About hand coloring

Paintings

Hand coloring black and white photographs mixes the cool modern look of photography with the soulful, ancient practice of painting.

I’ve been making hand-colored black and white photographs since 1998. For many years I shot film and made traditional darkroom prints and colored them with oil paints. In 2011 I switched to digital printing, using pure carbon-pigment ink on acid free 100 percent cotton rag paper, and then coloring with artist acrylic paints. The photos are beautiful, unique and long-lasting.

Forest 2012.53
A 2002 hand-colored photo done with oil paint on a darkroom print of a photo I made in Idaho’s Sawtooth Wilderness.
A photo made on newsprint and hand colored in 2016.
Making a large black and white print.