APIS was a really neat experience. Lots of really neat presentations about antique and historic processes, and just really great photography. Kenro Izu was the keynote speaker, and he was a really good presenter in addition to being a brilliant photographer. Ron Reeder gave a very interesting talk about using the QuadTone RIP to customize digital negative output (if you're interested, he posts on hybridphoto). Kim Weston showed his own work, and placed it in the context of his family's different working styles. He is now doing platinum (and silver) prints and painting on top with oils. To reproduce the one-off originals, he has them scanned, printed out 30x40, and mounted on aluminum.
On a very different note, there was a presentation on the Woodburytype, which was the first photomechanical means of reproduction for continuous tone images. It involved making a relief using sensitized gelatin, then impressing the relief on a lead plate, which was then inked and printed like an intaglio or gravure. In its day, the Woodburytype enabled printing at what was then high speed, but it lost out to other processes that quickly outpaced it. I'm embarassed to say that I forget the speaker's name (I'll come back and annotate later when I get home and get my conference materials in front of me).
Joe Sarff and Dick Sullivan gave a joint presentation on the importance of vernacular photography (vernacular photography being all the pictures that we take that we don't put in frames and try to sell as "art"- little Jimmy's seventh birthday, the wedding album, the family trip to the beach, etc etc etc). Specifically, they talked about what we need to do to preserve our own family photo heritage, in this day and age of digital media.
John Guider showed his photo series of his canoe trip from the stream behind his house in Tennessee down to New Orleans. A very ambitious, daunting, and visually captivating project. He is currently looking for a publisher to put it in book form.
Rondal Partridge was the opening presenter, and a fascinating bit of living photographic history himself. Turning 90 this year, he has been working in photography for well over seventy years. He grew up working in his mother's darkroom, and printing for Imogen Cunningham. He had all kinds of fascinating tidbits about darkroom work (if you get stains or silvering on your negs, you can take it off with kaolin-based car wax from the auto supply store). He also showed work he had done with chrysotypes (gold prints), and the infinitely variable results you can get.
One of the neatest things about the conference, though, was not the speakers themselves, but the chance to meet other photographers working in different media, and to see and handle work in those media. Some giants of the alt-process world were there with their work - Dick Arentz, Patrick Alt, and folks mentioned previously like Kenro Izu and Richard Sullivan. I got to meet some fellow APUGgers like Jeremy Moore (great to finally meet you Jeremy!). By the way, if you haven't seen his work in person, well... you're really missing out on some terrific images.
The only real shortcoming, in my view, was a lack of hands-on opportunities to try some of the techniques discussed in the presentations. This was understandable given the space constraints and the low cost of the conference. In future years though, it would be nice to have as an option.
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. Well, next time. I get out to California at least once a year if I can, and I'm trying to get out there this fall for a long weekend or something. If nothing else, at the APUG Conference next year.