James Mott Photography

I have been working this past week on transferring some of the things I have learned to printing on a new substrate: canvas. These may eventually show up on some clothing if things go well.
This is a lightweight canvas that I am printing on here. It holds up very well to the cyanotype process. I am finding that some images that didn’t work as cyanotype prints on traditional papers, seem to be much more pleasing on the canvas. This is one of my most popular images, taking on a whole different mood when printed this way.

My uncle’s 70th birthday was this past weekend and I travelled to Dayton to share the special day with him. More than a hundred of his friends were on hand to celebrate with him, and his neighbors Ruth and Harry were kind enough to open up their home for the event. Their home is quite a spectacular place, having been created from a turn of the century church in the St. Anne’s Hill historic district. It was grey and flurrying this morning, but I managed to capture a few shots of the church that I liked. This is my favorite of the bunch.

I was visiting my uncle in Dayton this past weekend and had a free hour to walk around the lovely historic district where he lives. Most of the homes in the district have been restored, but there are still a few that have that “well used” look. I’d like to spend much more time exploring this neighborhood, especially when the light is better than it was this morning.

This is my latest effort with the Van Dyke brown printing process. It is Van Dyke over pigment and is accomplished by coating and contact printing the Van Dyke over colors laid down by my Epson printer. I chose a very challenging subject for this first print. Not only was I working with two negatives at the same time, but by choosing to add colors to the sign lettering, I had to insure perfect registration between the negatives and the pigment coloring underneath.

I am grateful that I had the opportunity to make many photographs of these wonderful structures while they sat in this field on Route 9 near Georgetown, Delaware. They began their life in downtown Rehoboth Beach as small rental cottages before being sold at auction in the name of “development”. They spent about 2 years in this field before being purchased by someone else who has since resold many of them individually. I know of at two that have been restored back to living condition and I can only hope that the other three will also find good homes with loving owners.

I made photographs of these structures in every season while they stood here. This image was made in the fall, when the trees had nice color (which gives them a variegated look in black and white) and the foreground was full of soybeans that were dried and ready to be harvested.

This is my most recent effort in the Van Dyke process and is one of my best alt process prints to date. I don’t think the scan does it justice. The actual image is 4″x9″ on Arches Platine paper. It will be toned in selenium to improve archival qualities which will also alter the tone and color a little bit.

I’ve been working pretty regularly on this process for the last few weeks. For those who aren’t familiar with Van Dyke brownprints, they are produced by hand coating paper (I’m currently working with a nice hot-pressed cotton rag paper called Arches Platine) with an sensitized solution of iron salts. The paper is then contact printed with a negative under UV light. The sun was the earliest source of this light, but I am using a bank of UV florescent bulbs, lent to me by a friend. This produces a very warm toned image on a heavy matte finish paper. The finished print has a wonderful rich quality about it.

Another alternative printing process I have been experimenting with is cyanotype. This is one of the oldest photographic printing processes, and remains virtually unchanged from it’s invention by Sir John Herschel in 1842. The Prussian Blue color of the cyanotype doesn’t work for a lot of images, and I had to search hard to find photographs from my library which would be appropriate. This is one of my early attempts at contact printing and I think that it’s mildly successful. Since making this print, I have been concentrating most of my effort on perfecting the Van Dyke process because I feel it offers more potential across a wider range of image types. However, I have no doubt that I will soon return to the cyanotype process once I have fine tuned my technique.

Also, take note of the really poor coating technique on this print. The coating is almost as important to the aesthetics of the finished print as the image itself. Contrast this with the coating of of the Van Dyke print I shared a few days ago. There is about two weeks worth of learning separating these two prints.

I try to get out to shoot the full moon whenever the weather cooperates. I had been shooting at another location from sunset through most of dusk and was heading home when I saw the full moon hanging over the beautiful little church on Indian Mission Rd. I pulled over into the field acroos the way and continued to shoot for another 15 minutes or so. I know it’s derivative, but I like it nonetheless.

Back in October, Eydie and I visited Virginia and North Carolina to spend a week traveling the length of Skyline Drive and the Blue Ridge Parkway. We ran the gamut of weather from sunny skies to fog to torrential rain (remember that nor’easter that hit the coast? It hit us first). All in all, it was a great trip.
Eydie is a great assistant, helping to carry gear and holding an umbrella over me and the camera so as not to waste a good photo opportunity. In fact, some of my best photographs were made in the fog and drizzle.
Here is a small gallery of select images from that trip.

Here is a small gallery of photos from a couple of nice mornings. Mostly to test out posting galleries to my new blog.