Visited this morning, very nice, if anything, a higher standard than last year.
The best to us and most interesting, were a group of prints by Nigel Smith using Konica IR750, Fotospeed LD20 Lith developer and Vintage Ilfomar FB paper. Not only were they interesting subjects (Joshua Tree National Park in the USA) but the prints themselves were something else and very saleable.
Shane, I had no idea you had that many cameras. The Greenwich Foot Tunnel with the very long exposure had us wondering if you had used, "meantime", as a stop watch?
We thought the Paris prints from Sunil Patel were very well done. The fact that they were dated as "August 2019" made us assume the photographer came back from Paris then hit the darkroom before unpacking luggage.
We had a discussion with the author of an interesting print, Gregory Soltys, "Strappy Plants", which were toned in sepia and iron on Ilford warmtone FB and had yellow and green tinting. Fair bit of food for thought on that one.
Sally Paterson's Cyanotype Blues was very much liked, but we were left wondering just what the subject was. It was so interesting that we talked about that one on the way home.
Richard Sydenham used a 55mm Micro Nikkor to very high effect with his series on the Dragonfly. Dragonfly 2 looked almost identical to an aeroplane taxiing for take-off and was most effective. The other comments in the catalogue from the author, told us that his aims had been met and exceeded.
Mat Hughes finished his prints with a light coat of Damar Varnish, which I felt was lost on the viewer as the prints were behind glass. That said, I have no idea how good or bad they were prior to the addition of a light Damar Varnish coating.
Three prints were made from Ilford FP3 film, must have been brought up from the dungeon. These prints were from film exposed very early in the photographers photographic life and sitting alongside his today stuff, certainly highlights his photographic journey. FP3 film was discontinued by Ilford in 1968, according to what I found on the web.
We felt that the inclusion of 20, 20cm x 25cm prints from the students from nearby Albert Park College were by and large pretty good, with one being really good and making the cover of the catalogue, albeit in a cropped form. For those who won't know, the students did a two day analogue photography workshop in June this year.
Mick.
