Friday, June 30, 2023
Video: Washing A 20x24 Ambrotype
Washing this plate for practice purposes! Need to develop sound techniques for the later good Ambros.
Video:: Attempted 20x24
Learning, learning and learning some more. Today I took some 20x24 Ambrotype steps , more steps needed!
Exhausted!
Two days of shooting wet plate. The seconds day 20x24 plates. Did about 14 hours each day. I am exhausted!
Rain Roof For HF2024
Shooting the HF2024 today. The new roof shelter I got for her works great! It measures 6.6x6.6 feet, I managed to set it up by myself. Even though they do not advertise it as being waterproof, it pretty much is. There has been two major rainstorms and items underneath have remained dry. Is I do not need to be afraid of the rain.
Note* I will need to get some kind of big ten for the later HF3535 shooting. When I set up that camera it will probably be in place for 4 days to a week at a time.
Wednesday, June 28, 2023
On The Road With Rembrandt!
On the road, should be making Ambrotypes soon. Love the experience of traveling in Fanny the RV with Freddy the darkroom trailer.
When your away from everything and everyone there is a sense of freedom and creativity that is hard to describe. Whenever I am in Thailand for extended trips of 6 months or longer I feel it to an even greater degree.
Yesterday in Ponoka, Alberta I picked up a bunch of CDs, DVDs and book. A ton of entertainment for $30. The highlight is a wonderful book, with great reproductions, on one of my favourite artists, REMBRANDT!! Cost? $2.05.
Monday, June 26, 2023
20x20 Inch Flower Ambrotype
This is my first successful (kinda) mammoth 20x20 Ambrotype. It is the second one I varnished (first overexposed). .
QQC Collodion with a 13 minute exposure, HF2024 camera and 19 inch lens.
Note* Ordered another 10 sheets of 20x24 clear glass/3mm!! I pick it up today for the week ahead of shooting.
Sunday, June 25, 2023
Quote: Rock Hudson
"I am not happy that I am sick. I am not happy that I have AIDS. But if that is helping others, I can at least know my own misfortune has had some positive worth."
Video: Forest Plain, 8x10 Clear Glass Ambrotype, Preacher Point, Alberta, 2023
Forest Plain, 8x10 Clear Glass Ambrotype, Preacher Point, Alberta, 2023
This image is back lit, not sure I like that effect, but it certainly looks different then my other ambros.
2nd 20x24 Wet Plate Holder
I ordered a 2nd 20x24 inch wet plate holder from Filip in Czechia (Czech Republic) tonight. I might get this one with carbon fiber slides, not sure just yet. Cost of a normal holder is $400 Euro, for a Carbon Fiber double slide holder it is $800 Euro. I paid 1/2 up front, the build started. It will take a month or so.
I figured I needed a backup holder just in case my plastic slide version breaks down. Which it will with the hard use I plan to put it through. I do not want to be in far off Northern Yukon making 20x24 Ambrotypes and my one and only holder becomes damaged and unusable. It would be extremely painful to not be able to make beautiful Ambrotypes, in a beautiful, important location because my holder broke!! After I receive this one, I will always have a backup. Expensive, but important.
Wet plate and this project is so expensive. I need to get additional funding somehow, some way.
Saturday, June 24, 2023
2023 Ambrotype
This year! Forest at Preacher Point, Clear Glass Ambrotype, Highway 11, Alberta
8x20 Deardorff (Eddy) with120mm kens and Quinn Quick. Clear Collodion (QQC).
The temperature was over 25c in the trailer. I was getting artifacts with Gerry Collodion. QQC seems to handle higher temps better. Will keep experimenting.
Exposure is so difficult with wet plate work. I feel this one might be a tiny bit under and the 20x29 inch flower shits from last week, might be a bit over
New Turner Book
Really loving this book by Franny Moyle. Turner is such an inspiring. beautiful artist to study. His later work is one of the influences for the ambrotype project.
Quote: Waldemar Januszczak (Art Documentarian And Presenter)
"History has been frozen. A moment in time has been turned into something, ETERNAL!"
Speaking of the Seurat painting, "A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte"
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| A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte, 1884-86 |
Hope* If only I can turn the magical ambrotypes for AMBROTOS KANATA into something ETERNAL. Mystical, pieces of the present, captured INSIDE THE GLASS, FOREVER (eternally!).
Friday, June 23, 2023
Thursday, June 22, 2023
A Book Some Day???
I have wanted to have the photographs, the stories, published in magazines and books since I was a teenager. The magazine dream has happened 3 times now but a book, never!! I want a book published by a real publisher on their dime, non-one of those self-published narcissistic things. I want it to be the real thing.
I believe I have work strong enough for several books, certainly strong enough for one retrospective fattish volume. Will it ever happen? I am quickly running out of time. I am 59 and counting.
Here are two books and my tree and leaves Ambrotype. Studying all 3 at work tonight. Trying to figure the direction AMBROTOS KANATA and future work will go.
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| Sally Mann, GY, El Grego |
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| Sally Mann |
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| GY |
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| El Grecco |
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| Sally Mann from her book "Deep South"-Fountainebleau |
Wednesday, June 21, 2023
El Greco Book, Wonderful!!
Got a wonderful book on “El Greco” (the Greek 1541-1614) today. An artist I know almost nothing about. He had an important influence on the work of Picasso.. There is so much humanity in his art, love him already!
Video: Forest Gull Lake Ambrotype
Forest Gull Lake, 8x10 Clear Glass Ambrotypes, Alberta 2022.
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| Full shot and details from the Ambro |