Peters Valley

Curves

This was my 15th workshop at Peters Valley, and my third with Ernestine Ruben. Peters Valley never ceases to be a relaxing, fun place to spend a weekend. OK, the dorms are "funky", but the area is fabulous and the workshops have always been fantastic. And the food this year was better than ever.

Ernie is amazing - while her style is dramatically different from mine, she is still inspiring. I enjoy her workshops tremendously, and she is such a nice person with whom to spend a weekend. Of all the workshops I have attended, Ernie is the only instructor who takes the time to work individually with each student, meeting with us each day to review what we have done and give assignments for the next day. I saw her working in that fashion with adults (one of whom was 83 years old), and I also saw her working with a child about 5 years old - she is a natural teacher.

I took both the 35mm equipment and the LF gear. Naturally, the workshop itself was all 35mm - and many people were doing digital in addition to the film required for the class feedback. I shot 20 rolls of 35mm, four of which were processed and proofed at PV, and I processed an additional 8 rolls today. I'm looking forward to printing some of those negatives.

I did the LF work early in the morning by available darkness - exposures were extremely long. It is going to be interesting to see what kind of results I got. One challenge is that because I was photographing so early in the morning, the light was changing rapidly, and in several instances I tried to "guess" a compensation in the exposure for the fact that there was more light available half way through the exposure than there was when I metered before opening the shutter. I have a total of 8 sheets that I need to process sometime this week.

Met Ernie Riggi for coffee this morning. Jim took Cindy to Quebec City for a delayed aniversary weekend, and Jan took Eva to New Mexico. Mel was still dealing with his chimney problem. Had a nice chat with Robert Moriano - this will be the last time we will see him until Christmas since he has to be back in Connecticut when school starts later this week.

This image is a negative scan from the New Visions in Photography workshop. Joan, Joel and I were working with Daria in Greek. I had Daria lie on a table in the front room with the light coming through windows behind her and also on the left side. I know I want to print this on warm tone paper, but I haven't decided about toning. Perhaps a split tone is what is called for in this case.