First good snowstorm of the fall. The town is quiet and I am the only resident until next spring when the snow melts enough for people to get in on wheeled vehicles. This is the lull before the snowmobiles can make it in and I am alone with camera & skiis for a few weeks.
The paper is the standard Platinotype from Bostick & Sullivan. It seems to work well and doesn't give me problems when coating.
This was printed while in Silver City where I had to put the water in jugs & let it warm up in the cabin overnight or through the day to print the next day or evening. I blacked out the windows for coating, drying & rehumidifying the paper & then exposed to the blacklight unit I took up there with me.
Really like the quality of these prints, and really impressed with how sharp the zia's are. Very nice work, hope I can get this kind of quality from mine someday.
I use a vacuum easel. The split back easels I have tried don't get the negative & paper really flat & at times I have gotten soft areas as a result of poor contact. With the vacuum easel this has not happened.
I have also found that the pt/pd Zia is what Richard Sullivan says, the finest way to do it. Very nice look & subtle gradation & the color looks nice. So far I have stuck with the paper he sells & try to keep it as simple as possible.
In Silver City I was limited to the amount of water available. Limited by temperature mainly. I filled up three 5 gallon jugs & let them get to room temp overnight or through the day. Put up high they usually got to 68-72 degrees farenheit. The water quality was excellent, almost distilled water clean per testing. But cold... most of the winter from mid October until mid March the water was right around 34 degrees coming out of the spigot. Spring water flowing through a PVC pipe system for about 1/4 mile downhill. Then under the cabin where I stayed where we turned a tap & blocked off the pipe & let the water back up in the pipe until it came out in the cabin. Didn't take long and it ran about a gallon and a half or close to it per minute. Fill the jugs & let them sit to warm up so I didn't use up propane heating water... or I would have run short before winter was over & no propane trucks or wheeled vehicles could come in after the snow set in. Really nice.
I processed a lot of film & didn't print much, saving the printing for here where I built a new darkroom this summer. Now I am catching up & have had some time to live with the images so I can get the feel of them & see what I want to print.
All in all, a great winter and I have some good images from the time there. I will be doing some workshops there over the next few years and we will have hotel rooms(only one hotel in town... from the 1860's) meals at the hotel(the only place in town) and excellent photography of the area, in town & the mountains. If someone wants to go out of town to eat the nearest place is a small gas station with a grill 25 miles away by dirt roads in two directions. So, we stay & eat & photograph & work within walking distance right in town. With about 60 buildings there isn't a lot there but it is visually rich. Will be posting more images in the next few weeks so you can get a feel of some of it.
You realize that you're tempting all of us in the western US to come and visit you (uninvited of course) with our cameras and ruin your peace and quiet? I'm just across the cascades and can be there in 8 or 9 ho... (you hear a camera case hastily packed and the patter of feet running to the car)