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.
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.

Another 'MUST'!!! Use a "NON-HARDENING fixer"
A hardening fixer will make coloring difficult.

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