Sunday, August 23, 2015

Printing The Coffin Photo

Here is the coffin photo of dad, the last picture of the exhibition and the last I will be printing for the Rosebud show. I thought it was important to include this image so that the gallery viewers would understand dads complete story.

Initially I worked on a 35mm coffin shot made in the chapel just before dads funeral. I was not happy with the look of the print, it did not have the tonality and strength I hoped for. I switched off to the photograph below, a totally different type of shot. The photo was made with a 5x7 camera in available light the night before the funeral in the family viewing room. I like the sense of isolation in the shot. The family has moved away from dads body and dad seems so alone in the room, not forgotten but isolated and alone. There is a sadness and loneliness to the pic, everyone alive is looking away from the coffin. The living move during the long exposure, dad does not. 5x7 negs have such wonderful detail and tonality, even the blurred areas have extra dimension because of the very large negative.

I will let this print dry and continue working on it tomorrow night. I might have to do up another 2 or 3 versions. Tomorrow I also want to do the secondary printing on this shot and the photo of dad staring that I did on Friday. I should be able to have these two pics, spotted, mounted, framed and ready to go by the end of the next work week. I will then have all my photos ready for the Rosebud exhibition.

Now it's time for bed, I only have about 5 hours sleep before I need to get up and to do my biweekly swimming workout. I am looking forward to shooting the 5x7 Linhof in Asia, I should come home with 400 or 500 exposed sheets of film. It will be a joyous experience to print that work in 2016-2017. I will continue to work with motion in the photographs.

3rd print attempt, Dad in viewing room of funeral home with family, Linhof 5x6 210mm lens long shutter speed