Whoa! I am back home after two weeks on the road. The first week was in Yosemite Valley at the Ansel Adams Gallery, teaching a 4-day carbon printing workshop with co-instructor, Jim Fitzgerald, and wonderful assistant Elizabeth Opalenik. Then off to Hayward and PhotoCentral for prep for another carbon printing workshop there the following weekend (2.5 days and a half day in the field)...assisted by Mark Shaw.
For both workshops, I offered an 8x10 camera and film (FP4+) for the students to use to get a few negs to print in the workshop. Most had not used a LF camera, a few had used a 4x5. The amount of actual participation by the student in the setting up the camera for the desired image depended on their previous experience, though I tended to do most of it just to keep things moving...and the final focus, checking meter readings (and recording them since I would be doing the developing), tightening down all the latches, knobs or whatevers! I would work with one students while the others wandered about looking for possible images. I tried to get a sense of what the student wanted to make and go from there. A lot of fun. A couple students had specific ideas and it was fun matching the tools to the task for them.
I wanted to emphasize the use of film and to show its importance as one of our materials in creating a print, as well as the use of the 8x10 LF camera as creative tool. It was important, and exciting, for me to take the workshop participants from seeing the image they wanted to make, to getting the image onto film, to making/preparing their printing materials to match their negatives, and then to making their carbon prints. talking about the creative options one has at each step. of the process. It's a crazy way to run workshops...took more energy than I thought I had, running around with an 8x10 and Ries Pod over my shoulder (students following with the camera pack and holders), developing film into the wee hours, thinking "I hope I hit this right!"
It all came together nicely...but it is nice to be home again!
Photo: Me in Ansel Adams' old home in Yosemite Valley. I believe dinner is being prepared while I bask in the glow of one of the 750 watt self-ballasted mercury vapor lamps we used to make our print exposures. Photograph by one of the participants, Nikki Kahn.
Reply With Quote
Originally Posted by Jim Noel
Bookmarks