Images of mistakes - good or bad..

[Emil Schildt]

on a limb here...

because the image shown isn't mine.
The photographer is my girlfriend, and she gave me permission to show this!

TITLE:
Spiderwoman OR "... remember to check the developer for dead spiders before a solarization of your film!"...


Stine made this selfportrait, and wanted to make a solarized negative.

When developing the negative, she didn't realize, that a spider apparently had decided to commit suicide in the developer....

Look and behold: the spider was "captured" on the negative when Stine re-lit the negative. Hence this the "spider corpse" was the only thing on the images that wasn't re-lit - so the siluette stayed black..

(that's what we think, anyway)

This is the first time I have seen anything like this happen - and I like it a lot!

Camera: Sinar Norma
Foma 100 iso.

Lith print.

SPIDERWOMAN

[walter23]

I like the spiderwoman print. Very cool accident.

[Kirk Gittings]

However it was done......it is a magical image.

SPIDERWOMAN

[/QUOTE]

[bvaughn4]

Awesome, however it happened!

[jp]

This was one of my extremely rare happy mistakes. I farted around-took too long to set up and the foreground clouded over. My intention was the opposite with a brightly lit foreground and the background shaded which would make the building really pop. That is my normal predictable MO. This is not a site where you want to hang around long as people get run out of here at gunpoint-myself included a couple of years previous. This is the Upper Morada in Abiquiu, NM up the hill from O'Keefe's house. So I made a couple of negatives and got the hell out of there. I considered the effort a blown opportunity and I was mad at myself for missing it.

After developing and contacting the negative, I realized the light lent a brooding feel to the image that I really liked. It has become one of my most popular images, widely published, exhibited and sold. This image taught me allot about taking chances.

The brooding sky and the strong light and dark combine with the three crosses (on a hill outside of the village nonetheless) provide a strong Christian allegory.

It's a nice image, but perhaps that mood quietly adds to it's appeal as an allegorical image. I didn't see it at first, but after looking at it for a minute it was pretty plain it was far more than a normal pretty southwest historical landscape. The darkened bell certainly adds to that too.

Artistic/technically speaking, the dark tones and lighter tones are all perfect. The shapes and lines are good, especially the circle around the ruin and the dark triangle of the sky.

[ghostdancer]

Not as exciting as some of these. One of my 5x7 sheets got loose in the Bessler drum (don't have those seperators) and overlapped another sheet. Bummer but I was still able to crop it.

Not to mention what that sheep's doing to you!!

[Brian Ellis]

This is my worst image ever, and although it is a repeat image, it will not be my last...

jim k

Aw that's nothing. I have about 75 just like that one from a trip to Maine with a defective Readyload holder that was grabbing the film and pulling it up along with the inner envelope so that the film was never exposed. Mine might be a slightly richer black. : - )

[Kirk Gittings]

The brooding sky and the strong light and dark combine with the three crosses (on a hill outside of the village nonetheless) provide a strong Christian allegory.

It's a nice image, but perhaps that mood quietly adds to it's appeal as an allegorical image. I didn't see it at first, but after looking at it for a minute it was pretty plain it was far more than a normal pretty southwest historical landscape. The darkened bell certainly adds to that too.

Artistic/technically speaking, the dark tones and lighter tones are all perfect. The shapes and lines are good, especially the circle around the ruin and the dark triangle of the sky.

Thanks for those insights, I am actually reworking this image as we speak-this time for a show in Santa Fe later this year-this time for a larger Piezography print and working from a superb Lenny Eiger drum scan. I worked on it for about 8 hours today. The above was the first digital print I ever did period and it was a huge learning experience. I worked on the file for months and was finally able to get this negative to dance the way I had always wanted it to. This image is a pain to print traditionally-I could never get the tones or the complex d&B right. I was thinking this time I wanted to open up the bell on these prints a hair so you could just see the detail in the bell. I still want the tones to be deep and ominous.

[cjbroadbent]

If you can't beat them (reflections, that is), join them.
Krylon, iced water, tent? No way.

[Jim Cole]

Christopher,
What a set! This one has a very strange appeal to me that I cannot put into words. Very...