Most people meet my artwork first. They see a quiet scene, soft tones, and a sense of stillness. What they don’t see right away is the reason it exists at all.
Pictorial Whispers was born from a loss I could not fix or outthink: the death of my youngest daughter, Abby. Grief didn’t arrive as a single event. It came as a long, uneven road that still continues. My work is not an escape from that road. It is the way I walk it.
Category Archives: Salt Printing
William Holland Furlong’s 1843 breakthrough—and why it changed calotype
The single-bath “double-iodide” iodizing method, as described by William Holland Furlong and read aloud by John Adamson on April 3, 1843, made calotypes more reliable and repeatable. That stability opened the door for the Adamsons (and Hill & Adamson) to work at scale, and it changed everything for the calotypists in 1843.
I’m Moving to a Historically Correct Calotype Workflow
As of November 1, 2025, I now work exclusively with the St Andrews-era calotype: iodized paper, excited with aceto-nitrate of silver (no gallic acid in the exciting bath), and developed in gallic acid. This is the chemistry John Adamson used to make the process stable and repeatable.
Bending Toward Silence: A Beginning, A Surrender
I didn’t plan for Bending Toward Silence to mark the beginning of this series. It came from a place of necessity, not inspiration. On that particular day, I needed to do something with the weight I was carrying. Grief has a way of filling the room, whether you speak of it or not.
Pictorial Whispers – Plate No. 3 What Remains Between Us
Pictorial Whispers is a deeply personal series of handmade salt prints from calotype paper negatives, created as a way to process the grief of losing my daughter, Abby. Each image explores the quiet emotional terrain of resilience, transformation, and connection through the delicate life cycle of flowers.
New Study: Exploring the Alchemy of Salt in the Salted Paper Process
I’m excited to announce a brand-new research project that takes a deep dive into one of the most overlooked (yet powerful) aspects of the salted paper process: the type of salt used to prepare the paper—and whether adding citric acid makes any real visual difference, especially after toning.