Trip to Lake Superior - an antagonizing experience

The week of February 20th two friends and I went to Lake Superior on a dedicated photography trip. Two days away from the rat race!
The drive from my house to the destination is about 4.5 hours, and we started already at 2.30am to reach the beach by sunrise.

The antagonizing part is that I have 19 rolls of 120 and 1 roll of 135 with material, and not time to get into the darkroom and print any of it! But in due time some of these negatives will see the light of the enlarger and be transfered to baryta. Just not now.

By 6.35am we reached the beach at Stony Point, just South of Two Harbors. The moon and the sun were rising together, and the first glimpse of light was nothing short of exquisite, and I caught this scene.

This is the only roll from that morning that I've processed yet. After a couple of hours in the cold we decided to move on up the shore and landed at both Black Beach in Silver Bay, Temperance River State Park, and Tettegouche State Park before the day was over. Below is a pinhole frame from Black Beach that I'm happy with, along with a regular shot with the 80mm lens on my 6x6 camera; just to compare perspective. Pinhole is fun, and really trims photography down to the bare essentials!

Next morning we rose early again, and went back to Black Beach in Silver Bay to watch the sunrise, and it was a blessed time. A beautiful morning indeed. So little time, so much film...

We ended our photography endeavor back at Stony Point again. It was full sun by this time, but we found some really nice ice heaves that had drifted ashore there. We were also there coincidentally with another gang of photographers from the Twin Cities, all digi-shooters, of course... My Hasselblad decided to bail out on me at this time, but that gave me an opportunity to shoot pinhole and 35mm, so no loss for me.

As I continue to find more interesting material from the film I shot, I'll continue to report back here.

Please also check out http://www.monolight.us for some new advancements on my new web site.

I'll end with a frame from the harbor inlet in Two Harbors.

Thank you for visiting!

- Thomas

Starting in figure work

There is a lot to be said for those that excel in figure work. Personally it's something I'm very curious about, and I have tried a little bit of it. The difficulty lies in making an expression, and at the same time only have light to work with. No props, no clothes to make a statement with, just light.

My aim is to achieve a pictorial quality with this endeavor, where I believe less detail information emphasizes form and light. Lith printing is perfect for this, as the ability to control contrast is superior to most other analog printing methods. Below is an example of the quality I'm trying to achieve.


I will be spending a lot of time to create a portfolio for this. Unfortunately lith prints don't scan well, particularly if they're toned like this. The print has to be viewed in person to be fully appreciated.

So a new adventure looms around the corner. I hope to document my improvements here along the way.

Thanks for stopping by.

- Thomas

Welcome to monolight!

As the completion of my web site is something that looks to be an adventure in patience (which is a good exercise for me) I thought I could start this blog in the meantime to get some of my thoughts out to you right away.

monolight - a place where I wish for photographers that are passionate about darkroom printing to collaborate and promote our methods and results to the world. That's right, traditional black & white photography, with a twist.



I hope to revisit this blog and update on web site and business development, to share my vision with you.

Thanks for visiting,

- Thomas