Struggle for Pleasure

I ran 13 miles in the first snow this afternoon. I did the usual South Farms/MBK route, passing the female sculpture, stopping to gaze, and smiling because I photographed it last week, making a small mark on how the world enters my eyes.

I got into the darkroom later in the day, working on the neg I highlighted last week in the blog - the tree and road at the railyard.

It is a flat neg, so I had to improvise and tried to darken the top of the sky. I usually do not manipulate a sky so that it alters the feel of the original scene, but I thought why not, let's see what I can make of it. I am becoming more of a painter with light and chemicals as time passes.

I made 3 prints, but the sky was not right in any of them. I am going to maybe work on it tomorrow if I think it is worth it. I will also tone the prints I made today. I want to see how the Foma warm tone paper reacts to sepia/gold when developed with Dektol rather than LD20.

Print Info Sheet for Tree & Road Study

If I was a composer, I'd give a year of my life to make a piece similar to this: