Sunday, July 27, 2008

Darkroom!! :-) - 'Desert Distance'

I've done plenty of montage images that have been 'top to bottom', and 'from the center/out' blends, but haven't worked much with a diagonal axis blend/dodge & burn.
Being always ready to try something new, I gave this one a spin, the challenge was too much to pass up.
(nothing ventured?, nothing gained! ...right?)



The shack (on the left, above) was shot somewhere in the Mojave Nat'l Preserve.... I think.
The landscape and sky that's burned in from the lower left was taken somewhere along CA. Rte. 58, from Bakersfield to Mojave, CA., looking south-west. I was much closer to Mojave, than to Bakersfield - I was definitely past the mountains, heading down to Mojave.
On this particular trip, I was racing east to avoid all the storminess coming in off the ocean.
The storms made it over the coastal ranges, and continued over the central valley, and hit another impasse at the next range of mountains/elevation - which is what formed the swirling clouds on the horizon I caught in this frame.


It was the angle of the roof in the shack, and the similar angle of the clouds, that connected for me.

This is a good time to back up for a few moments, and explain my work process in the darkroom.
I almost always start by making successive exposures on four sheets of paper - I put them back in a light-safe box, and make additional exposures, until I decide to develop them.
Usually if there two dominant exposures that make a 'basic' version of an image, I'll develop the #1 sheet, to see how that works. If I'm lucky and 'in the groove', that first one might be a keeper. If not, that's OK, I still have 3 more left, I can make adjustments & corrections.
Hopefully, prints 2 & 3 will be exposed better. If I develop #2, it's almost always a 'keeper', and if so, I'll also expose & develop #3, just so I have an alternate.




Then I have #4, undeveloped, and ripe for an 'additional touch' ;-)

In this particular case, #1 fell a bit short, #2 & #3 (above) were right on...
so #4 got that 'additional touch' - a traffic directing sign, in the middle of nowhere......
Larger images, including the final/#4 are at:

www.bobbennettphoto.net/BeachBlog_Dkrm_5_08/Distance.html

(If you've been wondering "Hey, what happened to the supposed '50% digital' in this blog?",
well, I just haven't done much of that recently, what else can I say?
It just does not turn me on the way darkroom does.)