Breathing Light Issue #59

In this Issue

1. Taku Mahi Toi o Te wiki-My Image of the Week

2. Korero Timatanga-Frontispiece

3. Photographer's Corner-On finding your life map in your photographs.

4. Waiata mou te Ata-Poem for the day

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

6. Koorero Whakamutunga-Endpapers

My Image of the Week

Taku Mahi Toi O te Wiki

It is one thing to look at your work on a screen; it is quite another to view it as a finished print, something you can hold in your hand, an art object. Nevertheless, there is a joyous satisfaction in making a print, which is somehow more primal and visceral than a sound and light show.
The great artist Leonardo da Vinci once said:
“you never finish a work; you only ever abandon it.”
Whenever we create something, there comes a time when we need to let go of it. I suppose, in some ways, it's rather like having children. At some point, we have done all we can for them, and it's time to show them the door, detach ourselves from them and allow them to find their way in the world.
We can all tinker around the edges of our creation ad infinitum. The trick is knowing when to let go, to say:
“There, I've done my best. I can do no more.”
Printmaking is somewhat like that. We can tweak and fiddle, but sometimes we have got it so correct that to do anymore is to gild the lily.
A long time ago, I learned a valuable lesson in printmaking from the Great Man himself, Ansel Adams. A friend had bought a print made by Adams of backlit aspens in a forest glade. The print was so perfect that it didn't need a light shone upon it. Instead, it seemed to have an inner light that radiated out, making it glow.
Anyone who has ever spent time in the darkroom knows how difficult that is to achieve. How can one make a print that seems lit from within? It isn't easy to do. That aim, of course, became the gold standard for my printmaking.
And, in fifteen years, I only ever achieved it once.
Last year, while testing the then-to-be-released Fujifilm X-H2, I made a likeness of this macrocarpa hedge at the bottom of Southland. A glance at the LCD told me something special had jumped onto my memory card.

Post-production came incredibly quickly. A tweak here, a vignette there, and it was done. Somehow its complex purity seemed to say: there was nothing more to do. Leave me alone.
One of the best ways of sitting with a work we have made is to pin it on the wall, then sit with it for as long as is necessary, days, weeks or even months. If it still resonates for you at the end of this time, then you really have succeeded. But, of course, the opposite can happen. You fall out of love with it.
My friends make prints and then take them to the fridge and kitchen cupboards. That way, they can get to know them.
I took the finished print of the macrocarpas, a tree I've always admired for its durability and ability to grow in the harshest climates. I clipped it to the wall in my lounge, and so far, I have sat with it, wondering why I did so.
Then Sarah started the conversation.
“You know how you tell all your students that every picture they have made is a self-portrait??”

I sensed incoming artillery shells.

It is true. I've held that as a truism for many years. Every picture we make, have made or will ever make is a postcard we are writing to our Self. It's impossible to avoid it. Every time we pick up the camera, we give ourselves away. Our interests, beliefs and orientation all show themselves in the pictures we make. So if our photographs look like everybody else's, what does that say about us?

She went in for the kill.
“So tell me, Tony Bridge, which picture is your self-portrait?”

I mumbled something under my breath.

“I think it is that picture on the wall above you.”

I turned and looked over my shoulder.
Dear God. She was correct.
And what did that picture say about me?

“You know, Tony Bridge, you're a very complex person.
That is not how I see myself.
Perhaps, when I finally have it framed, I will entitle it:

As I were a Gallimaufry of Discordant synapses.

Hopefully, they will be too busy decoding the arty bollocks title to pass comment on the work itself.

Koorereo Timatanga

Frontispiece

Atamaarie e te whaanau:

Good morning everybody.
Or should I say good afternoon?

So let me begin with a welcome and an apology.
Firstly, a warm welcome to those joining us here at Breathing Light for the first time. It's lovely to have you on board. I hope you will find these issues of value to you and that they will perhaps breathe a little light into your world. I'm always striving to improve this offering, and you can help me if you wish. Please drop me a line if there is something that you would like to have included or something that isn't working for you. Brickbats and bouquets are both welcome.
The only way I can make this better is if you let me know.

Secondly, an apology. For many of you, Sunday morning’s Breathing Light has become a ritual or perhaps a part of your ritual. Two of you read it after your Sunday morning grocery shopping when you stop for coffee afterwards. I know another one of you saves it up for Monday morning after your trip to the gym (shudder!) and settles down with it before you get on with your busy work day. How joyous!
However, yesterday (Saturday) was a day when Mercury had gone retrograde (don't shoot the messenger!), and very little in my IT world was behaving itself. Finally, however, things appear to have settled, so my self-avowed aim to get this issue out each week, where possible, will take place, albeit a few hours later.

On the joy of printmaking

Someone asked me for a piece of my work for the first time in a long time. I always tend to be a little surprised when that happens. He is an art lover and collector, and it is always a joy to see my picture-making journey finding a home with somebody like that.
Curiously I have noticed that photographers rarely buy each other's work. I wonder what that says?

Anyway, after months of being ignored, my lovely printer grumbled, cursed, clattered, and generally threw its toys out of the cot at being asked to do something.

After cleaning itself more thoroughly than a cat and insisting I upgrade all the software and firmware, it was finally ready for business.

I will spend a little time in the Photographer's Corner this week discussing printing and some things you might want to look at. While making your own prints can be terrifying, it isn't all that hard.
And there is something to be said for holding a print, a work on paper, in your hand that projection onto a 100-inch flat screen will never beat.

Photographer's Corner

On the joy of light, ink and paper

in the days before digital photography, we could make and present our photography in one of two ways: by shooting transparency film and projecting slides onto a screen; or by making prints. We can do those ourselves in the darkroom or have them made for us by a commercial lab.
Shooting film involved a cost factor. Every time we pressed the shutter, we spent money. And, of course, every time we made prints, we also spent money.
Perhaps that is why so many of us who preferred to work in black-and-white quickly learned how to make prints in the darkroom. There was also the fact that we could make the print in a way that pleased us. At the end of the process, we would have a series of prints created by our own fair hands, which we could then frame or put in an album.

These days things have changed. And yet they haven't. They have remained the same. Once we have purchased our digital camera, the cost of making exposures is minimal.
Most competitions are online, and unless they charge an entry fee, there is no cost involved in submitting a digital entry.
However, if we have created an image that is truly meaningful for us, or we wish to have our own exhibition, then at some point, we will have to embrace making prints. We can get them made for us at the local chain store, or we can make them ourselves.
And, in doing so, we are following in the steps of the Masters, from previsualisation to realization. And then we truly have control of our picture-making from one end to the other.


Inkjet printers have come a long way since their early days. The best inkjet printers use pigment that theoretically can last years behind glass. Not that any of us will be here to argue the toss.

When you're looking for a printer, keep this piece of wisdom in mind:

There are good printers and cheap printers, but there are no good cheap printers. Avoid the all-in-one printers with built-in scanners and faxes (does anybody use faxes these days?) and the three-ink CMYK printers. Note that this type of printer is cheap to purchase and expensive to run. Just wait until you have to buy replacement inks. They are also not that light-fast and don't easily handle the range of papers available today.
A good printer will have at least eight pigment inks. It will be more expensive initially, but the inks will be more economical. The high ground seems to be held by either Epson or Canon. Both of them make great photographic printers.

When it comes to papers, the good/cheap rule applies as well. There are cheap papers and good papers, but no good cheap papers. Nowadays, an enormous range of papers is available, as well as some beautiful canvas media. It's worth buying one of those sample boxes containing a range of papers. Ensure your manufacturer offers colour profiles to suit your specific printer. Don't overlook offshore suppliers such as B&H in New York. Sometimes it is cheaper to buy from them, and that includes freight. Do your homework.

Printmaking is an art form in and of itself. There's a lot to learn and trial and error, and you will make mistakes along the way. There will also be intense frustration when the technology seems determined to defeat you.

Don't be deterred. There is something about a print you have made yourself, a glorious combination of light and realise paper which will make you understand that everyone can be an artist.

Whenever I make a print and look at it on my work table or the wall, it brings me great joy to see my work realized in a concrete form.

As it should for you.

Waiata Mou Te Ata-Poem For the Day

On life, death and ink

On life, death and ink

A burgeoning thought-swirl has been fermenting

in the inkwells of the liquid night,

pillowed by soft billowing moon reveries

and woven fine-spun mindskeins of stranded silver thought.

It floes staccato down,

past leaking, weeping wingtip fingers,

to emerge and flow from the balled tip

of a gravely engraved and finely-crafted

golden crucifixed nib.

Its liquid black dreamsong seeps forth

Onto mouth-upturned, unfilled thirsting parchment leaves of grass

And bleeds its life slowly away

drying and dyeing

in porous cotton capillaries

of fibre-enshrouded memory.

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

EndPapers

Koorero Whakamutunga

The winds of autumn

the weather has changed. A period of long still days seems to be over. Tautumn winds have returned, loping over the mountains to the west and running their fingers through the leaves on the trees, tormenting and taunting them and reminding them that it a time to let go.
Autumn is not at full strength ye.t However, the reminders of its presence are subtle; a yellow leaf here, a desiccating branch there, and a dramatic slowdown in the growth rate of my vegetables.
The hills are frequently shrouded in soft mantles of westerly rain and pools of wandering light. This will continue for the next month or two until winter has firmly embedded its frozen fingers and the land, and then the still cold of frozen-faced winter days will be with us again.

As always, walk gently upon our Mother and be kind to each other.
He mihi arohaa nunui ki a koutou katoa

Much love to you all,

Tony.