Lumière Atlantique!

My very first work in digital photography and my first work in color! For an argentic photographer, quite a departure.

For as long as I can remember, I have considered the light of the sky as a landscape in itself. During a sail from New York to the Caribbean in 2013, I began photographing clouds in the North Atlantic. I used a small-format Leica with black and white silver gelatin film. The series turned out to be quite good and inspired me to do more. So, a second trip was in order.....along the exact same route. For this trip, I decided to switch to my beloved Hasselblad cameras and the far superior quality of medium format.

My choice to use color may sound easy to you, but it definitely was not. I know this sounds simple, but I had to choose my "palette" of colors specifically and accurately. Exactly the same way a painter would select his palette. My goal was to obtain a perfect harmony of colors with the widest tonal values possible..... on each and every photograph, despite the available light. Not so easy ... Not so simple.

To be able to achieve this, I found a wonderful tool far above the multitude of others on the market. And this tool was the Hasselblad CFV 50c digital capture back. A tool I could easily adapt to all my Hasselblad cameras. A tool which allowed me to obtain a very wide range of tonal values.

Now, I was ready. Ready, to begin the exact same journey, again...this time using digital and color!

I dedicate this new series to my father, Paul-Edouard Bertin, who was a renaissance man and a climatologist. I know he is looking down and smiling.....he loved to see me work hard to find the answers. Well, Dad, I am working hard now!

Stay tuned for more on "FEB meets the 21st century" in my next post.