2 Nikon SB-28s, a white paper backdrop, 2 white umbrellas, a Nikon D3, some dog treats and 10 minutes before dinner is ready and this is what we came up with. The top image reminds me of one of William Wegman’s portraits of his Weimaraners.
Monthly Archives: December 2008
Check this out! My image of Vernon Wiley is going to be in the World in Focus issue of PDN magazine! Vern and I went out shooting photos one day in Tuolemne meadows and I took this image of him on the top of Eichorn pinnacle. I was standing near the top of the Southeast Buttress route on the ridge. Such a fun day–Thanks bro for posing it out for me on the summit!
The results are in. This image will be featured in the Yosemite Renaissance XXIV annual juried exhibition. I shot the photograph with my Nikon D3 this summer while on a climbing trip to the valley. The light is from a nearby campfire and I looked up and saw this amazing image and set up my camera for a 30 second exposure. The image is going to be printed at 11×14 inches and offered in an edition of 50.
Now that the wedding season has wound down and I’ve finished teaching for the semester, I’ve been thinking about the value of printing photographs:
After shooting almost 40,000 photographs in 2008, and viewing them almost exclusively on computer screens, it occurred to me that really a photograph isn’t finished until a final print is made. The print is a tangible object that can be viewed without reliance on sophisticated technology and without the subjectivity of a computer screen–each screen presents images differently and there are so many variables that are present within that viewing mechanism that it is almost useless to judge the true quality of the photograph on the computer screen. My students realize this shortly after they begin to make prints, even on calibrated monitors the image looks different on the screen because it is a projected rather than reflected surface.
This leads me to the story about the above photograph made in the summer of 2005:
It was right before sunrise in “twenty lakes basin” on the approach to the North Ridge of Mount Conness, but the clouds were already building and I could tell it was going to rain and nobody wants to be up on a ridge in a thunderstorm. I walked up along the trail and brought my 4×5 field camera because I had seen this stream with the background of North Peak on a prior trip up Conness and thought that in the right light it could be a great photograph. The sun was just peeking over the horizon and hit North Peak and I set up my camera and exposed a few color transparencies and some black and white film. The exposure was problematic because the foreground was what I was exposing for and the peak was very bright and I had forgot my graduated neutral density filter so all the color images were un-useable but the black and white negative had some detail in the highlights and I figured I could print it in the darkroom with considerable dodging and burning. A few weeks later I brought the negative in and worked on it for hours and hours and finally gave up because I just couldn’t get what I wanted so I stuck the negative in a sleeve and put it away—fast forward to December of 2008. I pulled the negative and mad 2 scans, one for shadows and one for highlights and combined them and after several hours on the computer voila! I have re-created what i originally saw in my camera. I’ve always wanted to print this image and so I’ve created a limited editioned series of prints based on the idea that my work should be accessible to a wider audience and if someone would like a print, it should be affordable. The prints are printed by me and are available in 3 sizes at prices that are “recession proof” 
I print the 8×10 inch, 11×14 inch, and 16×20 inch images on archival pigment printers on fine art papers. The 20×24 or 30×40 prints are chromogenic prints or “C-prints”
This image is available in 8×10 inch, 11×14 inch, 16×20 inch, and 20×24 inches. All images are signed and editioned with prices stated below:
8×10 = $25 (edition of 200) * 176 left
11×14 = $50 (edition of 50) * 43 left
16×20 = $ 200 (edition of 20)
20×24inch = $500 (edition of 7) *4 left
*quantities updated on 12-17-08
