I was in Seattle when corona broke out. My plan was to stay for a month, visit friends and family, and sell my condo. When I left Svalbard for Seattle there was merely a whisper of this new disease in China, and that people in Italy were ill. Two weeks later everything changed. Two weeks […]
Drift Ice: Loss and Change Read More »
Cyanotype can be delicate, at least cyanotypes printed on rag paper. Arches Platine is a wonderful paper — shockingly strong. But any paper that spends over a half hour being washed in a water bath is having a grueling experience. Sometimes, it shows. The photo sensitive coating is intended to soak into the paper fibers.
I never expected to become an alchemist. If anyone had told me that I would spend hours under a red light in a dark room mixing chemicals, I would not have believed them. And yet here I am, and it is magical. The first enchanted moment is coating paper. Once the chemicals are mixed they
The Unexpected Alchemist Read More »
A few weeks ago a friend told me an uncomfortable thing. She said (names changed) “Gabe isn’t taking pictures anymore. He told me there was no point. He’ll never be as good as you. He still wants to hang out with you and go hiking with you, he just doesn’t want to take photographs.” More
Most of the thinking work in creating a cyanotype lies in making a digital negative from an existing image. This… is not easy. Once you get past all the testing to determine your max blue which tells you the length of exposure time, to figure out what the proper curve is to deliver a correctly
The Digital Negative Read More »
Ultramarine. Cobalt. Indigo. Lapis. Sapphire. Navy. The list of names for blue is nearly endless. Across gender and ethnicity, blue is most people’s favorite color. My heart was captured by the blue fire of arctic ice – a color so intense, so strange, it was difficult for me to believe it was real. That is
How do you have a creative life? The good news is that there is no wrong answer. The bad news is it’s not easy. I believe that the single most important requirement to have any success in the arts, and by arts I mean anything that is a creative effort whether it’s writing or photography
Working the Creative Life Read More »
My time in Longyearbyen is a little more than half over, and a month now seems way too short a time to stay here. I should have opted for two months, but I did not. In two weeks I have watched the change from 24 hours of daylight to 13 hours of daylight – 11
Today, thanks to a question from a friend, I did the research to discover that I am in fact drinking glacial meltwater when I drink from the tap. That’s… amazing. Astonishing. It means ice for drinks – 10,000 year old glacial meltwater. When I wash my face, 10,000 year old glacial meltwater. When I flush
A Place of Greater Happiness Read More »
Months ago when I was accepted to these residencies and set up my initial travel plans I arranged to spend a full day in Oslo to do some sightseeing. Of course, I completely forgot about this, leading to a very tired me arguing with the check-in clerk that I wasn’t staying two nights, just one.
Eight Hours in Oslo Read More »