I attended workshop organized by Bruce Percy on island of Eigg in Scotland two years ago. The workshop itself was amazing experience for me and I really enjoyed the company of Bruce and other photographers. It was also my first visit to Scotland and found it so beautiful that I put Scotland firmly to my photo destination list.
Shortly after I came back home I developed and scanned my negatives and started to process them. This photograph caught my attention immediately since it was perfect contribution to my “Absence” project and I made the adjustments it in Lightroom in the way I thought it was appropriate for the subject matter at that moment.
First version of Absence 8
Few months after I did return to this negative and reprocess it again, this time in a bit of different way.
Second version
Recently I started to print my Scotland negatives in darkroom for our upcoming exhibition and this was the very first negative I printed, and despite my intention to interpret it in the same way as above, I ended up with even more high key version, than I originally wanted.
Title: Absence 8, Camera: Mamiya RB 67 Pro SD, Lens: Sekor 50 mm, Film: Kodak T-Max 100, Exposure: 120”, f 16, Eigg, Scotland, 2013
I do know exactly what was the reason for me to change the interpretation of this negative, maybe my mind is more optimistic these days, or my memories of that place has changed, but one thing which is important to have a freedom to interpret our negatives (or raw files) in the way we want and we feel is right. I cannot exclude that in the future I will print this negative in different way, but for the moment I am very happy with this “final” version.
The final silver print