Avebury

Story Photography

Story Photography Dead Reckoning by Al

Sheila's Splendid Photographic Studies

 At the start of 2023, I have arranged to put on an Exhibition to display a few of Sheila's prints. They will be in Gallery 4 Salisbury Library.

The show is in three sections 

1. her Fellowship panel 
2. her Associateship panel
3. and the rest - a variety of prints spanning a whole range of genres and techniques.

Below I put here some poor versions of her work.

Her Fellowship images. These were made in the Darkroom on Kentmere Document Art paper. 
The requirement for entry was 20 print panels. Sheila made 21 panels and some had 3 images. To produce them Sheila placed a piece of Doc Art Paper on the enlarger easel. Then with the negative focussed in the enlarger, she carefully balanced two L-shaped pieces of card around the image to vignette the result. Over the printing paper, she placed a used sheet of Bounce, used when Tumble drying, and tracing paper to diffuse the result. When exposing she only used half the time needed. Then removing the Diffusers to continue the exposure.

The print was then placed in standard developer, then in a stop bath and the normal fixer. It was washed thoroughly for the next stage. This was the Toning stage. The prints were immersed in a tray of Selenium toner, washed and transferred to a tray of a ferricyanide bleaching solution. The bleaching had to be carefully timed to expose the Selenium oxide layer beneath. This layer has a lovely reddish colour unique to this method. Getting them evenly toned was very tricky and it caused some headaches.

Her Associateship pictures below

Here are the other studies

I hope this page was enjoyable especially if you were unable to see the Exhibition for real. None of the images shown here is correct for colour or feel. Prints have qualities, unlike projected images. They are tangible and have textures you can feel.