I have just had 5 ~ 35mm negs printed by someone who is probably one of the worlds best hand print (silver nitrate) artisans; Dennis Da Silva. 45 years in the dark room. It has taken 3 years of experimentation and hesitation for me to have the courage to present some of my work to him. I suppose you could compare this to preparing a visit to the Delai Lama and your philosophy is still “unconcerned, but thinking about it”. Pending.
When I captured the images of water moving through Lions River in the Natal Midlands I had a sort of funny feeling. Electric, emotional and palpitations over-ridden by my energy to just make more and more images whilst the light was good. When the negatives came from the lab and looked at some of them on the soft-box – the same feelings came back.
But when the final prints ~ 16″x 20″ came out of Dennis’s dark room, I nearly fainted, so strong was the electricity. Hydro-electricity.
Water.
Water;
The existence of a well defined spot on each of my series of many photographs, where a certain spot or a particular very very small area is actually sharp and in focus, will continue to perturb my senses.
These images are essentially taken with quite slow shutter speeds. I would expect that the overall result would be a picture of moving spots.
Some how, a poignant or central element of each image manages to separate itself from the general “flou” of movement. It seems to be unilaterally frozen. I cannot explain this except from perhaps some hesitation in the circular force field of every wave action, having perhaps some kind of “point of hesitation”. That area of hesitating molecules of water become the punctum of the image.
Or am I dreaming?
Also fine.