Ray

Got to spend the day with Ray Bidegain in his workshop in Portland.  Ray is a master printer and all around decent guy.  A practitioner of what would be called "Historical" photographic processes,  wet plate collodion, platinum palladium, he lectures and his work hangs in collections worldwide.

The work involves contact printing from negatives.  Ray uses primarily large format negatives, I was using negatives I produced on an inkjet printer from digital images.  As the solutions are sensitive to UV light we were able to work in a lighted room and the chemicals are not considered toxic.  Cool!

We also produced a negative from one of my iPhone images and printed it.  Ray seemed impressed with the results (or he humored my my enthusiasm for the iPhone) but I was definitely impressed.  There is a richness and warmth in this process that must be seen to be appreciated.  In no way do my samples included in this and the next post come close to doing them justice.