Work · Nell’s Ness

Sea Fret

2024–2025 · 22 sheets exposed · 2 prints kept

A fret is warm air over cold water and it arrives faster than you can pack. It removes the picture in a fixed order: horizon, then sea, then middle distance. What it leaves is a print that is nine-tenths paper white with one thing to hold on to.

These are the hardest to print. There is no shadow to sit the exposure on, so the whole print is decided in the last quarter-inch of the scale.

Dense fog reducing a shingle shoreline to a few dark stones in the foreground and pale grey beyond. — Fret coming ashore Nell’s Ness July 2024 neg. 4×5 fibre base, grade 4 toner selenium 1:20, 6 min mean chroma 2.74

An upright high-key frame, one dark wet boulder low in the picture and empty pale fog above it. — The last stone Nell’s Ness July 2024 neg. 4×5 fibre base, grade 4 toner selenium 1:20, 6 min mean chroma 2.11

The prints in this series

Both were toned in the same bath at 1:20 for six minutes and measure a mean chroma of 2.74 and 2.11. The difference between those two figures is the difference between the two photographs, not between two treatments: a print with more shadow in it takes more selenium, because there is more silver in it to convert.

Order a print