What Makes a Picture?
This recent print tells a lot about what drives my photography. More than anything else, I strive to transform my feelings into a picture. Pictures I make without a feeling tend to be not more than compositional excercises. Of course you have to exercise to advance in any craft, but those excercises don’t satisfy me.
In December I stayed in the City of Bellevue, WA for a couple of days. On Sunday I had some hours to take a walk through the neighborhood. During that walk, suddenly the sun came out and the boardwalk was hit by this wonderful winter light, soft and directional. The forms and the feeling of that light on that surface make it for me - no other content needed.
When I do such a print, I tend to relive the moment when I took the picture. That’s why I love it so much being in the darkroom and doing prints. The paper here really adds to the impression, the surface of the paper and the texture of the lith print kind of resemble the rough surface of the boardwalk.
Technical Stuff
To some this is boring and unimportant, but I personally like to know how things are made.
The photo was taken on Bergger Pancro 400 with a LEICA M6 TTL and the lovely LEICA ELMAR-M 50 mm. For this picture, sharpness and resolution obviously are not the key drivers. It’s just a nice universal combination for taking ‘my’ pictures.
The print is a darkroom lith print. I used Moersch lith chemicals and I chose Fomabrom 123 paper since I love the velvety surface for dreamy pictures like this one here. Unfortunately Foma stopped producing this lovely paper some time ago.