Recent Entries
Upper Desoto Falls
**The Desoto Falls campground and trail has become one of my favorite spots lately. Frogtown creek at the campground level is a rock filled creek with plenty of composition opportunities. The 3/4 mile hike to Upper Desoto Falls is relatively easy and has a good viewing platform. The sound of the rushing water is very […]
Frogtown Creek III
**Shortly after I made the Frogtown Creek II image I wandered downstream to where I had previously shot Frogtown Creek I. But I was on the other side of the creek and had to work my way down the bank, over a fallen tree and under a rather gnarly vine to perch on a narrow […]
Field exposure and printing notes
**Over the last couple of years I have been taking field notes on a custom 3×5 card rather than using a notebook. 1 card per 4×5 shot allows me to capture all the information about the exposure I need to remember or use for printing later. I have refined this card over time and today […]
Frogtown Creek II Split Toned
**After my toning experiments I decided to split tone the Frogtown Creek II image. I think I went a little too far with bleaching so turned the whole image brownish rather than just warming the faintest highlights. But I do like the results and it is different than the untoned version. The print was a […]
Thiourea Toning Tests Continued
**Today I decided to run some more toning tests. Instead of working with a scenic image I chose to make a sort of step wedge though not very precise. I exposed an 8×10 sheet 1 second at a time moving a cardboard sheet down the page until I hit about 12 seconds which was more […]
FrogTown Creek Revisited
**In the last week of November I decided to drive up to the Desoto Falls camping area and try to take another image of the upper falls. The trail was closed due to storm damage over the summer. So I walked along the creek on the campground side and found this composition. Frogtown creek is […]
Split Toning First attempt
**Over the last few weeks I have been trying my hand at Toning with Thiourea (Sepia) and Selenium on different papers. This thanksgiving day weekend gave me some extra time to try Split Toning with both. And as luck would have it my mentor Steve Sherman put out a video on his toning technique along […]
Photo journal
**While I try to write something in this blog about my photographic journey and discoveries frequently, I find there are things I think about that I do not wish to share publicly or necessarily chronicle here. So in the style of Edward Weston, I have started a Journal/Day book where I can write more freely, […]
Toning with Espresso
**Continuing experimentation with toning or in this case staining I decided to see what soaking an image in espresso would do. While I let one of my test prints pre-soak in about 75* water for 5 minutes, I ran a double shot portafilter full of freshly ground espresso through 4 cycles which gave me about […]
Testing LPD vs PF106 part II
**In a previous article, http://www.searing.photography/testing-lpd-vs-pf106/ I explored the differences of two paper developers on 3 different papers and found there was little difference in the tonality based on developer. There were differences in exposure time required to achieve max black and some differences in shadow detail but I can not attribute all of that to […]