Some photographs resolve themselves in a single frame. I was walking through a disused industrial block on a bright September afternoon when the light found the back wall. One clean shaft cut through the interior between a ladder and a lifting chain, and landed on the brick between them.
It was a fifteen-minute window, maybe less. The sun was low, the windows were narrow, the geometry needed to be exactly right. I made a handful of exposures along the same wall. This is the one that held.
The scene is monochrome by subject, not by filter. Brick, iron, concrete, shadow, with almost no colour information. The tonal work in post was balancing the highlights against the deep blacks in the ceiling and corners.
Why aluminium
Brushed aluminium is the right material for this image. On canvas the shaft of light would soften. On paper the contrast between the lit wall and the shadowed ceiling would flatten. On aluminium the whites catch the metal through the unprinted base layer, and the deep blacks stay ink-black against the satin laminate. The print reads at full contrast from across a room.
The limited edition of 25 is numbered and certified. Each print is inspected under controlled 6500K lighting before dispatch.