Death Valley, February 2020, part 1
First of all: God, I hope everyone is ok.
I've been wanting to send updates since this all started, but with my spouse (who has a real job), her nonstop work-from-home Zoom calls, and our energetic toddler, I've had my hands full. Also, the last thing I wanted to do was try to sell anyone anything. But now, six months on, I'd like to fill you in on what is going on with my BWMastery site, my software, as well as share a little of the work I've done in lockdown.
I spent the last several months of 2019 doing one-on-one printing workshops; working on a couple of new apps; and then preparing for what I thought would be a year of travel, photography, and creating new videos for a tutorial course and my YouTube channel.
That was before this year went all 2020 on us...
On a personal note, at the beginning of February, my father quickly lost a 2-year battle with cancer. That sucked, but we were all able to be with him at home in New Mexico, surrounded by family (if you emailed or messaged me and didn't hear back from me for a while in February and March, that is why. I'm sorry).
I already had a trip already planned to Death Valley for a few weeks later, at the end of February. I decided I should still go, having no idea at the time how bad Covid-19 was going to get throughout the world, and in the United States especially. It was also still before the beginning of lockdowns, and spending five days camping and photographing by myself in the desert was exactly what I needed at the moment.
I've been traveling to Death Valley since 2001, and it is one of my favorite places on the planet—but, like a lot of photographers, I photographed in the usual places: the dunes, Bad Water, Zabriskie Point, etc. Then in 2017, when photographing the Eastern Sierra, I took a short trip over to Death Valley and did a couple of the short canyon hikes. In editing the pictures from those canyons and watching this short film about canyoneering in Death Valley, I immediately became obsessed with the idea of exploring and photographing in all the varied canyons there.
Part of the appeal was to make large-scale inkjet and gold and platinum-toned albumen and collodion-chloride POP prints from pictures made in the canyons. These processes can hold much more detail than the platinum/palladium prints I usually make, so I decided to rent the Fuji 100MP medium format digital camera for the trip, as well as bring my 8x10-view camera. I'll address the camera stuff later, but I was able to get my albumen printing dialed in back in May, and the prints are just astounding. I've been wanting to print albumen since 2005, but was sidetracked into the old Centennial POP silver-chloride and platinum/palladium printing. Now, I'm starting to master making larger albumen prints that will really take advantage of the format.
This video below is from my first day, a test hike for making the videos while hiking and photographing, and getting used to the 100MP camera.
There are several more videos in the final editing stages, and the canyons get better and better. I'm excited to finally be able to bring you along with that part of my process and share more pictures I made that week.
Lastly, I started to set up a Patreon page at the end of last year as well, but, again, 2020...
I have been putting it off, but I finally made it public. As I said, the last thing I expect anyone to do right now is to give me money. But, if you have it, and if you like what I'm up to and want to provide some additional support, I would be eternally grateful.
