169 ☼ Bringing a Polar Expedition to Life
+ video debut + GIVE AWAY
Dear friends,
This week:
Behind-the-scenes mini documentary premiere of the printing process for my new book, NOTICE Journal, Volume One.
A new creative client shoot set at the North Pole (in Amsterdam).
A new Process x Moment Giveaway
Another big thank you to everyone who’s helped spread the word about NOTICE Journal, Volume One—including the good people at Lomography who just published a new interview, which you can read here.
Process Photo Walks
In the past two weeks, we held the ninth and tenth Process Photo Walks in Paris and London, and both were fantastic experiences! It was a joy to meet everyone and see new friendships forming. A highlight was finally meeting Shane and Josh, my co-hosts in London and the founders of Framelines Magazine—such great guys!
Below are group photos from both walks. To everyone who attended, please send me your favorite shots. I’ll put together galleries to share with all Process readers featuring some of my favorites. I’m planning a new series of walks for spring 2025. Feel free to suggest your city in the comments!
Video Premiere — Printing NJV1
To start this issue off with a bang, I’m excited to share a new behind-the-scenes mini-documentary on the printing of NOTICE Journal, Volume One, so creatively shot and edited by Alain Galje. Watching each step of the process in action brings the book to life in a way words never could. Many thanks to our printer robstolk for generously allowing us to document it all.
If you haven’t ordered your copy of NJV1 yet, you can do so here or click the button below.
Remember, Yearly members of the Process Photo Club get 50% off NJV1 and 100%-off coupons for the Process Workbook, €30-off my previous book NOTICE, and more.
Bringing a Polar Expedition to Life: A Creative Client Shoot
This week, I’m taking you behind the scenes of a recent client shoot I did for the good people at the Flock Theatre, an improvised theatre company based in Amsterdam. We created images for the promotional poster and postcard campaign to promote their upcoming unscripted play Polar Nights. This one had a little bit of everything that makes creative work a challenge—and a joy.
The play, directed by Gael Doorneweerd-Perry, was inspired by his time at an artist residency in the Arctic Circle. It reflects on the isolation of the Arctic and the complicated relationships we form in remote places, as well as our urge to "own" nature, even in the harshest conditions. This background added so much to our brainstorming for the shoot and it helped guide how we brought the play’s themes to life in the photos.
From the start, we wanted the final images to feel like artifacts from another era. Gael had a great idea to use the cyanotype process for the posters and postcards. We’ll get into what that means later.
Building the Concept and Getting Technical
For a project like this, I love digging into the history and mood of the circumstances that we are re-creating. I researched early polar expeditions and gathered inspiration from the photos and stories of explorers like Ernest Shackleton, Robert Falcon Scott, and Knud Rasmussen.
The period we were referencing—from the mid-1800s to the early 1920s—was dangerous and beyond unprecedented at the time. It was sort of the space travel of its era in some ways. The images from those days are striking and cinematic. See above.
We wanted to capture that authenticity and bring a similar sense of seriousness to our photos. Since we were working with quite a small budget, we decided to use Flock’s rehearsal space and stage lighting as our studio. I shot everything on my Pentax 67ii, with the 105mm lens, and a Contax G2 with a 35mm lens, on Kodak Tri-X film.
The choice of black-and-white film did a lot of the heavy lifting to translate our small set into something from a past era. We also already knew we would have had to strip out any color later on for the cyanotype printing.
Limited Resources, Big Ideas
Of course, any shoot has its challenges, and with our time constraints and limited budget, there was plenty to manage here. We had only a limited number of rolls, so each shot had to count. The actors’ sense of play and attention to detail helped make it a smooth and fun experience. From group shots to individual portraits, they fully inhabited their roles, making it easy to bring the old-world explorer aesthetic to life.
We finished the shoot with a good range of photos to work with, and while the plan was initially to use these negatives directly for classic cyanotypes, that part of the process ended up taking its own path.
The Cyanotype Process, Improvised
Gael’s vision was to use the negatives from our shoot and apply the cyanotype process to create period-appropriate prints for the poster campaign. Cyanotype is one of the oldest photographic processes, producing a distinctive Prussian blue image when exposed to UV light. However, we faced a challenge: the Netherlands' lack of sunlight in the fall and winter, which is the most important element for the cyanotype process.
To work around the lack of strong winter sunlight, Gael crafted a UV lightbox for the exposures. For me, seeing someone else take the images and then use them to create their own version, using a whole different medium, is one of my favorite parts of making client work. Sometimes a magazine art director completely reinvents and improves my images through creative cropping and layout, and in this case Gael used collage and the physical printing process to make them his own.
The physical postcards and posters (above) are cyanotypes, and the Flock team created a digital collage of four images as an online poster (below). I’m super pleased with it!
This shoot felt different from most of my shoots, with its own vibe and technical process. But at its heart, like all my shoots, it’s about using photography to tell stories and solve problems—whether by capturing an idea or just sparking someone else to see their world with a fresh perspective. Thanks, as always, for reading Process this week. I hope these stories add a bit of inspiration to your own creative work.
Come see the show: If you’re in or near Amsterdam, join us for Flock Theater’s Polar Nights on stage! Performances are December 12th–14th at 19:30, with a matinee on December 15th at 14:00. Full details and tickets here.
NEXT WEEK: The official launch of NOTICE Journal, Volume One—fully bound and available in stores! Plus, I’ll share lessons learned from the past few months. If you haven’t grabbed a copy yet, the early bird discount has been extended for another week—get €10 off now!
Thank you for reading. Process is the result of collaborative creativity. It’s written by me and supported by you—whether you read, share, comment, buy my books, hire me for portraits or mentoring, or become a paying subscriber and member of the Process Photo Club.
Keep shooting and take good care of yourselves and others.
Wesley
Gear & Tools Used
Camera: Pentax 67ii, 105mm f2.4 lens. Contax G2, 35mm f2 lens.
Shout out to MPB.com, my go-to place to buy, sell, and trade used cameras and lenses. I love their service and am a paying customer. MPB caters to over 625,000 visual storytellers and provides a 6-month warranty. Thanks for the support, MPB! <3
Lab: All my analog work is developed and scanned by my friends at Carmencita Film Lab. They’re my favorite lab in the world. Use code “PROCESS” to get a free upgrade.
Process Giveaway
My pals over at Moment are back for a generous giveaway! One winner will receive a $150 gift card to buy whatever you wish including film, bags, a course, and more.
To enter this week’s giveaway answer the following question in the comments:
Q: If you could pick one actor to have a portrait session with, who would it be?
ENTER THIS WEEK’S GIVEAWAY before 11 a.m. EST on December 1st.
The winner will be randomly drawn. This giveaway is for Process subscribers only.
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A terrific look into a complicated shoot. This is invaluable information for anyone wondering what it is like in the trenches, getting it done. A wonderful perspective piece.
LOVE THE VIDEO!