Lith print on Fomatone MGFB Classic, gold toned



Silver Gelatine print on Ilford MGFB IV, sepia toned


Silver Gelatine print on Ilford MGFB IV, sepia toned


Silver Gelatine print on Ilford MGFB IV, sepia toned

Lithed Lily

RB67|Film|5x7 Lith print

Seven Sisters

RB67, 50mm prime | HP5+, Diafine

Stately Homes

While on a week off work I visited Lacock and Kingston Lacy, two English manor houses, the former being the home on Henry Fox-Talbot, the man who invented the negative. I had all sorts of trouble that week trying to avoid building works that seemed to be going on everywhere, Corfe castle was a complete blowout as the scaffolding surrounding it completely spoiled any photo opportunities. The shots below are probably the best of the bunch.

Lacock Abbey | RB67, 50mm prime | HP5+, Diafine

Kingston Lacy | RB67, 180mm prime | HP5+, Diafine

Lacock Abbey | Lith print

The lith print was taken on Kodak T-max, a film I have never tried before, I was quite impressed with the results I got but its was a little flat for traditional printing, however I think it works really well with the lith process. The above print is still WIP as I ran out of paper and probably wont get any more until around Christmas. When I get around to re-printing this I'm going to tidy up the cropping and maybe see if I can get a little more contrast out of it.

The other shots from my week in Dorset can be seen here

Yorkshire

A couple of weeks ago I went on holiday 'oop north' with my wife, we stayed at her aunties house in a beautiful little village called Burley on Wharfdale, which lies somewhere in between Leeds and Bradford. During our stay we visited the Gordale Scar, Bolton Abbey and Ilkley Moor. Below are a few images from these trips.

Gordale Scar | Mamiya RB67, 50mm Prime. Rollei IR 400 scanned on 4490.



Near Cow & Calf Rocks | Mamiya RB67, 50mm Prime. Ilford HP5 printed on Kentmere FB WT. Bleached and selenium toned.



Bolton Abbey | Mamiya RB67, 50mm Prime. Ilford Pan F scanned on 4490.



Gordale Scar | Mamiya RB67 Pro S, 50mm prime. Ilford Pan F scanned on 4490.



IR Sheep | Mamiya RB67, 50mm Prime. Rollei IR 400 scanned on 4490.

The full set from Yorkshire can be found here

Been busy...

Rather than concentrate on one subject I'm going to ramble a bit and try to write down a little of all of the things I have been doing lately (photographically speaking).

My latest group of photos involved visiting a church I pass every day while driving to work. St. Alban's Church is off a side street and up a small hill from the main road and I thought the road lines led in an interesting way towards the church itself. I used infrared film as I wanted a high contrast scene, it also moved the grass and foliage tones out of the way of the church tonally speaking which has helped to create a more pleasing look in my opinion.



Although the above scene was the one I had wanted to take the shot below seemed to work slightly better, I think due to the cleaner composition i.e. the lack of the lamp post.



I've also been playing around quite heavily with lith printing as of late. My latest attempt being a new take on a shot of Blaenavon Ironworks. To get it to the state below I had to lith print normally, bleach the print for a couple of seconds, re-develop in Ilford Multigrade, then selenium tone it. I like the deep tones that this process has created as well as the nice dark-brown (almost rusty) colour.



Last but not least I have developed an idea for the chive plant lith that I posted below, the idea came to me when I was playing around with a triptych presentation for the image. Instead of three identical prints all in different tones of colour I decided to print a mirror image of the original, selenium tone it and position it upside down under the first print to create a reflection.

Flowery Liths

I had a chance to try out Kentmere Fineprint VC in Fotospeed lith developer the other day. I had wanted to try it out with a couple of my flowery shots and was looking for a very graphic image with nice warm highlights. I'm happy with the results on the chive shot as its exactly the sort of thing I was looking for. By the time I got to the other shot the developer was nigh-on exhausted and I couldn't fully develop the image. In an attempt to get some more density I used a handy torch to solarize the paper while it was still in the developer. Even that didn't help too much and I had to selenium tone it to get it to the point of the scan shown below.