The Old Mill Cordoba

Beautiful - HIE images and Lith prints make for a wonderful marriage. Well-done.

Renato Tonelli said:

Beautiful - HIE images and Lith prints make for a wonderful marriage. Well-done.

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I totally agree with you. As a long time worker in IR I hope to start lith printing my favorite shots taken over the years.

An interesting exercise and execution, but in my opinion the subject matter ( the mill) is far too overshadowed by the IR and the dominance of the trees. It's too style over substance. I think IR should be used to enhance what IR excels at, and not just any subject falls one comes upon. To me this is a picture (beautifully done) of a tree with some building in the background. You've drawn our eye away from the subject and instead featured something else.

I'm going to bite because I had an opposite gut reaction to seeing this. My initial emotional response to this photograph was that it puts the seemingly solid and man-made stonework mill into a different perspective, ephemeral and beginning to wear and crumble against the bright and more real "now" of the sky and water and trees. In time, the sky and water and life and the "now" will persist, but the mill will be nothing but pebbles. I guess for me the subject is the place and moment, with the mill having receding importance.

I think this is really an impressive combination of subject, vision, capture, and a lot of darkroom technique. Really first class.

Thanks NedL & Bruce for your comments. It is good to see other people see what you are trying to capture in your work.

Vincent, I like this one as well (although I am biased as a fellow HIE shooter and lith printer!) Actually, I don't think the infrared overwhelms the image at all - it's a nice balance of muted wood effect, and of course the way HIE renders highlights and tonal gradations on everything else. I would have liked to see more of the mill though (slightly different angle) but that's very minor. I never would have thought to have used Rodinal to develop HIE, but it looks good here. What dilution did you use?

mooseontheloose said:

Vincent, I like this one as well (although I am biased as a fellow HIE shooter and lith printer!) Actually, I don't think the infrared overwhelms the image at all - it's a nice balance of muted wood effect, and of course the way HIE renders highlights and tonal gradations on everything else. I would have liked to see more of the mill though (slightly different angle) but that's very minor. I never would have thought to have used Rodinal to develop HIE, but it looks good here. What dilution did you use?

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Thanks for for comments Rachelle. In my defense I have to say that it was a very restricted area to move around in to create a view. This is probably the best that I could achieve on the day to satisfy the picture I had in my mind. My choice of developer was guided by an article I read when I first set out to use HIE. After several years I changed over to ID11 (1+1) for 13 minutes. My Rodinal dilution was 1+25 for 5.5 minutes. Like myself I see you also attended a Tim Rudman workshop, he maintained that lith printing and HIE were a marriage made in heaven. But I never took up lith printing afterwards. But I decided to have a go again and went for 1 day workshop in Dublin. This is the print that I produced at the workshop.

Actually, I did think that the location may have been a bit restrictive for you -- I often have that problem myself. As for infrared and lith, I love the work that other people (especially Tim) have produced, but I have been really unsuccessful with it - I just don't like the colours with it, and the way it looks in lith. That being said, maybe it's something I need to go back and explore a little more.