In this issue

1. My image of the week

2. Frontispiece

3. On the joy of making prints

4. Ilford Washi Echizen 110gsm inkjet paper-a review

5. Fevered Mind Links (to make your Sunday morning coffee go cold)

6. Endpapers

My image of the week

― Nikola Tesla

See Print of the week (below)

Frontispiece

From the poem 'The Unseen World."

― Munia Khan

Kia ora e te whaanau:

Issues. Issues. Damned email issues.

Arohamai. My apologies. Here I go. Apologising again…

For the last week and 1/2, I have been involved in a long-running discussion with tech support from Microsoft to try and fix some significant email issues. At the moment, anyone sending an email to me using this email address, [email protected], will be getting bounceback messages. We are trying to get it to connect to the Microsoft Exchange server, but we haven't had any luck so far. It's a three-way ménage à trois between me, Microsoft and BaseZap, my hosting company in India.

A few days ago, we managed to get one email address up and running. Unfortunately, the above email address has yet to start working again. Hopefully, regular service will resume in the next few days.

In the meantime, if you need to make contact via email, please use the following email address:

[email protected]

In this issue

This issue will probably be taking a mainly photographic direction. And I'm adjusting it (yet again) to try and create something of value for you all.

I guess newsletters are somewhat like children; when they are young, they are finding out everything they can about the world around them, exploring, experimenting, falling over, and then getting up again.

How many of you remember the challenge of learning to ride a bicycle? I know I do. However, it wasn't long before I attempted to kill myself by going too fast or through an inflated idea of my abilities.

Come to think of it; it was something like that when I learned to drive a car. At first, I was terrified, trying to put all those decisions together in the correct order and at precisely the right time. And again, come to think of it, it was a wonder I made it through the first year or two.

I imagine it was like that for many of you.

This week I am introducing a section called Print of the Week.

Occasionally, I find an image in my archive that I love so much that I want to share it, and I'm keen to see it hanging on as many walls as possible.

So here is what I'm going to do.

I will offer it to you at a pretty bargain basement price for one week only and in a strictly limited number. Five copies only, handprinted by me and sent to you, shipping included, anywhere in Aotearoa. A little bit more if you are offshore.

And, this week, I want to tell you about a printing paper that has got me terribly excited.

More about that below.

On the joy of making prints

— Henry Ward Beecher

Several years ago, I called in to see a fellow artist, Doc Ross, at his studio in Christchurch. Doc is a wonderful artist and a man of firmly-held convictions. Conversations with him are always valuable, if at times challenging.

As we sat there, he asked me a question over our coffee.

"Tell me," he asked, "how many pictures do you have?"

"Oh, I don't know," I replied, "maybe 300,000?"

He repeated the question.

I repeated my answer.

"No," he responded, "I mean, if I asked, how many pictures could you lay your hands on right now?"

"Well, none. They are all on my computer."

He smiled in satisfaction. Game over.

Then I got it.

He was right.

I only had virtual pictures on my computer, electronic ideas without tangible form. They were ideas waiting to be brought into reality in the form of ink on paper. It was not until I had made a print that they became concrete, something of substance.

Something to be held in one's hand and valued as a thing.

When I thought about it, I realised there are many components to art-making practice. There is the idea, the capture, the postproduction, and finally, the process of giving that initial previsualisation form. Making a print.

Digital photography is relatively easy, and most picture-making skills can be learned in a relatively short space of time. However, printmaking is a whole craft and art in and of itself. Making a fine print is much more than just pushing the print button.

I'm going to step out on a limb here and say this:

if you're not making prints, then you're leaving the job three quarters done.

In the fifteen years that I spent mastering the arcane world of making prints in a darkroom, one of the great joys was watching the image emerge from the emulsion and coalesce into something with meaning.

Making prints with a fine inkjet is no different. As the ink heads slither backwards and forwards across the surface of the paper, bit by bit, a picture emerges from the depths of the machine and smiles up at the light.

If you get it right, that is.

And often, you don't.

There is an awful lot to learn about making prints, and most of it comes down to getting your printer and computer to agree to see things the same way.

However, when that picture has dried, been framed, and is hanging on your wall or in a gallery, there is a sense of satisfaction and joy well beyond staring at it on a screen.

You have taken your vision and made something. You have been a part of every step of the process from concept to completion.

Every time you walk past that picture, you will know the steps it took to bring it out of the darkness of the idea realm to the light of the real world.

And it was all your work.

Something to be proud of, indeed.

And if you surround yourself with your own work, hanging it on the walls in your home, then you are surrounding yourself with your own vision, with your own soul.

Ilford Washi Echizen 110gsm inkjet paper-a review

― Saint Francis of Assisi

-Ansel Adams

Printing, the oft-forgotten/ignored chapter of photography, provides one of the great ways of engaging with our art and craft. You see, becomes part of the wonderful process and, while at times frustrating, has the opportunity to give you a sense of concrete achievement.

As well as learning to print, there is a wonderful tactile joy in selecting your papers and choosing papers that resonate with what you're trying to achieve. There is a paper for just about any type of photography you can think of, from photographing the shiny metallic thrill of motorsport to the soft, diaphanous wonder of flower photography. As you move deeper and deeper into the arcane world of printing, you make friends along the way. And we all need friends for our journey. Over time we find papers that resonate with the way we work and the expression we are seeking to bring forth. We gather a group of friends, and as we get to know them, they get to know us and work with the statements we are trying to make.

Ilford has been around a very very long time. Those of us who came up through film/chemical photography will remember this company as one of the pillars of our craft. Names like FP4, ID-11 and Galerie will be familiar.

Ilford has been making wonderful papers since the early days of inkjet printing, and continually expanding their range of media for this particular printmaking process. And inkjet printing is just that-a printmaking process, like lithography or stone printing. It's just that we use pigment inks and a machine to give our work concrete form.

Over time and following a lot of testing, I have found a small stable of papers that really work for what I am trying to create at the time.

A few years ago, I heard about Japanese Washi paper and ordered a sample pack from Japan. It was unlike anything I've ever worked with before, but the difficulties of obtaining a suitable and consistent supply meant that I never explored this paper type further.

Most fine art printing papers are either made from paper (as you might expect) or cotton fibre. However, the Japanese, who do tradition like nobody else, have been making paper for over 1500 years. Think about that for a moment-before Europeans really began to manufacture paper seriously.

Washi paper sets itself apart by virtue of the materials used to create it, and the particular feel it brings to the print you make. And the tactile and sensual nature of the paper gives it a particular feeling of history and connection to very old ways of thinking, doing and being.

Who would have thought making inkjet prints could be such a mystical experience?

Recently C R Kennedy, the Australian owner of Ilford, sent me down a couple of trial boxes of Tesuki Echizen 110gsm to try and then report on. Working with a new paper is always a bit experimental in the beginning but, when I reached out to their technical support, they supplied me with the appropriate profiles to make sure that my monitor, computer and printer all spoke the same language. The profiles are very accurate, so there's very little, if any, tweaking to be done to get them to behave.

For those of you who are interested, I do all my work with a Canon ImagePrograf Pro-1000 A2 printer. For the last fifteen years, all my printers have been Canon and one of the reasons why continue to use them is the Print Studio Pro Photoshop plug-in, which makes it easy to get an accurate print the first time. And it helps that the printer uses twelve separate pigment inks, which assist in providing a wondrous subtlety of separation in hues and tones.

Tesuki Echizen 110gsm is made from a combination of 40% mulberry fibres and 60% hemp. This gives it a unique fibrous texture, and the light weight means that it has a unique translucency when held up to the light. It also feels wonderful in the hand, and somehow precious. This is a paper to be treasured, honoured and used for your very best work. You definitely aren't going to use this paper to print iPhone snaps of your summer holiday at the beach.

Early in the process of making the body of work around the life-cycle and energy of plants and flowers, I was looking for a suitable paper to express what I was seeing and feeling. My feeling was washi.

Tesuki Echizen meets that intention.

My initial observations, which are empiric rather than scientific, are that it is particularly good with greens and blues, allowing the subtleties of tonalities and hues to come forward. Reds are a little more subdued than I would like, and that is a function of the paper itself, which tends towards something slower and more considered, than the immediacy of chemically-synthesised modern reds.

Because it is handmade rather than machine-made, the paper is extremely expensive ($NZ 265 for ten sheets of A3+ paper). Helpfully, Ilford includes a five-pack of 100 x 150 mm sheets to help you get your calibration right before you commit to a final print. And what is even nicer is that the A3+ sheets are deckle-edged, which just serves to give the sense of having made a piece of art.

I can see prints from this paper float-mounted in a deep box frame, so the work floats in space. Did I mention that framing is an art in itself?

Who is it for?

Anyone seeking to make something that is expressive in a timeless oriental way, rather than merely documenting a moment in time. It does black-and-white beautifully, and I can imagine impressionist photographers going for it.

Recommended. Highly recommended.

For those of you interested, here is a little bit more information supplied by Ilford themselves.

The Washi Story

The traditional craft of hand-making paper, or Washi, is practised for over 1000 thousand years in Japan. The paper is typically made of fibres of “Kozo”, “Mitsumata” and “Gampi” plants and used for letter writing and books, but also to make paper screens, room dividers and sliding doors. The craftsmanship is handed over from generation to generation - families and their employees work under masters who have inherited the techniques from their parents.

The communities play important roles in keeping this craftsmanship viable, ranging from the cultivation of the “Kozo” “Mitsumata and “Gampi” plants up to training the techniques of making the Washi paper.

The plants are grown on farms, so the bushes cut for the Washi paper productions are continuously replaced.

The handmade Washi paper has a unique characteristic that cannot be reproduced by machines. Each Washi master has their own way of creating that unique type of Washi paper which is passed on from generation to generation. Washi is only produced in sheets with long fibres entangled and bonded together.

The light which shines through the gaps - which one can only be seen by looking through a microscope - gives the Washi paper its unique soft glow. As air comes and goes through these gaps, you can feel the outside season when the washi paper is used as walls or sliding doors in Japanese houses.

Washi paper is tough and has a very, very long life. There are still papers in existence that have been handcrafted a thousand years ago. Its long-entangled fibres make the paper very durable even though

it looks and feels so light. Washi paper can be repeatedly folded without paper cracking due to its long fibre structure.

The way the Washi paper is produced gives it its long-lasting durability and quality. Produced with almost zero chemicals, it is also acid and Lignin free.

Washi paper is nominated as United Nations “Intangible Heritage”. Intangible cultural heritage includes traditions or living expressions inherited from ancestors and passed on to our descendants, such as oral traditions, performing arts, social practices, rituals, arts, festive events, knowledge and practices concerning nature and the universe or the knowledge and skills to produce traditional crafts.

Fevered Mind Links (to make your Sunday morning coffee go cold)

The Science of How Alive You Really Are: Alan Turing, Trees, and the Wonder of Life — getpocket.com

“The more a creature’s life is worth, the less of it is alive.”

Withering Winter — matsuobashohaiku.home.blog

It is bitter cold, one can see nothing but white, and hear nothing but the sound of wind. One could imagine Antarctica in the winter, or a Siberian scene in Dr. Zhivago. For me it was a “white-out” in eastern Colorado, early January of 2020.

Over the Rooftops, Under the Moon: A Lyrical Illustrated Meditation on Loneliness, Otherness, and the Joy of Finding One’s Community — www.brainpickings.org

Olivia Laing wrote in her lyrical exploration of loneliness and the search for belonging.

30-Minute White Chicken Chili Recipe: Easy Chicken Chili Recipe Tastes Like It Simmered All Day by Donna John — 30seconds.com

No simmering all day here with this delicious chilli recipe. This quick white chicken chilli recipe is ready in about 30 minutes. Perfect for a fast dinner or lunch. Take 30 seconds and join the 30Seconds community and follow us on Facebook to get recipes in your newsfeed daily.

The Revenge of the Hot Water Bottle — www.lowtechmagazine.com

Imagine a personal heating system that works indoors as well as outdoors, can be taken anywhere, requires little energy, and is independent of any infrastructure. It exists – and is hundreds of years old.

The high-altitude quest to save alpacas

Cárdenas said the changing climate may not prompt such a mass die-off, but one immediate consequence could be a change in the animals’ coats, making the fleece less valuable. Two varieties of alpaca exist: huacaya, which is short-haired, and suri, which has long hair.

BBC David Hockney's Secret Knowledge [HD + AI Upscaled] — www.youtube.com

David Hockney became gripped by a desire to find out how the artists of the past had managed to depict the world around them so accurately and vividly.

For two years, he sacrificed his own time as an artist to follow this mystery trail, obsessively tracking down the hidden secrets of the Old Masters

‘There’s no room for error’: The humble tugboat’s crucial role in easing a global crisis — www.latimes.com

The sea is calm tonight. The breeze is light. An easy swell rolls beneath the Delta Teresa, a tugboat idling at the entrance to Long Beach Harbor. In the darkness where sky and water meet, nearly three dozen tankers and container ships ride at anchor. Lights outline their skeletal shapes.

Print of the Week

― Nikola Tesla

On a day when the weather was not playing nice, we had flown out to the farthest reaches of Fiordland to photograph the distant fjords at the bottom of the country. We ducked in and out of wandering herds of cloud cows, and were on our way home, looking to get back over the Main Divide before the weather closed in and made returning difficult.

We ducked around the corner of the mountains into Doubtful Sound, and as we did, I looked back over my shoulder towards Uenuku/Secretary Island. The light seemed to shimmer and play with the water in the dark shoulders of the mountains, the whole scene vibrated to its own energy.

If this scene resonates with you, please consider securing your own copy.

Five only prints. A2. Printed signed and shipped to anywhere in Aotearoa.

Normally $600, $400 for this week only.

Oh, and there is a secret bonus for the next six people who order. Ring, message or email me ([email protected])

EndPapers

—Saint Francis de Sales

At the moment, there seemed to be more rabbit holes for us to stumble into than a Central Otago paddock.

And I should know. I spent a small amount of time working as a rabbiter in Central Otago. Until my boss fired me because I wasn't "shooting enough of the bastards."

Night after night, I would head out on my quad bike into the darkness, with a single mission (my boss's): if it isn't a sheep, then shoot it- rabbits, hares, feral cats (especially feral cats), opossums. Those animals were introduced to a land that once had only two mammal species- the pekapeka (native bats) and the kiore (a native rat). It's a sobering thought when we look around ourselves that our beautiful land was one giant bird sanctuary once upon a time.

Alas, no more.

As I wandered the hillsides under the moonlight, I often wondered what it looked like in the Times Before. Just plants and fabulous birdlife. No doubt I would have wondered at the slow-moving herds of moa, grazing the hillsides in their unique way.

Every morning I begin my ritual around 4 am. First, I will step out from under my balcony and stand, with my feet rooted into Papatuuaanuku, my Mother, the Earth. Then, as often as not, I look up at the Great Serpent meandering slowly in the heavens and orient myself to Orion.

Then I will settle into myself and align myself with the rhythm of the wind moving softly through the tips of the trees, gently and lovingly stroking the leaves as it has always done.

After that, there is karakia to set my soul for the day, and, following that, I will have a glass of water to make myself noa and begin my day.

There is a lot to be said for having our unique morning rituals, rather than tearing ourselves abruptly from the arms of Morpheus and staggering into the day, hoping that we will avoid those rabbit holes.

Do you have your unique ritual to align your heart, mind and soul?

And if not, why not?

As the Dalai Lama puts it:

"Do not let the behaviour of others destroy your inner peace."

Ka mihi nunui arohaa ki a koutou

Much love to you all