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Maine Media’s Brenton Hamilton Featured at Addison Woolley Gallery

With his new solo show, Relevant Histories, Maine Media faculty member Brenton Hamilton caps off a banner year. Recently featured in the October issue of Maine Home & Design, and currently part of the Portland Museum of Art’s Between Past and Present exhibition celebrating the work of Winslow Homer, Hamilton and his work are creating quite a buzz.

Taking cues from northern German paintings and refashioning images from multiple sources, Hamilton uses 19th century processing techniques to compose new narratives for old fables and allegories. The 20 works in the exhibition demonstrate platinum, cyanotype, gum bichromate washes and free hand painting with gum printed in the sun.

Relevant Histories will be on display in the Addison Woolley Gallery in Portland through December 1st.

 

© Brenton Hamilton

“Death at the Tower”, 2012, Brenton Hamilton

Sicily, Belize, and Hanoi—Oh My!

So Maine in winter isn’t your thing.  We understand (but we’ll tease you about it later). How about one of four new Destination Workshops to get you and your camera out and exploring? While we’re braving sub-zero temperatures, you could be capturing the City of Light on New Year’s Eve or swimming with rays and whale sharks in Belize’s Barrier Reef. Imagine spending Easter documenting one of the world’s most visually striking religious rituals in Sicily or digging deeper into what you know about Vietnam with a two-week filmmaking workshop in Hanoi. Get off the beaten path and return home with far more than memories. We guarantee it will be a trip that will stay with you for a lifetime.

December 29, 2012 - January 4, 2013

The Paris New Years Workshop

 

March 3, 2013 - March 10, 2013

Underwater! Shooting the Mesoamerican Reef

  

March 27, 2013 - April 2, 2013

The Sicily Streets and Easter Ritual Workshop 

 

March 30, 2013 - April 14, 2013

Destination: Hanoi - In Print and In Documentary

 

 

Give Creatively, Give Creativity

Those who have taken a workshop with us already know that coming here is one of the best gifts you can give yourself. Now you can give that gift to someone you love. A gift certificate from Maine Media can be purchased in any amount, and can be used towards any of our classes or Workshops. Gift certificates of $500 or more even come with one of our snazzy Maine Media Workshops hats. Maybe you’ll keep that for yourself, hmm?

Purchase before December 18th for guaranteed Christmas delivery. Call us at 877-577-7700 or purchase online today!

Hey Mainers, It’s Warm In Our Darkroom!

The Fall Workshop season has ended, but there’s still plenty going on at Maine Media in the winter and spring.  In addition to a new line-up of workshops that will begin in February, we also have courses that are perfect for those of you who live nearby. Want to polish up your portfolio, hone your printing skills or learn about photography’s roots? Here are four great classes for artists and photography fans of all levels that meet once a week between early January and mid March. We’re not hibernating, and neither should you!

Mondays, 1/7-3/11, 1:30-5:00pm, Project & Portfolio

Whether you’ve got a fine art or documentary project, work in digital or chemical printing, we’ll help you create and tune a spectacular collection.

Intermediate and Advanced Levels, $349

Tuesdays, 1/8-3/12, 9:00am-12:00pm, 20th Century History of Photography

Find your path to the future of photography by knowing and understanding its roots. Your friends will be impressed.

All Levels, $199

Wednesdays, 1/9-3/13, 1:30-5:00pm, Digital Printing

Get your brain around the problems and possibilities that come with shooting in color, and work with advanced Photoshop image processing techniques. 

Intermediate Level, $479

Thursdays, 1/10-3/14, 1:30-5:00pm, Introduction to Alternative Processes

Step out of the digital world and into the darkroom. You want to know how to create platinum, cyanotype, gum bichromate and salted paper prints, and we will teach you.

All Levels, $499

Coming to us from farther afield? Be sure to check out the complete listing of Winter-Spring Workshops.

Maine Media Faculty Train Their Lenses on Winslow Homer’s Studio

by Karin Leuthy

In conjunction with the completion of its six-year restoration of the Winslow Homer Studio, the Portland Museum of Art is highlighting three Maine Media Workshops + College faculty in an upcoming exhibition, Between Past and Present: The Homer Studio Photographic Project, opening October 6th. Maine Media is one of the few places photographers interested in historical and alternative photographic processes can learn and hone these techniques, through its workshops as well as its Professional Certificate program.

Using photographic processes available during Homer’s time, Tillman Crane, Brenton Hamilton, and Alan Vlach bring the painter’s studio, its artifacts and surroundings to life in a way that evokes the landmark’s history and its lasting presence. Winslow Homer moved to Maine in 1836, and painted his most well known seascapes and marine subjects at the Prouts Neck studio between 1883 and 1910. Notoriously and unapologetically reclusive, he displayed a sign warning prospective visitors, “Snakes! Snakes! Mice!”

“I actually started photographing around the area before I even knew about the show,” said Vlach, whose photographs showcase the salted paper process. “I was looking for places to hike and walk my dog, and I discovered the cliff walk around Prouts Neck and the studio. I was really taken with the shoreline.” 

Tillman Crane used the platinum printing process to capture the interior of the studio. “I loved the way the light played around the rooms,” he said. “I always chase the light. That’s what I respond to. It was inspiring to work in the same space that Homer worked.” 

Brenton Hamilton was taken with Homer’s Harper’s Weekly engravings from the 1860’s. “They were incredibly incisive and moody,” said Hamilton. Using cyanotype and gum bichromate processes, he explored Homer’s engravings through historic methods and fresh eyes, “suggesting new meanings via collage and adjustments and juxtapositions.”

Working with alternative processes can sometimes be more challenging for today’s photographers than those that lived during Homer’s time. Emulsions and other materials that were once available commercially now must be mixed and applied by hand. Enlarging prints and negatives can require hours of work.  But the long tonal scale, hand-made nature and even chemical challenges make these photographs all the more exciting to create. 

The Homer Studio Photographic Project will run through Feb. 17. Tours of Homer’s studio can be scheduled through Dec. 2. For more information, visit PMA’s website at www.portlandmuseum.org.

 

Platinum Printing, Then and Now

by Tillman Crane

Platinum prints are known for their beauty, archival stability and unique, one-of-a-kind print statement. Made from the salts of platinum and palladium, these prints are also called “platinotypes” or “platinum/palladium” prints. Platinum and palladium are noble metals, and resistant to oxidation. The platinum salt emulsion is imbedded into the fiber of the paper during the printing process. As long as the paper remains intact, the print will retain its appearance for hundreds of years.

In the late 1800s, making a platinum print was a commercial process. Photographers bought pre-coated paper from any number of manufacturers including Kodak and Ilford. Creating platinum prints today involves considerable time, effort and materials. My photographs in The Homer Studio Project were made from hand-mixed and hand-coated emulsions.  Making prints this way is labor intensive, but it also means that no two photographs are exactly alike. I like to think of them as “monotype” prints from the same negative.

As with many historical photographic processes, the size of the print is equal to the size of the negative. For The Homer Studio Project, I worked primarily with an 8x10 view camera, and created larger digital negatives from which 16x20 prints could be made. When the negative is ready for printing, the emulsions are mixed, coated on the paper with a brush, and dried. Once dry, the negative is placed in direct contact with the paper, and exposed to ultraviolet light for anywhere from a few minutes to more than an hour.

All platinum prints have a matte surface, because the emulsion is absorbed into the paper rather than sitting on the surface. There is also a more gradual change from black to white along its tonal range, giving it a softer feel. The image tone of a platinum print can vary widely in color. The proportions of platinum to palladium in the emulsion, choice of developers and the temperature of the developer control the final colors of the print, which can vary from cool, purple blacks to warm, rich browns.  Occasionally emulsion brush strokes can be seen in some of the prints.  They should be seen as marks of the artist.

 

Faculty Close-Up: Wayne Beach

Wayne Beach VideoWayne Beach has written screenplays for Warner Bros., Twentieth Century Fox, Disney, TNT, Fox 2000 Pictures, and Village Roadshow Pictures. He has developed projects for the makers of PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN, LAW & ORDER, THE FUGITIVE, OCEAN’S ELEVEN, and THE PERFECT STORM. His filmed writing credits include MURDER AT 1600 (Warner Bros.) starring Wesley Snipes, Diane Lane, Alan Alda and Dennis Miller; and THE ART OF WAR (Warner Bros.) starring Wesley Snipes, Donald Sutherland and Anne Archer.   

In 2007 he made his directorial debut with SLOW BURN, based on his screenplay. The film received its world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival and was released by Lionsgate. SLOW BURN stars Ray Liotta, LL Cool J, Mekhi Phifer, Jolene Blalock, Taye Diggs and Chiwetel Ejiofor.

In addition to his work for the screen, for three years Beach taught screenwriting at Northwestern University. His former students include prominent writers, directors and producers with hit films and hit television shows to their credit. He currently teaches screenwriting at Maine Media Workshops and Maine Media College. Among upcoming workshops: Writing the Spec Script, Oct. 14 – 20; Basic Story Structure and Screenwriting (WS), Feb. 3 – 9; Advanced Story Structure and Screenwriting, Mar. 10 – 16. Click on the image to watch a couple of interview clips featuring Wayne.

CMCA and Maine Media celebrate Samantha Appleton

© Samantha AppletonA native of Camden, Maine, photographer Samantha Appleton covered the war in Iraq for much of the first three years. Most of her work there concentrated on Iraqi civilians. She began covering the U.S. presidential campaign in early 2007 for the New Yorker magazine, and became an Official White House Photographer at the start of the Obama administration. She served in that capacity for the next 2½ years.

For Appleton, these two profoundly different experiences were merely different sides of the vortex of modern history. The images she created reflect each other rather than contrast each other. Here From There, like the idiosyncratic Maine saying, “You can’t get there from here,” suggests that to make a line, you must make a circle.

© Samantha AppletonMany journalists bounce from story to story as dictated by assignment, but Appleton has not been a tourist in her career. Each choice was a deliberate investment in what she thought would be relevant to US history: to cover the civilian side of the War in Iraq after the invasion itself and to take a chance on an unlikely nominee in early 2007. Both stories started from the street level, not offices on high. She trusted what the street told her. History bore those instincts out.

HERE FROM THERE: PHOTOGRAPHS BY SAMANTHA APPLETON will be on display at the Center for Maine Contemporary Art from August 4th - September 22nd. The Exhibition is sponsored by A.E. Sampson & Son

Maine Media Workshops invites the entire community to the Rockport Opera House, 6 Central Street, for this free amazing presentation on Monday, August 27th, at 7:30pm.

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