Darkroom!

Part 1 of 3 - Memorial Day weekend

Fog at the coast (summer is here, already?!) just didn't clear out...
so it was a darkroom weekend.
Which was OK, hadn't done any printing except for one session, since taking in a whole lot of new stuff in Nevada. Still trying to sift thru the new stuff... and integrating it into all the existing stuff... that'll take a while, for sure...
But I definitely had some new things that were ripe for printing.
(If you haven't already checked out my 'darkroom techniques' pages, I suggest you check 'em out, the link is in the column to the right.
It occurred to me that if you are not familiar w/ some of the techniques, this all might leave you wondering "Whaaa???",
and that's definitely not my intention. If you have questions?..please by all means, feel free to ask.
It's: bobbennettphoto@yahoo.com - 'operators are standing by' ;-)

Desert Ride

I did four Photoshop sketches of this one....( w/ different foregrounds), they are above.
the one that really caught my attention was one that used a landscape I shot at the end of the day, looking north from a turn-out near Red Rock Canyon, NV., lower right.
(sometimes you don't have to walk far off the beaten path to get a good shot - my knees and hips like that, a lot...:-)
Hey, what can I say but "57 y.o." and feelin' it, all the time! ...but don't get out a shovel, anytime soon, OK?)
I am finding this process of doing 'sketches' in Photoshop to very helpful, but I still feel nothing replaces doing the actual print the old fashioned way.
Why did I choose that one?
For one thing I really liked the strip of directly lit land, w/ shadow in front and behind it. There was also a lot more interesting detail in the mountains beyond than the other frames.
The lighting in the other landscapes implies direct side lighting in the sky, but the carousel horse is softly/indirectly lit - the two don't match up very well. The image hangs together better when the carousel horse feels like it's being lit by the glow on the land in front of it... that's why I chose it.

One thing I noticed as soon as i made a test print of the foreground?
I've seen a number of 'fine art photo prints' lately, the source images being digital, that are very nice, and 'tasteful' and all.... but none of them are very sharp. Sorry, but I have a problem w/ that - and why shouldn't I?
Digital cameras seem to make sharpness the last thing on their agenda.

This negative is just totally tack sharp, on Joshua trees that probably a mile away(?)...
and also on the mountainous rocks beyond, that are probably 2 miles away.
(Pentax 6x7, 55mm lense,Yellow filter, Ilford FP4 souped in Rodinal, 1:50, it doesn't get any better than that.
Unless Agfa rose from the dead, & resumed making it's 100 ASA B&W film, which will definitely not happen.)

And, if you want some icing on the cake? this is hand-held, no tripod.
I tossed that away 15 years ago. Did a decade of 4x5 view camera architectural photography, on a tripod - been there, done that... enough, already!

First I exposed the bottom/foreground... then I added the sky, much lighter in the center than around the edges, then I blew in the carousel horse, from the center, out - adjusting each of 3 ( or was it 4?) prints each time - the position, & the exposure.
The final print ( one of them, anyway) is at the bottom of the images above.

As usual, many more & larger images on a page at my site:

www.bobbennettphoto.net/BeachBlog_2009/DesertRide/index.html

Hand-coloring B&W photo prints - a dying art?

I don't think so!...If big art supply companies are still stocking them, I guess they ain't dead yet.

http://www.dickblick.com/products/marshalls-photo-oils/

"Hobby Set — The contents of this set include fifteen ½" × 2" tubes, a ¾" × 4" (2 cm × 10 cm) tube of extender, a 1 oz bottle of P.M. Solution, and a 1 oz bottle of Marlene (for removing and cleaning), as well as cotton balls and toothpicks. Colors included with this set are Basic Flesh, Cerise, Cadmium Orange, Cadmium Yellow Deep, Cheek, Cobalt Violet, Lip, Neutral Tint, Oxide Green X-Strong, Sepia, Sky Blue, Titanium White, Tree Green, Verona Brown, and Viridian.

"...Basic Flesh, Cheek, Lip, Oxide Green X-Strong, Sky Blue, Tree Green..."

Hunh???.......I don't know what to do with these colors... puh-leeze give me the basic painting colors I am so used to...

I ended up buying a really basic oil color set, it's a lot more color for less money, and since the tubes and caps are larger, it seems easier to keep them well sealed for future use - those Marshall oil tubes are just too small, and hard to deal with, and they dry out way too fast.





Oil colors:
Cadmium Red, Cadmium Yellow, Ultramarine(blue), Viridian(green), Yellow Ochre, Burnt Umber.
Now that's 'basic'!

I inherited a watercolor set from a photog. who was ditching all his traditional stuff
( there seems to be a lot that going around these days) -
A Marshalls "Photo Retouch Colors" set:
"Primary" - Blue, Red, & Yellow.. and a "Basic" - Black, Brown, Flesh, Blue, & Green.
Using these basic colors means that you will have to mix them to get the colors you want, many times.
So 'mix away' !
Fiber based matte surface paper is definitely the way to go - a matte surface absorbs the colors well.
Ilford used to make a very nice matte surface paper, but that seems to be 'history'.
The currently available Ilford matte ( which is what I used) seems to have a bit more texture than I remember from a decade ago - I just don't want the surface texture to show at all.
The flatbed scanners I have used lately seem to all emphasize surface texture - In fact, many very nice prints I've made on 'pearl' surface papers are unusable for Hi-res scans - too much texture that no amount of Photoshop filters can get rid of.

I only use the watercolors very sparingly, on small details first, before going to oil colors.
They (watercolors) are very hard to control, they soak into the paper almost immediately, and can't be 'worked with' the way oil colors can.
After a few small watercolor details?... then on to the oil colors.
Maybe they are kinda 'retro'...?
But, hey! ..there's no software to install, wrestle with, or update!
Neither Bill Gates or Adobe gets a dime of your money!
All you need beyond the oil colors is some linseed oil, cotton balls & Q-tips.

I always give the entire image a nice 'prep' coat of linseed oil, first: I apply it liberally, then use a paper towel to wipe off the excess.. (this makes it easier to blend colors together, and 'work' with things a while) ..and then go to it. :-)
Use the cotton balls for large areas, the Q-tips for smaller ones, and after the print has dried for a day or two, you could add small detail things w/ Marshall Oil Pencils.. which I did not investigate the availability of, to tell ya the truth - I still have what I bought 20 years ago.
Another thing? - get some tracing paper to tape over the print while it is drying - any dust that settles on the print will show when you photograph or scan the print.

Obviously, if you are new to this, work on some prints that you don't care about particularly, to learn the process first.

While we/re on the the topic of other 'retro' & alternative processes:

http://www.gumphoto.co.uk/technical.html

http://www.alternativephotography.com/

An excellent directory/compilation is here:

http://www.capworkshops.org/
(Center for Alternative Photography, in NYC)

It includes:

Bromoil Printing: Joy Goldkind, March 22 (Details)
Albumen Printing: Daniel Levin, April 4 & 5 (Details)
Alternative Process Projects: A Critique Seminar: Keliy Anderson-Staley, April 13, 20 & 27 (Details)
Intro to Wet Plate Collodion: Fundamentals of the Black Arts : Nate Gibbons, April 18 & 19 (Details)
Daguerreotype Workshop: Sean Culver, April 25 & 26 (Details)
Lost & Found: Photo, Collage, & Photocollage: Jesseca Ferguson, April 26 (Details)
Calotype: Dry-Process Paper Negatives: Alan Greene, May 2 & 3 (Details)
Cyanotype Printing: Robert Schaefer, May 9 (Details)
Platinum/Palladium Printing: Carl Weese, May 16 & 17 (Details)
Mammoth Plate Wet Plate Collodion: Eric Taubman, May 30 & 31 (Details)
Salted Paper Printing: Brenton Hamilton, June 6 & 7 (Details)
Lens Seminar: Geoffrey Berliner and Eric Taubman, June 13 (Details)
Bromoil Printing: Joy Goldkind, June 14 (Details)
Introduction to the Dry Plate Process: Terry Holsinger, TBD (Details)
Pinhole Photography: Making a Camera and Shooting: Harvey Stein, TBD (Details)

A Polaroid Update:
(Remember Polaroid 55 (PN) film? If you missed it, you missed something special & unique!)
http://lens.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/06/08/shoptalk/?scp=1&sq=Polaroid&st=cse


For more on my hand-coloring exploits/techniques/tips/etc...
including several 'before(B&W) and 'after'(hand-colored) images - you be the judge, & jury..

www.bobbennettphoto.net/BeachBlog_2009/Handcolor/index.html

Also included is a digital colored version of one image, with a small photoshop file you can download to see the things I came up with to color the image.

Up next?.... Hhmmm.... either some skies/clouds... or maybe a lotta darkroom.

Nevada - digital montage

My approach to digital montage is, of course, the antithesis of darkroom montage - you can 'get something started', then save it in suspended animation (photoshop) 'til you see what you want to do next.

I'm sure I'll be opening one or more of the 550+ digital pix I took in Nevada last X-mas for quite a while - I've tossed together about half a dozen 'getting something started' files, two in particular I knew immediately had stronger potential than the others - they included petroglyphs:
A human figure that seems to be tightrope-walking between two cracks...
and a figure w/ an arrow ( which seems to be a 'direction' sign).

One of the big reasons I took this particular trip was to see petroglyphs, and I was not disappointed.
The two mentioned & shown above are the only ones I saw that were 'understandable' in any way, to me/anyone in the oh-so-'developed' 20th/21st century.

The 'direction sign' is very clearly exactly that - it is situated along the path to a tinaja in Red Rock canyon.
(A tinaja is a place where water collects, and remains, in recesses in the rocks, long after a storm has passed by.
This is definitely a place where people would hang out for a while, water being essential to physical survival, and not easy to find in this kind of enviroment.)

It is about 50 or so feet up & off the trail, carved into the vertical face of a rock that could crush your house into bits, unless your house was as big as... oooh... Steve Gate's or Larry Ellison's.


As for the 'tight rope walker'? I continue to wonder what the artist meant by placing the figure in this spot.
Is the figure 'walking' on the lower crack? I would answer 'yes'...but that's just the answer from a 20th century guy who wants to see a logical explanation of things.
Is the figure using the upper crack in anyway? is this significant??
Your guess (and they are guesses, aren't they?) is as good as mine.

One thing about actually seeing a good amount of 'glyphs is... that you come away w/ more questions than answers. And it is impossible not to be awed.
Only a few are at easy viewing distance/ close to ground level - most are 25...50...75 or more feet above the beaten path. And I do mean 'above' - & very dangerously so!
( As I was walking along these trails, there were others who brought binoculars to view the glyphs, that's how high up they are!)
It took a whole lot of effort to do these, so they must have been important, in some way.

I have read in a number of places that the earth and this place in particular was significantly warmer and wetter a thousand years ago - even taking that into consideration, this is one very difficult place to 'make a living'.
That these people made the effort to carve these signs/signals... & 'worship'(that's really what it needs to be called) is amazing.
I ended up feeling really small... and stupid.
But that's a good starting point, isn't it?

Here's a few links to pages about ancient rock art/etc:

http://travel.nytimes.com/2008/09/19/travel/escapes/19Pict.html

http://www.socialfiction.org/
(this one is very strange, but very interesting)

On the topic of 'creating messages that will stand the test of time' -
which is indeed a big question we need to answer, and seeing and attempting to interpret petroglyphs raises this question:

'The monumental task of warning future generations about nuclear waste dumps'

http://www.ocrwm.doe.gov/factsheets/doeymp0115.shtml

To get back to the images, which are a small concern, compared to nuclear waste dumps...
One, in particular, deserved much additional work:
the 'direction sign' ... and a compass, they are the images above.

As usual, much more on a page at my website:
(Including some of the 'getting something started' image files, and a screenshot of all the layers that make up the bottom image, above)

www.bobbennettphoto.net/BeachBlog_2009/Nevada_digital/index.html

Do you read the New York Times?

Well, if not, perhaps you should give it a try.
IMHO, they consistently produce/publish the most interesting news reports anywhere..
( I guess you can't quite call it a news'paper' anymore, it's just not that simple)
Here's a few relevant samples:

Why Newspapers Can’t Be Saved, but the News Can
By Eric Etheridge
http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/03/16/why-newspapers-cant-be-saved-but-the-news-can/


Polaroid Lovers Try to Revive Its Instant Film (5/26/09)

"Marta Bukowska, a partner in Basic Model Management in New York, said that digital cameras had entirely displaced Polaroid for the workaday tasks of scouting talent, pitching clients, and beginning a photo shoot. About 18 months ago, the agency stopped using Polaroids regularly because digital is much less expensive, but still gets requests to capture that “high-quality, old-fashioned look” with a genuine instant photo.
“It used to be something you use for a lighting test,” Ms. Bukowska said. “Now it is the art itself.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/26/technology/26polaroid.html?_r=1&hp

From a follow up article published today:

"At first, we were merely amazed. Hundreds of readers answered our request on Tuesday for their Polaroid photographs, in response to an article in The Times about efforts afoot in the Netherlands to reinvent instant film. By the time we closed the submission gates on Thursday morning, 932 of your pictures had arrived.
Our amazement, however, soon gave way to grateful and respectful astonishment. The quality of the work was even more impressive than the quantity......"

http://lens.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/05/29/readers-photos/?hp


"Smile and Say ‘No Photoshop’ "
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/28/fashion/28RETOUCH.html?_r=1&8dpc

No photoshop? They're kidding, right?? They aren't, and I'm happy to hear it!

"I'll be back" ;-) in a few days, w/ some Nevada digital montage things... which are, definitely, photoshop.
But have no fear, I haven't succumbed completely to the 'dark side'(digital) yet! - there's a good bit of 'darkroom' coming up after that.

Darkroom - a 'silver lining' in a cloud

This is the first print that has come out of the film I shot in Nevada last December.
Curiously enough the main negatives were 'bookends' for the trip - the stormy sky being shot the first afternoon I went to Valley of Fire, and the carousel being on the last roll, at Casa De Fruta, outside Gilroy CA., on the way home.

I've started using what most might consider to be an ass-backwards way of figuring out a montage image - I make a quick digital shot of the contact sheet frame, and mess w/ it in Photoshop, to see how it works before I make a print.
If you haven't been paying attention, the cost of traditional materials seems to have increased a lot in recent years - the 50 sheet box of 16x20" paper I used to buy at a local store (in SF) for a bit over 100$ is now not available there & has to be ordered from Freestyle in L.A., after shipping, it's almost 200$. So whatever I can do to zero in on the image without wasting paper is a good idea.

(It's also convenient that I like rice, beans, pasta... and have a simple 'no frills, and no car', life! )

The Photoshop sketch, crude as it is, tells me all I need to know - this one is gonna look reeeal nice - :-)
The big curve of the clouds is a mirror of the shape of the carousel.

When I see a test of the stormy skies, it's pretty obvious that the foreground/land is waaay dark and featureless, almost clear plastic film base... so I held(dodged) it back, and blew in another foreground, from Valley of Fire.

In spite of the fact that this was printed on RC 'pearl' surface paper ( which is definitely NOT a hand-coloring artist's choice!), I gave it a try anyway.
it turned out better than I thought it would.

As usual, for more go to:

www.bobbennettphoto.net/BeachBlog_2009/SilverLining/index.html

Desert Spaces

One 'disease' that is really good to get... is a thing called 'the travel bug'.
If you are a photographer, it will never do you wrong - gotta get out there, somewhere, anywhere, and 'shoot yerself silly' = make a capture (or shoot film) of anything, & everything that catches your eye...
& 'bring it on home'.... and sift thru it all, many times.
You may perhaps find that what you shot very quickly, 'off the cuff', to be better than what you thought initially was a good shot.
If you've been following my posts (thanks for doing so, BTW), you'll remember that I took a year-end 2008 trip to Nevada - shot 24 rolls of film, made about 550+ digital pix.
Sooooo glad I did!, I am still looking over all those images, and seeing things I didn't see before.

I suggest you do the same! - get out there, somewhere, anywhere, and 'shoot yerself silly'!.
You'll be glad you did.

If you are raising kids? Throw 'em in the car, and hit the road, show 'em a few things they haven't seen before. Eventually, they will thank you for it. If they complain? tell them to shut the **** up, and count cows, or something like that.

My dad took all the family on many road trips when I was growing up - our 'home base'? - Gardiner, Maine.
We went to: New Brunswick, Canada,...Quebec City,...Toronto, ..Upper NY state (Lake Champlain), ..the Bay of Fundy (Nova Scotia).... and a lot of other places I don't remember in particular, after 40 years, but I definitely remember the gist of it it all.
What a grrrr-eat 'education'! So glad he did, didn't appreciate it that much at the time...
But wow!, it has really stuck w/ me.
I continue to 'get out there', follow the thread he started.

(It is said that the dead aren't really gone, until everyone alive... forgets them.
I haven't, and won't. Maybe you should consider doing the same.)

A couple more pages of Nevada landscapes:

www.bobbennettphoto.net/BeachBlog_2009/Spaces/index.html

If that ain't enough desert for ya, here's more:

www.bobbennettphoto.net/LscapeDigital/Desert2003/index.html

For more on the formation/geology of the west:

http://www.johnmcphee.com/
http://www.johnmcphee.com/annals.htm
http://www.johnmcphee.com/assembling.htm

And for good trip advice?...

108 road trips from Southern California
http://www.latimes.com/travel/la-trw-roadtrip,0,5653256.special

*Anything* the New York Times publishes, is worth your time:

America’s Outback: Southern Utah
http://travel.nytimes.com/2009/04/12/travel/12outback.html?8dpc

http://www.americansouthwest.net/

What better parting words could there be but 'hit the road, jack...' (and take a camera w/ ya!)

See ya in a couple of weeks......

Aaah, Simplicity! - 'The Viewpoint'

This one is very simple - just two images - that's it.
But they've made a rather mysterious place, haven't they?

Which brings up the whole topic of image making vis a vis the ridiculous amount of tweaking that can be done these days, digitally.
You've probably already guessed that I don't think too much of that.
Here's something I suggest you check out:

http://video.nytimes.com/video/2009/03/09/opinion/1194838469575/sex-lies-and-photoshop.html
the last sentence in this 4.5 minute video?
"I dare any magazine to publish just one issue w/ out any retouching"

I don't think any magazine will take up this challenge.
In my darkroom, there isn't any choice about this, whatever I print *is*, as it is, and that's it.
I like it that way, ain't gonna change it, ever.

www.bobbennettphoto.net/BeachBlog_2009/Viewpoint/index.html