Friday, March 29, 2013

Day Trips

Last weekend I went out for a day trip, hoping to make some photographs with my view camera.  It had been quite some time since I had been able to get out.  This time around I took all three girls along with me, more to give their Mom a break than anything,  I spent most of the day acting as a referee and not much time making photographs, though I did manage a couple of setups in Elk Island National Park.
Then today, Good Friday, I went out again... this time by myself.  I headed off southwest of the city and ended up around Battle Lake.  I was very uninspired.  It wasn't really winter as the snow was significantly melted and had that old dirty look.... But it wasn't really spring yet either.  It was very muddy but there was no water flowing yet and everything was kind of stuck at that ugly in between stage.  I did take a couple of shots... one of some aspen trunks out near Battle Lake and the second of the remains of the Sparling School south of Calmar.  I have photographed this old school house a number of times in the past and in recent years it has begun to collapse.  I think it is not much longer for this world, and was worthy of documentation.



Busy Week

It was a rather busy week this past week.  The girls are home frin school for Spring Break combined with the Easter weekend.  As a result there are no piano lessons, or dance classes this week.  
I managed to put together a submission package for the Monochrome Guild.  This was "Greatest Hits... a 10 year retrospective"  The year 2012 marked the 10 year anniversary of the Monochrome Guild.  As a group we voted on a selection of images submitted by current members.  The 12 with the most votes, including two of mine, were included in this submission package.  I dropped the package off at McMullen Gallery on Thursday, just ahead of their annual "end of March" deadline.
I took Annelise to the Oilers game on Thurday evening.  For a change they managed a victory, this time over the Columbus Blue Jackets by a 6-4 score.
I am home for the Easter long weekend as the shop is closed for Good Friday.  The current snow conditions have made for very slow conditions in the shop and as a result I chose to keep the shop closed on Easter Monday.  So, all the staff will enjoy a four day long weekend.  When we return to work on Tuesday, hopefully the spring melt is well underway and things will be busier.




Wednesday, March 27, 2013

Winter Hockey - Games 29 & 30

The Renegades played the last two games of the regular season over the past couple of days.  On Saturday we played the Ice Hawks, and defeated them 5-2.  Then last night we played the Icebreakers and hung on for a 4-3 victory.  We finished the 2012-13 Winter Season in first place in Division 11 with a record of 20 wins, 9 losses and 1 overtime loss, for 41 points.  Some of the other teams still have games left to play so it remains to be seen how everyone finishes the season, and what the playoff structure will be.  As a result of our first place finish we get a bye in the first playoff round.  Our first playoff game will be on April 6th.  Stay tuned...

Saturday, March 23, 2013

Spring...???

Last weekend we were hit with a significant spring snow storm and there was quite a bit of accumulation.  We Canadians didn't take this all to seriously.  After all... March almost always comes in like a lamb and then blasts out like a lion.  We all thought this would be winter's last gasp, and that spring weather would be upon us.  Spring officially arrived last Wednesday, but along with it, another winter storm.  This second one was worse than the first.  It snowed heavily for most of two days.  The accumulation that we had and thought was significant was nothing compared to what came this week.  It's almost as if the earth reversed its orbit on the equinox and plunged us back into winter, rather than rolling forward into spring.
Road conditions were terrible.  The snow and blowing snow resulted in white out conditions and there was a huge traffic accident on Highway 2, south of the city.  Hundreds of vehicles were involved and there were over 100 injuries... fortunately none fatal, and only a handful serious.  When I took Hailey to her dance class on Thursday evening, the studio was almost empty and only a handful of other students showed up.  At work we already started getting numerous phone calls from customers desperate for some one to come out and deal with the water backup that was occurring into their roofs and around their skylights as a result of all this snow beginning to melt.
Here are a couple of photos of the snow accumulations in our yard.  These were taken earlier in the week, just before the snow finally quit.  Note how much snow cover there is on the roof of our garage.  And compare the views of the front yard, and the kids swing set, to those that I posted a couple of days ago.  I think that accumulations are now between 1-1/2 and 2 feet, considering what we previously accumulated over the winter, what we got last weekend, and now what has been added these last few days.




Printing Complete

Last night after work I took Annelise to her dance class.  When we returned home, I hit the darkroom anxious to get back to my printing.  I managed to print the last two images for the Procession West exhibition.  As I have done all along, I made multiple copies of both images.  There is almost always some minor damage incurred to the prints during all the handling of fixing, bleaching, clearing, toning, washing, drying, flattening, mounting and matting.  It is a lot cheaper to just have back up copies available, rather than to have to return to the darkroom, set up, and try to make a replacement.  Furthermore, the Procession West project will initially include two shows... the larger 36 piece show being shipped to Regina, and the condensed 22 piece show to be delivered to McMullen.  Some prints will be included in both shows, and as the dates overlap, this will require duplicate framed pieces.  If any prints sell at these shows, then I will have backup copies available for sale.  Today I am working on getting these last two images bleached, toned and into the wash.  Once they are finished and have been dried, I can turn my attention to the mounting, matting and presentation...



Tuesday, March 19, 2013

Winter Hockey - Game 28

The Renegades lost yet another hockey game this weekend, this time to the Maulers by a score of 8-4.  We still cling to first place in our division, with two games left in the regular season.  I've read the guys the riot act in an attempt to get us re-focused for the remaining two games, and then the playoffs.  Hopefully we can turn things around for these last few weeks of winter hockey.

7500 Pageviews...!!

My blog just hit 7500 page views this week.  Quite a milestone.  I imagine that quite a number of these are my own views, but a milestone just the same.  The statistics for the blog suggest that it is viewed all over the world.  The single most viewed entries are the ones that discuss the world's largest ammonite down in southwestern British Columbia.

Removing Black Spots from Prints - New Technique

I've come up with a new technique for removing black spots from prints.  This problem, and my new solution may be somewhat foreign to anyone shooting digitally.  But for those of us old school analog photographers, this has been an ongoing problem.  If a piece of dust or debris is on the surface of the film during exposure, this blocks light from striking the light sensitive emulsion when the film is exposed and the picture is being taken.  This results in a clear spot on the negative.  Of course when the negative is then exposed with an enlarger onto a piece of photographic paper, the opposite of a clear spot... a black spot... is created on the print.  These are very difficult to deal with.
If dust or debris is on the negative of the paper during exposure of the print, this results in a white spot on the print.  Spotting dyes and fine brushes can be used to eliminate these white spots and this is almost always required,,,, to some degree, on every print.  The black spots used to ruin some negatives as they were not so easy to deal with.
Over the years, one of my favorite films has been the now discontinued [in 1999] Kodak High Speed Infrared.  I still have several hundred 4" x 5" sheets of this film in my freezer, and will continue to use it for a few more years to come.  This emulsion is very susceptible to fingerprints, and accumulates a strong static charge.  When the film holder is inserted into the view camera prior to exposure, and the dark slide is pulled to take the picture, it is not uncommon for any dust particles and fine hairs that may be present inside the camera, or on the surface of the film holder, to be drawn onto the surface of the film and cling there, creating these annoying clear spots on the negative, and black spots on the resulting print...
One of the images that I have been working on for Procession West was shot on this film.  It was on the verge of being removed from the show as there a literally about a hundred small little black spots on the print that resulted from dust on the negative during exposure.  Here is a shot of the printing in progress, and a close up view of some of these dust spots...



Potassium Ferricyanide is commonly used for localized bleaching of select areas of a print.  This is typically brushed onto a section of the print, allowed to act for a few seconds, and then rinsed away.  The result is that this chemical lightens an area of the print.  It takes some experience to undertake this process as it is easy to take it too far and end up with a very uneven bright spot on the print.  I decided to try and use this bleaching solution to get rid of these little black spots.  The question was how to apply the bleaching solution just to these spots, without getting it all over the adjacent parts of the print.  Then I remembered the technical pens that we used to use back in the good old days when drafting was done by hand.  This was years ago... before the days of AutoCad software and computer plotters.  We used to fill these technical pens with ink and the result was lines of very uniform width and density on our architectural and technical drawings.  I thought that these pens would be perfect to apply very controlled amounts of this bleaching solution.  I still had a couple of these pens left from back in the day, and I checked on line with a number of drafting supply stores to try and find a few more.  They are pretty difficult to find, as similar to film based photography, digital drafting has taken over from the old methods of drawing by hand.  I finally found a few, with various nib sizes, but they cost me over $50 each.  Here is a close up view of one of these Marsmatic 700 technical pens...


The idea that I came up with was to fill the pen with a dilute solution of potassium ferricyanide, and then repeatedly apply this solution, with the pen, to all the little black spots on the print.  With this particular image that was very labor intensive as I actually had about six copies of the print, and there were literally over a hundred of these little spots on each print.  In addition to that, the bleach solution had to be applied a few times until it eventually bleached away the little spot.  After three or four applications of this bleach solution, the print was fixed for a second time in a solution of ammonium thiosulfate.  This not only stopped the bleaching process, but also intensified it.  When I was done with this step, each print now had about a hundred little white spots, instead of little black ones.  These spots are much easier to deal with as they can be spotted away by traditional methods, using a fine brush and spotting dyes, or spotting pens.  I see tremendous potential for this process as I can now use it to salvage prints from negatives that would have otherwise been unpresentable.  This black spot problem, although most common and pronounced with the infrared material, also occurs to a lesser degree with other films.  Here is a close up view of the bleached away black spots on the print...


Another consideration for these technical pens would be to use them to apply an opaque dye to the surface of the negative.  This would create the same result... a white spot on the print instead of a black one.  The advantage to this approach would be that it would only have to be done once... to the original negative... and then all resulting prints would automatically have the resulting white spots.  The down side would be that the white spots on the print would all be bigger.  The opaque dye on the negative would be the size of the nib of the technical pen... in the range of 1/3 to 1 mm in diameter.  But this would increase in size on the finished print by the amount of enlargement that the negative is given in printing.  At least two or three times in a large format negative, and even more on a smaller negative in roll film format.  I haven't tried this alternative method yet, but it is worth experimentation in the future.
I'm really proud of myself for coming up with this idea and have been really busy of late bragging and patting myself on the back...!!

Reprints

I was hoping that I might find time to go out on a day trip this past weekend and take some photographs.  The lousy weather conditions made that impossible.  Trapped at home, I decided to spend part of the weekend down in the darkroom reprinting a few of the images for Procession West.  There are a few that need to be tweeked and improved upon.  I still have two more to go to finish up all the images for the show, so one more darkroom session should wrap things up.  Then I can move on to mounting, matting, spotting and framing.  Here are quick snapshots of the latest...



Lookit What We Got...

A gift for St. Patricks Day...??  Or a present in advance of the first day of Spring...??  It started snowing late last week, and continued through most of the weekend.  Just after mother nature teased us a little and gave us a couple of mild days last week...  Then we got slammed with this.  Temperatures dropped down into the range of -10 to -15C, and even colder with the humidity and wind chill factored in.  And we got a lot of snow... about 8 inches with more in the forecast.  The snow let up a little at the beginning of this week, but for the vernal equinox... the first day of spring... we are forecast to get another 3 to 4 inches of snow, and see the temperatures drop back down into the "minus-double-digits"...  Doesn't look as though we will be able to get out camping with that new trailer any time soon...  The girls riding lessons will NOT get underway in early April as hoped...  Skylight work will not start rolling for a while...  And the renovations here at the house will remain incomplete for at least a couple more weeks...





Monday, March 11, 2013

Procession West

I haven't updated the Procession West project for quite a while, but it has been one of the things that has taken up a lot of my time in recent weeks.  My friend Rob and I have finalized our image list for this project. It now includes a total of 40 images... 20 by each of us.  The exact number that will be exhibited will vary depending on the venue that we are showing at.  Not only do we have the image list finalized, but we now have almost all of them printed.  We are finishing that up and are in the process of mounting, matting, and spotting the final exhibition prints.  Soon we will be starting on cutting and assembling our frames.
There are a lot of little side projects that go along with the preparation of our photographs.  We built several foam-lined plywood shipping cases that will be used to transport our finished prints to the venues that we will be showing at.  We have prepared scans of all of the images.  These are being used for further submissions to additional galleries, in the hope that this can become a travelling exhibitions and remain on the road for a number of years.  These scans are also being used to self-publish a book which will be available for viewing, and offered for sale, at our exhibitions.  The first two exhibitions that have been confirmed are...

The Art Gallery of Regina 
2420 Elphinstone Street
Regina, Saskatchewan
June 19th 2013 to August 23rd 2013

McMullen Gallery
8440 - 112 Street
Edmonton, Alberta
August to October 2013 [exact dates TBA]

Hopefully there will be some upcoming announcements about future exhibitions.  We have sent our submission package out to four more galleries already, and have another 20 packages that will be sent out over the next few weeks.


Winter Hockey - Game 27

The Renegades played game 27 of the winter season on Sunday morning.  The puck drop was at 7:15AM, but this was made even worse by the fact that we switched to Daylight Saving Time the night before, so this was really like 6:15AM.  I had to be up by what my body believed was 4:30AM to get packed up and head over to the rink.  We managed to snap our losing streak and defeated the Buzzards by a score of 8-7 in a close, hard-fought battle.  If we can win one of the remaining three games of the regular season, we will finish in first place.  The worst we can do is a third place finish, and the top six teams make the playoffs, which get underway in early April.

Renovations

Back in the depths of the January cold, somewhat fed up with the lack of insulation in our old clapboard shack, we decided it was time to renovate.  Our little 1200+ square foot bungalow was built back in 1968.  The standard of the day was to insulate the exterior 2x4 walls with 2-1/2 inches of fiberglass insulation, and the attic with about 6 inches of wood shavings.  Our old aluminum slider windows had seen better days... and the entrance doors leaked air like sieves.  In fact, when I walked up the side walk, returning home after my day at work, I could smell from the front street what Margarit was cooking for supper.  We also got some really cool frost patterns on the windows, that generally lasted from about November until March.  They were great for making photographs, but not so great for the gas bill.  The big 5 x 10 foot picture window in our living room was really inefficient and when it got really cold outside the glass touched together in the center forming a big circular patch of ice.
We got a quote on a complete upgrade package from a local renovation contractor.  It was pretty much in the range I expected so we decided to bite the bullet and go for it.  The package included new windows with triple glazed Low-E glass, insulated entrance doors with storm doors, new soffit, fascia and eavestroughs, 1-1/2 inches of rigid insulation added on the exterior walls, new siding all around the house, upgraded attic insulation, and new shingles.  The new windows were ordered back in January, and were ready for the installation to begin in late February.  It will be nice that we can get all this construction and disruption to our lives over with at this time of year and be able to look forward to enjoying the summer months without a major project on our hands.  This snapshot shows the old vinyl siding coming off the front of the house and the even older funky 1960's vertical siding underneath that...


Here are a couple more images of the work progressing.  We are changing the exterior color scheme to dark brown on the soffits and fascia, and a light tan colored siding.  The new shingles will probably be a brown or grey color... we haven't decided yet.  The roofing work can't take place right away, as we still have to wait until the snow disappears.



Way Behind...

It's been ages since I've found the time to update my blog.  It's not that I've lost interest... just that things have been extremely busy.  I will make a point of trying to catch up on events shortly...
In the mean time, check out this new T-shirt I just got... how's this for a dose of "redneckedness"...??
In the words of Lyle Lovett...  "Redneckedness is getting like a disease..." - Give back my Heart / Pontiac


Friday, March 8, 2013

Winter Hockey - Games 25 and 26

It has been quite some time since I have posted anything on my blog, let alone any hockey scores.  Life has been very busy these past few weeks and I need to try and get the blog up to date in the coming days.  The Renegades have fallen on hard times of late and have lost four of our last five games.  On February 24 we lost to the Wolf Pack by a final score of 6-4.  The last goal was into and empty net so it really was a close, hard fought game, more so that the score suggests.  Then on March 2 we lost to the Oil City Wings by a score of 4-3.  Despite this recent losing skid, we remain in first place in our division.  With four games left before the playoffs we really need to turn things around and wrap up the regular season on a roll.