I have been working for the past several weeks on a new batch of salted-paper prints. The last batch of salt prints I made was back in early January, almost five months ago. I did not want my skills to get any rustier.
All of the exposures, except for the last one, were made more than ten years ago. I went though my Lightroom catalog looking for a set of images that would look good as salted-paper prints and might go together. I ended up with the first four images… all animal portraits.
The exposure of the ram was made one October day while doing the annual “Wool Arts Tour” , a local Columbus Day weekend of “woolly things”.
I photographed the cow at Stonewall Farm, a educational farm in Keene.
Harley (the bull dog) is (was?) a stable dog in charge of a group of Clydesdales at a farm in southeastern Massachusetts. When the stableman (with a strong Massachusetts accent) introduced me to Harley, I miss-heard his name as Holly. When Harley turned around to wander away I was, for a short while, very confused since “Holly” was clearly not a girl!
The photo of the snapping turtle was taken in our yard in Bridgewater or, more precisely in one of Joan’s flower beds. Every spring the female snappers would make their way up from the river at the edge of our property and, much to Joan’s consternation, proceed to lay eggs in the nice warm, loose soil of the well-prepared beds.
In perusing the archives, I also came across one of my favorite images made on a trip to the Pacific Northwest. If only I had an inkling of which beach this was… All I know is that it was somewhere on the ocean side of the Olympic Peninsula.
The exposure for final image in this post was made back in December of last year. I had prepared a negative for when I last made salt prints (back in early January) but somehow I did not get it printed. Its time arrived for this batch!
Harley came out well. The tonality in the ram loses some of its features. That could be Second Beach along the Pacific Coast. glad to see your talents are not rusting away. . .