Thomas Point Shoals Lighthouse

I won’t tell you what my eight works fetched this afternoon, or where or for whom apart from their fetching for a worthy cause.

I will tell you that signed single prints of each, six at 13×19 inches and two at 11×17 inches, went home with a buyer. 

“White Spring,” intended as a decor print and “The Road to Roulette Farm”, intended for institutional acquisition, were part of completed limited edition print runs. 

“Cold Fence”, on the other hand, represented a one-off print of a series of five prints (existing) — same “capture” but each tonally manipulated — while “Thomas Point Shoals Lighthouse” and others came off very short runs, the lighthouse in particular as it was printed on Pictorico White Film (the printing monster was HP’s near lethal B9180 — truly, I feel daring using it in the presence of uncertain high blood pressure — loaded with the archival Vivera inks) and I’m not so hot to invest in another stack of sheets.  Still, the few prints of the lighthouse on the Pictorico are as gorgeous as the image.

"Untitled", Winter Scene, Longmeadow Road, Hagerstown, Maryland, 2008.

Bloody Lane, Antietam National Battlefield Park, Sharpsburg, Maryland.

“Bloody Lane”: Intended as 1 of 20, the B9180 came down with the bangs and shakes when fed additional sheets of heavyweight Hahnemuhle Photo Rag Pearl, so today’s buyer has taken home a truly unique print: 1 of 1. 

In thinking it over, that 1/1 will always be unique, for I may not get it together to invest in another printer (so I can feed it the fattest Hahnemuhle rag for as long as funding permits) or choose to start over with a less substantial sheet and some other finish) and resume the project (the Antietam National Battlefield Set consists of a dozen similarly toned images, and while unsigned prints are available through my account at Fine Art America – at least they are there this March 2012 — I’ve priced around $1,000 per print with a cut-off at a dozen sales each).

The Road to Roulette Farm, Antietam National Battlefield Park, Sharpsburg, Maryland.

“The Road to Roulette Farm”: I thnk there are 16 more prints, each tweaked, to move along to buyers (numbers 1 and 2 being reserved as “estate prints” — may the lot grow in value before I kick off)!

“Patuxent River Trout Fisher”: This too has been let to live online at Fine Art America.  The web “print” only hints at the detail available in a large realspace print, for in the enlarged file, one may see the fishing line!

White Spring, Longmeadow Road, Hagerstown, Maryland.

“White Spring”: The run made it before the HP B9180 decided it was done with the Hahnemuhle.  Probably, I should set it up on Pictorico although I’ve become fond lately of Ilford’s Gold Fibre Silk.  All this gets silly: is the paper the art?  Is the image the art?  What if it were printed on metal?  That can be done these days.

Cold Fence, Hagerstown, Maryland

“Cold Fence”: I already miss this delicious gray-on-white print.  There are a few more of the fence around (bids are welcome), and, of course, they’re all fine, but this one’s got a hint of two-tone wood cut vibe going for it.  And it’s gone.

The prints were left loose on foam core boards inside plastic slips with descriptive sheets on the reverse.  It was the first time I’ve seen a loose collection of mine “binned” for sale and looked over by strangers.  The auction was silent, so the bid-up minimized by each buyer moving on to mull, schmooz, nibble, and sip, altogether a pleasant set of behaviors and psychologically much, much different from head-to-head live competition for a valued unique item.

The experience has left me with a couple of questions, the first being whether to replace the notorious HP B9180 with an Epson, or nurse it along (that’s going to take a lot of coffee!), and the second being whether to put more effort and cash into limited edition printing and marketing.

The early web ethos relating to all being free seems belied by the costs of producing — call it what is really is: artisinal manufacturing — pretty good to excellent work, some of which may float along once certain basics — camera gear, web gear, web services — have been obtained — but expanding travel range (and keeping belly and tank full) or pushing ideas into realspace using paper and ink incur continuous direct expenses.

Add to the bite the more interesting “costs” — those to desire, ego, and heart. 

How compelling, how decorative, how good, how wonderfully original, how suited, and how suited to what does work need to be to keep a photographer afield?

Or is contemporary art culture done with breathtaking buys, courageous commissions, and deep-pocketed patronage?

Setting those nagging cultural, economic, philosophicle, and practical questions aside, I’ve long found it cool – once with a play, many times in print, sometimes reminded by someone else of an old music recording I made (and left on a cassette tape) – to have something I have made (even forgotten about) out in the world enjoying a life altogether its own.

"Morning Orchid"

However all of this works out (aesthetically, financially), I’ve got thousands of slides to mine out of the files, strong film and digital Nikon gear, and plenty of miles to go with a sweetheart of a Mustang built for getting a ways away and into fresh surrounds really, really fast.