It's Go Time

Hi everyone:

Tonight's blog was too important for me to award the soundtrack rights to any single musical act. So, I'm listening to a play list on my Shuffle right now- everything from The Jackson Five to The Sex Pistols is included...hopefully that won't result in too manic of a post.

The big news is that, as promised, I've got two new pieces to show y'all. Hot of the presses- I printed them up this weekend and have two editions I'm pretty darn pleased with - at least for now. So, without further ado, here they are, with some notes from "the horse's mouth:"

The name of the above print is "Lone" - as in "Lone Tree" - though I just found out there is a Lone Tree, Colorado. Who knew? And though this looks like it could have been shot in Colorado, it was shot right here in PA. And "So Lonely" by The Police just hit my Shuffle - how appropriate!

Anyway, this image represents one of my happiest accidents in quite some time - on a variety of levels. Firstly, when I shot it, I was kinda on the fence. It seemed like a scene I may be able to do something with, but I was thinking about 5 steps ahead because it didn't really look like much to me at first. The negative came back clean and the possibility was still there, but I still wasn't sure. But I included it in my scanning batch anyway - just as a hunch. When I got the scan back, I realized that Tom, my scanning guru, scanned it in color instead of the native b/w it was shot in. And I was thrilled because when I saw that image, I fell in love with it. It perfectly encapsulated a lot of what I've been feeling lately and I think it just works. In fact, the straight scan looked so good, I contemplated using it that way without employing my voodoo - and I will say that since I've been using this process, this piece looks the most like the original scan of anything I've done to date.

Next:

This one I felt had possibilities as soon as I shot it. Called "Tower", at least for now, this actually shows a radio tower poking out of the landscape. I grew up near a radio tower and I've always been a little intrigued by them. But for this, I knew I wanted it to look a bit abstract when it was finished, and my process was just what I needed to achieve that feel. As always, with my work, it's about the "essence" of something.

This one was also a b/w image scanned in color, but I converted it to gray scale before moving forward. A no-brainer...my ideas for color on this wouldn't have worked otherwise.

So, in printing these two images, I made some decisions for the future:

1. From now on, I'm only printing a max of 5 editioned prints with 2 artist's proofs for this body of work. Now, maybe it's because I printed both editions once, thought they looked great, and then realized they needed to be reprinted the next morning after I saw them fully dry. But, this process is too labor intensive to do more than 5 + 2, and really, I don't think it's necessary. Before, I was doing 10 numbered prints with no A/P's, and I think 3 prints is worth my sanity (or what's left of it). As an aside, remember that each print is unique because of the process - so get 'em while the gettin's good!

2. Because of the success with "Lone" (or my perception of said success), all negs will now be scanned in color and I will convert if necessary on the back-end. Without this step at the beginning, I probably would have passed over this image and not printed it. As it turns out, it is now on my home page - and if that doesn't say it all, I don't know what does.

Big shout-out to Tom for rockin' on these scans. There are several more where these came from - so hopefully I'll have a couple more new images in a week or two. In the meantime check out the website: http://www.sirinsky.com/ to see the images a bit larger.

Thanks again for being patient and enjoy!

-Marc