Snowy Owl

Ron Reeder (1939-2019)

Ron earned his PhD. in Biochemistry from MIT in 1965. In 1978 he joined the Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle, WA and ran a research lab until retiring in 2002 to spend full time on photography. Photography was a passion that began in childhood while living in Japan with his parents and younger brother. He has published articles on the Pigmented Platinum process (View Camera and Camera Arts) and three books on creating Digital Negatives. He pioneered the use of the QuadTone RIP in making digital negatives.

As a chemist, Ron perfected tintypes, albumen, salt, cyanotype, silver gelatin, but always his favorite process was printing in palladium, a 19th century process in which a sheet of watercolor paper is hand coated with a sensitized solution of palladium metal. When dry the coated paper is exposed to ultraviolet light through a negative the same size as the final image. Palladium prints have a warm soft tone and are among the most archival of photographic images.

Ron’s photographic work is now stored at the Library of Congress, University of Washington Special Collections Division and at the University of Oregon library.

Snowy Owl, palladium print by Ron Reeder is a part of the Kevin & Mary Daniels permanent collection.