This picture come from a series of self portraits I captured circa 1999. I have added them to the Self Portaits gallery at www.wmgphoto.com. Check out Tom’s Wholesale Toy, a new photo added to the Still Life Gallery, while you are there.
For the past few months I have been printing my black and white photographs using carbon pigment ink from MIS associates. This is a third party ink provider. My Eboni black and white ink works in my Epson R800 photo printer. There are three dilutions of the MIS Eboni carbon pigment ink that I can use to make pure carbon-black photographs, and I still can maintain the Epson color inks to use the printer for both black and white and color prints. With printers other than the R800 or R1800, in order to use such carbon pigment, non-dye-based black and white inks, one must remove all the color inks and replace them with various shades of gray.
Form is not in the material:
it is in the designer before
it ever enters the stone:
and the artificer holds it
not by his equipment of eyes and hands,
but by his participation in his art.
Plotinus
in Whitall N. Perry
_A Treasury of Traditional Wisdom_
Varanasi: Indica, 1998, (1971), p. 672
“Caught in the Act” is the name of an upcoming invitational art exhibit at the Northbrook Public Library and Arts Center in Northbrook, Illinois. The purpose of the show is to display artwork that “seeks the moment of the numinous, the captured instant that reveals and questions what is hidden.” My photograph, Boys at Play, reproduced in this post, will be on exhibit in that show.
The show will open with a public reception on Friday, October 3, 2008, and will continue through October 31. For more information about the show, you may visit the show’s website by clicking -HERE-. That website will be updated with an exhibition catalog on September 23.
I hope to see you at the opening reception.
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Light always plays a part to a greater or lesser degree in any photograph. Sometimes, as was the case the morning of June 30 when I captured the image in this post, light becomes a compositional element in the photograph.
But light can be a fickle subject. She is prone to fool your lightmeter, claiming for herself center stage, causing your camera to underexpose your main subject.
Light also can be elusive. While she is eager to show herself in all her glory, she will do so for but a moment. The photographer must act quickly to capture her on film before she slips away to hide in the full glare of the sun.
A photographer will be well served to learn the secrets of natural light.
This website features William M. Gatesman's photographs and musings about photography and the creative process. This site is affiliated with Bill's online Photo Gallery, www.wmgphoto.com. You may visit the Gallery by clicking on the words "Photo Gallery" below.
