Now that I am the proud owner of the fabulous Epson 4900 printer I’ve been thinking of all those new opportunities around experimenting with fine art papers. I particularly enjoy viewing monochrome images on fine art paper due, I think, to the way it renders those grey tones in a much more delicate way than other materials.

In the past weeks I’ve consciously kept my eye open for images that lend themselves to the monochrome treatment in order to display them at some point in the future at the Staircase Gallery. This is no mean feat particularly when you’re out looking for autumn colours at this time of year. But it is achievable with practice. Much like I had the same problem a few years ago when I started making close-up images when really I was looking for the bigger vista.

One of my favourite monochrome photographers has to be the images of good friend and occasional workshop partner, Steve Gosling. His images are truly sublime in their delicate simplicity and the quality of his prints are something to behold. Seeing Steve’s images on-screen are great, but if you ever get the chance to see them in print please do.

It’s images like Steve’s that urge me to explore this fascinating area of photography and has ultimately led me to create these three images as part of a triptych set that I’ve decided to name Geometrics I, II & III (which I thought of when thinking of a name for my other triptych, Geophorm ~ see last post). Of course, they were originally made in colour, but I did have an idea they may end up as black and white images (although they do look rather good in colour too!).

I chose to convert them in Lightroom initially as there are many sliders which allow you to create the perfect contrast in tones. From there I set to work in Photoshop where I used the filter to add noise to the image to give that raw antique feel ~ although you won’t notice this on screen (I had my camera set to ISO 100 which made the image too smooth). Using a feathered selection I darkened the outer edges to give an almost obvious vignette to create a kind of pinhole look to finish them off.

I now look forward to preparing them for printing some point soon!