Salt the night with silence

Medium Description

This peaceful scene was captured from inside a window during a winter storm using a 4×5 Intrepid camera with a 210mm lens, ortho litho sheet film, and a long exposure to compensate for the low light conditions. I added a few LED strip lights outside of the frame to highlight the tree details that were getting lost in the shadows and increase the highlights on the snow. After scanning the original 4×5 negative, I prepared it in Adobe Photoshop and output it as a 16×20 digital negative. In the darkroom, that negative was used to make a contact print, exposing all 4 sheets of 8×10 silver gelatin paper at once.

Artist Description

This scene caught my eye during a snowstorm as I watched flakes accumulate outside a window in my house. The way the snow and tree caught the light was unique since we rarely get this much snow at one time. I loved how lonely the table and chair looked framed beneath the snowy branches.

This silver gelatin print started as a 4×5 ortho litho negative shot from inside a window enlarged for a 16×20 contact print in the darkroom covering four sheets of 8×10 paper. It seemed only fitting that I reframed the photograph in a replicated window frame so the viewer could experience the same feeling I had during that snowy night.

The title, “Salt the night with silence,” comes from the book Brother Odd by Dean Koontz.