Friday, August 17, 2012

Today I had a most pleasant early afternoon in the garden. I was visited by director/actor Sarah Rodgers and her daughter Poppy. I was to attempt to photograph them together wearing the red shawl. The photograph will make a pair with Rodgers’s good friend director  Johnna Wright and her son Sascha.

The photograph (what you see here is a Fuji Instant 3000 ISO b+w print and the reversed negative. I am still not 100% in figuring out why the negative manifests the Sabatier Effect (it looks solarized). It has nothing to do with over or under exposure so it might be related to the fact that I wait 30 seconds instead of the recommended 15 seconds before I peel it. Or it could be my heavy duty hot air drying (a hair dryer) to make sure the emulsion on the negative is bone dry as do not want it to stick to the glass of my scanner’s flatbed.

The picture was a lot easier to take than we thought. Poppy came into the house and noticed Rosemary’s cat, Casi-Casi who is a gentle soul. He did not move in the least when Poppy approached him. She charmed her. When I was taking the portraits I gave Poppy my best cat noise imitation (I am very good). The Ektachrome 100G will have to wait until Rodgers writes her essay. I think I might suspect what will be in her essay. As she came in she told me that she was wearing her mother’s dress, the only one that she has left of her mother’s former wardrobe.



Rosemary kept Poppy entertained while Rodgers and I munched on watermelon in the garden and discussed the theatre scene in Vancouver. Rodgers is so busy directing that she welcomes acting jobs once in a while as they seem to be vacations.