which paper to print on and what size or sizes to print. My current favorite paper Ilford MG Art 300 I am concerned may not do well with images that have lots of small detail or lots of complexity due to the texture of the cotton rag paper base. So I chose to print some images on Ilford MGFB Classic paper to confirm or deny my feeling on this.  I also printed the same image in different sizes or crops. This is driven by a number of factors. First I still like looking at bigger prints. However bigger prints mean bigger frames and more space on the wall. There is a limit to how many of these prints I can display.  Recently I have been making my own small simple frames ranging from 4x4, 8x8, 9.5x9.5, and 9.5x12 inches. These frames are more affordable (and fun to make) and I can fit a lot on a wall or bookcase. I have also made the frames so that I c...

The chestnuts are dying. They are not really dying as I remind myself we are past August and the brown fringed leaves are what they do every year many weeks before the other trees start to show color. The chestnut seems to be in a hurry every summer to shed its canopy as if it is particularly vulnerable to the the seasonal storms. Quickly, quickly the leaves must go. No time for a pretty show of yellows or oranges. No! Directly to brown, off with the leaves, get ready for winter.  So I set out the other day as the weather has been kind and in fact actually hot and pretty humid. I feel the approaching Autumn only with the much shortened daylight on days like this. I wish to get out to the woodlands before fall is upon us, one last time. I haven’t been to Holme Fen in a while so I head out there on this hot early September afternoon. I am not really feeling the photography energy today but want to be there at least to observe and perhaps something will change in me.  It turns ou...