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TODAY IS THE LAST DAY AND NIGHT AT Rist Camp. Here are a few pictures made over the last couple days - my total picture output, INSTAX print wise, is hovering around the 75 print number.
One highlight of our time at Rist was just yesterday. The wife and I had planned a walk in the woods at nearby nature center-miles of trails through a variety of lake, bog / marsh / forest habits-only to discover the trails were closed due to damage from a severe rain event. So instead, we headed off to the Adirondack Experience, formerly known as the Adirondack Museum - a campus-like layout of buildings that includes a very large Art exhibition facility.
After a recent renovation, the facility is not divided into four galleries - Light, Forest, Water, Mountains. Each gallery displays Adirondack inspired paintings-they have a magnificent collection of Hudson River School masters’work-photography (primarily old-timey era), and crafts (emphasis on rustic furnishings) that fall under the gallery theme.
In any event, there was one photo by the reigning dean of Adirondack photography-albeit that he hasn’t made of photograph in 20 years. The print-most likely made on his wide format epson printer (which I helped him set up)-was approximately 3’x4’. The photograph was very much to my liking inasmuch as he primarily made photographs of the “overlooked” natural world and, in the case of this print, just screamed to my eye and sensibilities that it was a film based photograph.
That written, I was never a fan of his prints; garish, ultra contrasty and unplesantly sharp-to my eye and sensibilities-Cibachrome prints made directly from his Ektachrome 8x10 transparencies. He was enamored of the Cibachrome process because of its extreme archival properties.
All of that written, the print in question had the look and feel of a traditional C print. That is, natural color and smooth tonal transitions - a “creamy”-different from “soft”-somewhat seductive representation of the natural world. A look and feel that, by not conveying ultra-fine, extremely-sharp micro detail and contrast, exhibits, to me, a vague hint of hidden mystery that really suits my eye and sensibilities. It is a look and feel I rarely experience with the viewing of ultra-everything - detail, resolution / sharpness, dynamic range, micro-contrast - super hi-res digital-capture prints.
To be certain, I am not pining for the good ol’ days of wet darkroom, film, and C prints. I am quite happy using less than state-of-the-art sensors together with a bit of post picture capture processing with which I can simulate a film-like quality that comes through to the eye on my prints.