Beach Mirage - in the darkroom again

I started w/ just an image in my head, of a figure on the mirrored beach walking into the distance, in search of what? ..i wasn't sure.
It is of course a B&W neg, i shot a whole roll of this view, it was a spectacular occurrence at Ocean Beach, San Francisco. The sand was almost level, at low tide the water didn't recede, it created this glass-like mirrored surface, reflecting the sky. This is a digitally colorized version of one of the frames.

For this montage, i chose another frame w/ just the single figure.

Initially i thought i would burn in some ships moored at a long pier, something like this image, done in 2010:

But it felt too much like i was repeating myself, the first test was just muddy... so i went back to old tried and true methods, and sifted thru contact sheets til i came upon some images taken at Marin Headlands, of a figure at the end of a long tunnel, one of the remnants of decades of military installations and gun batteries.
The figure is playing bagpipes, the tunnel echoed the sound mysteriously, incredibly. Which of course doesn't show up in the film at all.

There we go again, i had the 'Aha!' moment.
On the contact sheet, it didn't look like there was much shadow detail, when i worked with it, it turned out there was shadow detail, as it fades into the sky, makes it more interesting, what is this space the figure is walking into? A place of myth or legend? And who is the figure standing out over the ocean?
That's a 'the viewer gets to decide' question.

I tried a digital colorization of this one, once again it's.. uh... kinda interesting, but nothing to rave about. There are 4 layers of color adjustments:
1 - a basic Hue/Sat colorize that makes it all seemed toned blue.
2 - a selective color layer that only affects the beach, warming it up a bit, making the blue a bit more cyan - Neutrals/ +cyan, + Yellow.
3 - a selective color layer only affection the opening at the end of the tunnel, warming it up a bit, +y to neutrals.
4 - an overall SC layer, adds a touch more warmth (whites/ +Y).

Then i came back and worked on it some more.

Subtle difference, but it works for me.
Now I can hit 'save' and write it to back-up HD's.
As usual, larger images at a page on my site:

www.bobbennettphoto.net/BeachBlog_2014/BeachMirage/index.html

Last but not least, digital photography is now 25 years old.
This is a page well worth your time:



July 31, 2014 5:00 amJuly 31, 2014 5:00 am 
Digital Photography: A Look Back - by James Estrin
http://lens.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/07/31/digital-photography-nppa-james-estrin/?_php=true&_type=blogs&_r=0

Some mo' darkroom! this one's called 'ascension'

...I started this one by working with the P'shop 'sketch', working w/ a sandwich of two negs (The clouds and the mountains at the top), and a few stair steps from military ruins in Marin Headlands.

But as i started working on the print (the sandwich part), and did a test, it just didn't feel right, it just didn't work, i had a feeling in my gut about that. (Doing this sort of work, or any creative work, you need to develop that 'gut feeling' instinct.)

It still needed work, but it had some magic about it.
So...... sparing you the description of the rummaging i went thru, i ended up w/ something else.

I did something i have done many times before, when i was vexed, and couldn't go further - i covered the tray of developer w/ some freeze wrap, to keep it from degrading ( +becoming weaker from one day to the next).
I slept on it, this image, hoping i would come up w/ the 'next step'.
Which is what happened - i sifted thru all my Nevada 2008 negs, and found 1 where the hi-lite on the desert floor, when sandwiched w/ the stair steps, lined up perfectly, or awfully damn close to it. The way the stair steps start, on the playa... and then ascend thru the mountains and into the sky adds mystery, and tension.
It took a few tries to perfect the dodge and burn on this one - the lower right corner was a bit too dark, the steps at upper right were a bit burned out.

Once I nailed that, i thought...Hmmm... is there anything else that 'belongs here'? ..that expands the meaning of this one?
The image is about a journey, a trip, climbing up somewhere, somewhere beyond the mountains and horizon. So what do i have that compliments that thought? (it might not be obvious, or visually obvious).
I found something, a neg I'd shot many years ago at the Musee Mechanique in SF, when it was still on the bottom floor of Cliff House. The only windows faced west, and the end of day light streamed in at varying angles depending on the time of year. It was always interesting to see what was lit up, it changed subtly from day to day.

http://www.museemecaniquesf.com/

http://www.museemechanique.org/

This one item, a weight machine of some sort, had a spinning wheel that would display various 'fortunes' you might be liable for. I really liked the one that said 'there are many answers to all questions'. it seemed to connect w/ the journey/quest idea in the image...... so i blew in just that part of the neg.

That works for me, adds that extra something special, enigmatically, tugging at your imagination.
How many questions? How many answers?
It's endless. welcome to 'life', it's crazy, but make it fun, you only go around once, no rehearsals, no re-do's, no Command+Z.

I did digital colorizations of both of these, just for shits -

....they are only OK.... just barely.
I can do soooo much more w/ Q-tips, cotton balls, and some oil colors:

http://californiasilverwizard.blogspot.com/2014/01/hand-coloring-binge-december-2013.html

http://www.bobbennettphoto.net/HndClr/index.html

...and you can, too.

Larger images, a few more comments:
www.bobbennettphoto.net/BeachBlog_2014/Ascension/index.html