Saturday, the 11th, began the long haul of photoshopping and finalizing images to be printed. My negatives have a such a large surface area and didn't have an ideal place to hang dry, so dust was a major issue. Dust is the bane of photography. On your camera, lens, negatives, prints and framing, it just seems to be everywhere. The same probably goes for analyzing samples in the lab. I've certainly seen the students struggling with instruments this summer.
Bryce came down in the morning to help me and we spent most of the day in the lab. The sunset was really nice so we went for a break on the beach, picking up a few treasures, like a pink snail. I remembered Anna-Mai telling us about grad students who'd collect snails and paint some of their shells with nail polish, then see how many they could find at the end of the year. This little guy decided to stick around our beach. Bryce also picked up his first crab!
We got a camping spot at Deception Pass, since Washington Park was all booked and Shannon Point is complicated for having guests. We managed to get a nice spot for being one of two left, with lots of huckleberries to go on our breakfast.
Sunday, we couldn't spend much time to enjoy Deception Pass, since time was ticking for printing by Wednesday. We bought a bottle of milk for the convenient store by the campground, had a good cereal, canned peaches, doughnuts and huckleberry breakfast, and hit the road.
We did get out of the car to walk below the bridges for a bit and headed on our way to Bellingham. It was nice to get outside before spending so much time in front of a screen. Bryce and I went for dinner at Fiamma Burger and took it on a walk downtown to enjoy the sunset.
Monday, more time in the lab. Repeat until Wednesday morning.
We went out for dinner with Justin to the Brandywine Kitchen downtown. It's relatively new and none of us had gone. It's the sort of place you walk up to the counter to order, lots of art and an emphasis on local farms. I tried their mac and cheese, which was baked with almonds on top. It was great! One of my favorite things downtown is watching all the critters in Clark's Feed and Seed. It's amazing how much personality gerbils have. They also had teeny tiny chickens that seemed to have just hatched.
Tuesday. People are probably starting to wonder if I ran away from Shannon Point a week early. Tonight was the final push before presenting tomorrow. All of the science students are preparing their powerpoints, graphs and conclusions as I work in Bellingham. I'm excited to see how everyone's projects turned out.
After a good pancake breakfast at home, Bryce and I went out to find some hardware for hanging up my long prints. We bought out OfficeMax's supply of "Klix", which work like hair clips but are for holding paper. The aluminum looked nicer than a binders clip and were more inconspicuous. We also nearly bought out their supply of suction cup bulldog clips for hanging the cyanotypes on the window. These were much easier than our original plan of stringing wire to suction cups and magneting them.
Tonight was the final push. Poor Bryce was along for the ride and worked with me until all the dust was gone and it was time to color correct. This process can also be slow and painful, as we learned from last year's calendar project in trying to correct skin tones to match. We gathered some cushions from the downstairs couch and sheets from bygone cyanotype projects and built Bryce a bed in the photo lab while I trudged along.
I worked in a separate room where the printing computer is, since it's supposedly the most accurate for printed color. I spend a good amount of time laying on the floor as I waited for pictures to save in a smaller format. Probably not necessary but at that point it was hard for me to tell if making smaller photos or just working with large ones would save more time. At least a got the illusion of sleep, laying on a linoleum floor staring at florescent lights.
I finally pressed print at some time before sunrise and let the printer do the rest. I felt like crying when I saw Shad's face coming out of the printer. It just felt so nice to see the prints materializing at last.
Wednesday, success. With a fat stack of prints now carefully rolled, Bryce and I headed to Shannon Point. I'm so lucky to have such a willing and dedicated partner through all of the madness. Sometime in between the photo lab and Shannon Point's parking lot, I was able to make a presentation on my experience this summer.
Gene made an amazing pulley system for hanging work, which he'd been wanting to make for a while but finally had a project to use it. It was a nice board with four eye bolts. You just lower the whole thing and no ladder was needed. By the 9AM presentations, the prints were on the wall! Exciting and terrifying. I should probably go check on them in the coming months, to make sure those clips are doing their job.
We celebrated the end of presentations, research and goodbyes to to faculty at a pizza lunch in the library. It felt like an art reception, combined with lots of marine research related chitchat. Bryce got on a ladder and helped hang all the of cyanotypes on the windows while Anna-Mai helped match them to the subjects. The back lighting from the windows really made the blue pop. It was almost strange to see everything finalized and in one big display together.
I said farewell to Bryce and Kailey, who were headed to Bellingham together. Kailey left the week before since her program was a week shorter, but came down to cheer on our presentations.
We spent the evening playing Pictionary and spending much time in the commons.
Thursday, the idea of finally leaving this place is looming over everyone. I decided I wanted to make something for everyone to take with them, so I coated a piece of fabric (that I bought at the beginning of summer from a thrift shop) with cyanotype solution. The fabric was a nice teal, good with the dark blue of cyanotypes.
All of my color chemistry came out of the fridge and into hazardous waste disposal bottles. It may have had a little more kick to it, but I won't be developing until school starts - if that's what I end up doing. Shooting so large was a lot of work, in setup and developing, so I'm not sure what medium I'll be using come fall. I'd love to pick up a medium format camera. At least someone else, right downtown, could develop the film.
A few of us went down to the beach to enjoy a great sunset. I went to go package up my cyanotyped fabric, and Kalia and Shad came to help. It was fun sitting in the dim orange light, ripping up fabric into squares and wrapping them in black plastic sealed with purple tape. It looked pretty criminal once we were all done.
I sacrificed my amazing garbage bag to seal up this last project. All the garbage bags in Shannon Point were made of thin plastic that wouldn't block the light when I carried cyanotypes outside to be exposed - except for the ones in the darkroom. That room is just used so infrequently that it still came with rugged plastic bags instead of the wimpy ones. It'd saved me for two months.
Friday morning, the sadness really begins. Alannah was the first to leave, but I didn't make it for her ealy morning departure. Shad and I both left notes outside of her door and I left her a few fabric packages to enjoy. For the rest of the day, every few hours, another group left for the airporter. Lots of hugging and crying. It was so sweet and tragic when Anne was leaving - she and Annie had been diving together all summer, every week and multiple times a day.
Eventually, it was just Bellingham residents left to go. Jenna and I were the last two, because she volunteered to help me move out of the lab and helped me photograph all of the cyanotypes. It was a process I realized I couldn't have done without her, since we had to move a huge ladder around, and it was quick and fun to have her helping.
There's something nice about being the last people to leave a place. This summer was so great for meeting people and experiencing a new place. I've heard that their are other programs similar to ours and I'd love to be a part of them or helping form new ones. It's so important and refreshing to meet with people from other backgrounds.
Then away I went to Bellingham with a car full of art supplies.
Thank you for reading and I hope to update you one what I'm up to next year. My next post shall be a link to the work when I have a these cyanotypes digitized!
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