Nocturne
This series of images is called Nocturne, a title suggesting a number of movements – from night to day to night. The animals seem playful in the day and cautious at night. They trigger the images themselves on a trail camera, unknowingly, although they sometimes seem aware of its presence. These images combine analogue and digital photography to portray English wildlife in a Wiltshire wood.
People have asked how these images are produced. Firstly I positioned the trail camera in a remote local plantation and normally left it for a week. The digital images were triggered by movement and at night illuminated by infrared light. Over the course of a year I had about 5000 images to review to get to the final edit. From the digital files, I made a 10” x 8” negative which was sandwiched with fine art paper and exposed to UV light to create a unique print. The blue daylight images are cyanotypes and made from coating the paper with a light sensitive solution which gives images in Prussian blue, the same as found in ‘blueprints’. The brown night-time images are argyrotypes, an iron-based silver process. Both have their roots in very early photographic processes invented in Victorian times, although the chemistry has been improved in the last few decades. It’s been nice to get back into the darkroom, even though to reach final prints means grappling with many variables – the density of the negative, the method of coating the paper, the paper itself, the exposure time, and the chemistry. The images here are high resolution scans of the handmade prints. These were exhibited at Marborough Open Studios in July 2023.
