"Contact" Images by Jake Shivery

[Preston]

I found this on CNN. This gentleman uses a Deardorf 8x10 and B&W to photograph people in Portland, OR. Contact is the name of the book containing the images.

Some very nice portraits in this CNN article and slide show.

--P

[David Karp]

Jake seems to be another nice LF guy. I recently purchased a lens from him at Blue Moon Camera in Portland. We had a nice conversation while completing the transaction.

[fishbulb]

Yeah Jake's a great guy and very talented. Here is his website: http://www.jakeshivery.com/

[Sal Santamaura]

Nice work. However, he needs to run another Kickstarter campaign and pick up a Jobo. Lots of tray (or hanger)-processing artifacts on those negatives.

[fishbulb]

For those of you in the Pacific Northwest, Jake's "Contact" work (8x10 contact prints) will be on display next month:

Newspace Gallery, Portland, Oregon.
April 3-26, 2015
Opening Reception: April 3rd, 6-9pm
Cocktail Party & Book Reading: April 18th, 5-8pm

I believe the book will be for sale by then, or shortly thereafter, but you can pre-order it here: http://shop.diffusionmag.com/product...y-jake-shivery

[Nathan Potter]

As Sal says some of the prints show a bit of distracting processing artifacts. His Flickr site gives a good impression of his range of talent. I like the way he connects the portrait with its environment.

Nate Potter, Austin TX.

[fishbulb]

I dunno, the processing marks are mostly on the edges and don't really bother me. All of his shots appear with no crop, right to the edges of the film holders every time. Most people (including myself) crop that stuff off, or sometimes crop quite a bit more than that.

[Sal Santamaura]

I dunno, the processing marks are mostly on the edges and don't really bother me...

If you're not bothered, great. I look at the entire image.

...All of his shots appear with no crop, right to the edges of the film holders every time. Most people (including myself) crop that stuff off, or sometimes crop quite a bit more than that.

In my experience, among those who contact print 8x10 negatives, "most people" work toward composing on the ground glass, accounting for all of the image, right to its edges. Cropping is much less common in that arena than with enlargements of smaller formats.

Even if one sometimes crops, uneven processing presents a limitation on what portion of the negative is available to select from. It's hard to argue in favor of film processing defects.

[Drew Wiley]

Showing blemished neg margins is the "new" and "creative" artsy thing now.... or it least it has been for the past forty-five years! Kinda a boring cliche by now.

[Sal Santamaura]

Showing blemished neg margins is the "new" and "creative" artsy thing...

What you're describing is more related to showing the edges of a Polaroid Type 55 negative on an enlarged print or the untrimmed, uneven periphery of prints made using hand-coated processes. I don't get the impression that Shivery is going for that "look." Rather, it just seems his negatives suffer from undesired, uneven tray or hanger processing.