Sold the print with the actual sea in it, and I'm still a little bruised
I've been making a series on the beach at Aguda since February. Same stretch, same black rocks, same two hours before the tide turns. What changed is that I started developing the sheets in seawater I carry up from there in a plastic can instead of the tap water in my studio. The prints come out softer, less certain of their own edges. I've been calling that a flaw in my head for four months.
A woman bought one on Saturday. The one where the net drags across the top corner, the one I nearly threw away twice because the exposure went too long and the blue got so deep the weed reads almost black. She said it looked like something recovered from water rather than made. I stood there and took her money and said thank you and felt weirdly close to tears.
I think the win is not the sale. It's that I stopped treating the sea as contamination in my own process. For years I've been correcting it out.
Anyone else here sell the piece that embarrassed them a little? I don't mean the commissioned one. The one you almost didn't put in the folder.
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the seawater thing. carrying a can up there every time just to develop with it is such a specific commitment and it's exactly why the prints don't have that hard edge. you can't fake that with a filter. the one you almost binned twice is usually the one that's actually doing something, the too-long exposure is the whole point. called it a flaw for four months, someone else called it the reason to buy it. that gap is most of the job honestly.
The can is ridiculous, honestly. It leaks in the boot of the car and my partner has opinions about it. But the water from the tap in the studio is a different water, and the paper knows.
The "too long" exposure is the part I still argue with myself about, so it helps to hear it said plainly. Four months of calling something a mistake and then a stranger hands you money for exactly that. I don't fully trust it yet, but I'm keeping the sheet.