One of the most intriguing aspects to analog photography is the ability to engage with an incredibly wide array of materials, techniques. and processes. The number of pathways to a print is innumerable, and limited only by time, desire to experiment and learn, and to some extent, money… (some of these processes are darned expensive!)

For a while I experimented with contact printing large format sheets on to watercolour paper coated with various light sensitive emulsions, in this case palladium. The emulsion is mixed and brushed onto the paper, then exposed to UV light and developed/fixed in its own unique sets of chemicals.

Platinum/palladium printing (pt/pd), gives beautiful prints with a very unique look and feel — if you are lucky enough to get a print at all. I found the process too finicky, too hard to make consistent, to stick with it. That’s why I call the alt processes the ‘dark arts.’ There is a great deal of mystery and luck it seems in between the negative and a final print.

Despite that, I’m glad I tried it all out, and I have several prints I’m happy with, including this one from the grasslands beneath my house. Shot on 8x10 film on an old century old wooden camera…