Tom Coates and David Gluck carried out their annual task (sadly to be David's last) of chosing winners from works selected via the open submission process. The prizes, of £250 each, are awarded to one 'outstanding' work from each of eight regions across the country - a full list is on page 5 of this newsletter.

Prizewinner for East Anglia was Noel Myles, for his platinum & palladium photographic collage, 'Wood Pile' (right). Noel came from an etching background and wanted to find the "sort of quality in photographic images that related to a mezzotint or an aquatint in appearance".

A little used process today, platinum printing was very popular at the turn of the 20th century, but the lack of availability of commercially produced platinum paper by the early 1940s means that the few photographers who use this technique now have to create their own printing paper by mixing light sensitive chemicals and coating the paper by hand. The negative is then placed in direct contact with the paper, held down under a heavy sheet of glass and exposed to ultraviolet light.

Noel will take several hundreds of photographs for each image and as each print can take 3 hours to make, this is a time consuming process, but one which gives both technical control and personal satisfaction from its hand-made approach to photographic print making.

 

Copyright © 2002-2010 The Discerning Eye  ~  Web site by Shepperton Software