Hey guys sorry for the delay. Still catching up from the holidays and the gallery sales.
Alexander Wolcott received the first patent on a camera in 1839. He designed the camera with a concave mirror to magnify the light, so he could take portraits and speed up the exposure times. This shortened process from about 17 minutes to a short enough time to capture portraits. He also created a working photo studio and even started selling the process here in the states but also in Europe. Its hard to imagine that there was no photo studios. The very idea that no one had thought of the idea of inviting the public to get there photos taken in a working local. To speed this process up on the exposures, times were set for patrons to come in for optimal amount of light. Places were set up on the floor for different times of the day so they could get the most amount of light possible. This allowed the photographer to get the highest concentration of light to shorten the time of exposure. I believe the solution back then for an ISO setting was about 7.5. I know later in the 1880's it was 15 ISO.
Although the camera seemed fairly primitive it did make a major change in how images were not only captured but changed what you could shoot. In 1840, Alexander put on the very first photo exhibit in Washington D.C. I'm still trying to figure out what was shown in that exhibit.
Over the years, there were many photographers in my family lineage. Horace Wolcott a frontier photographer was killed in the plains area around 1860's. Oliver Wolcott photographed many of the soldiers that went off to fight in the Civil War and had a portrait studio in the Galena Illinois region. His son later opened several studios just across the Mississippi shooting the landscape and also portraits in the surrounding areas.
Although many of them were photographers in the midwest some became indian photographers for the Smithsonian photographing the tribes, pottery and older civilizations. When Pearl Harbor happened Harry Wolcott was killed I believe on the Arizona who shot for the Armed Forces.
My great grandfather told most of this and showed photographs of them. When I was 6 years old my father and Great Grandfather built a darkroom in the cellar which doubled as the tornado room. This is where I first saw the magic of my first image come from a blank piece of paper to an image. I don't remember much of my childhood but this stuck very clearly in my mind. And yes I was absolutely hooked. From that point on I had been in love with photography. My first camera was a 4x5 camera.
When I was 17 I got to spend time with Ansel Adams after winning a Friends of Photography competition and the table was set. I've never looked back and started showing my work with AIPAD.
I was interested in color processes and was taught by George Phillips and then moved into Ultrastable then to Evercolor process to print pigment color photographs. By the time I started experimenting with the inkjet process (which was dye based). I met a few engineers to create the very first pigment inkjet photographs in early 1995 on a treated paper we made by hand. Although the process was not great, it was a big wake up call. Evercolor was very expensive (nearly 100 a foot) inkjet was about 5 dollars a foot.
In 1996, really was the big break through for Pigment inkjet. WE did many shows from PMA to Photokina and others, it was the start of the battle between Fuji paper with light jet vs inkjet pigment prints.
To cut to the chase to present time. I wanted to create a process that had every attribute I could think of in a printing process. Sharpness, very white paper without OBA's, surface texture to knock down light reflections, doesn't ding or scratch easily, Mounts easily to mounting boards, excepts a coating to get rid of glass and plexi, make it all without chemical and heavy metals to be GREEN. This all was accomplished with a lot of money and almost 2 years of beta testing. Since pigment prints last so long, having a dimensionally stable paper and mounting system is mandatory for long life. I think most photographers want their work to live on long after them.. One day I will get around to selling this product. But for now my goal is to produce a chain of galleries.
So after a 175 years, most of goals have happened. You can see my work at
www.Galleryoftheamericanlandscape.comThanks Tim
