30 Sunday Apr 2017
Posted in Digital Photography, Portraits and People, Uncategorized
Tags
art, art paint brush, artist, artistic blur, blur, intentional blur, nikon 36 - 72 series e lens, nikon 36 - 72 series e lens reversed, nikon d800, oil painting, painting, portrait, reversed lens
Nikon D800 with 36 – 72 Series E lens reversed and at 72mm. Blur effect is all in-camera. Some vibrance added and shadows opened in post capture.
21 Friday Apr 2017
Tags
black and white darkroom, black and white film, black and white film photography, black and white film portrait, black and white photography, black and white portrait, black and white prints, female, female portrait, film, fuji neopan acros film, high contrast black and white, nikon 105 f1.8 lens, nikon film camera, nikon fm2/t, portrait, silver gelatin prints, woman
I recently had a physical and discovered that my thyroid functioning is somewhat sub par. One result of that can be difficulty concentrating (I would say staying focused, but being a photographer and all…), and perhaps some memory lapses. I prefer to think of it as the absent-mindedness of a genius. In any case, the fix is in, the drugs are being taken each morning, and all will be peachy in short order, I’m assured.
So, I will blame what happened to me in the darkroom a few days ago (I think, or was it this morning?) on this totally biological abnormality and not on my being deficient in general intelligence. I walked in to develop the film that contained four of these images and grabbed the paper developer, Ilford Multigrade Developer instead of the Kodak D-76 that had been my original goal. I had put the paper dev into collapsible plastic containers to keep out air with its deleterious properties and had the D-76 on the floor in a gallon container by the refrigerator.
Normally, for paper, the paper dev is diluted 1:9. I used it on the poor rolls of film at 1:1 for one of the rolls, and at FULL STOCK STRENGTH for the other. That is the roll you see here. Needless to say, result was catastrophic. They were what we called in the olden days, “Bullet proof” in the highlights. So, I had to use grade 00 contrast filtration and do a lot of tricky burning and dodging to get what you see here from the scanned prints. The face particularly required a full minute of burning in. The overall exposure times ran into 2 – 3 minutes at f4 on the enlarging lens.
I hope I don’t do this again.
This, by the way, is my lovely wife, Christy. Camera was Nikon FM2/T with good old 105 f1.8 manual focus Nikkor lens on it. Film was Fuji Neopan Acros 100 shot at that rated ISO.
21 Thursday Apr 2016
Tags
african american, alternative photographic process, black and white, film camera, film photography, platinum/palladium printing, platiumn/palladium, portrait, senior citizen
For you who are holding your breath until my next exciting installment, here is one of today’s outcomes. This one actually has some strength. I was pretty frustrated earlier today until I checked again in my book on alternative processes and got reminded to mix enough emulsion for the next size up when being a beginner. My earlier (expensive trash can material) prints today were mottled and streaky. The coating wasn’t getting onto the paper for good, even coverage. So I counted drops into the shot glass for a 5 x 7 print to do a 4 x 5 and things were much improved.You really hate to botch these prints because of the cost and time consumed in finally being able to determine that a particular effort was in vain. I was about to ship my UV box back to Austin…
For a little background into this subject, I will copy and paste from one of my other blogs about sandlot baseball games during my middle childhood:
“If we were lucky, Jimmy Porter made an appearance as well. Mr. Porter had been a player in the Black Baseball League and had come to Carrollton in the 1940’s. He is another topic altogether, but I’ll touch on this here. He would come to the field and coach us some. I particularly remember a lesson on laying down a bunt. He would tell us about life and caution us on keeping our behavior in good order. Jimmy would pitch, but would always stand between the mound and second base for our safety’s sake since he was pitching the ball harder than we might be used to from the boys our age. I remember his bats. They were heavy and seemed as thick as tree trunks. He’d carry two or three around, gripping all of them with one hand, the bats protruding out over his right shoulder with his old glove fastened over the end of one. We were his ‘little friends’ and he has a peewee league field named after him today.” This is the man pictured here:
I took this picture in 1982, I believe, using a Nikon FE with a 55mm micro Nikkor attached. The film was Kodak Technical Pan and was shot at 25 ISO of all things. (It was the best sharpness solution for those of us who didn’t have a large format camera.) I have no idea how I got a sharp picture. I was pretty new at photography. He was sitting outside an old storage building facing the already set sun in the west. I asked him and his friend Ira if I could take their pictures. I did one of each man solo, then of the two of them. This is the only image I have to work with now.
I printed each of them an archival 11 x 14 and toned in Kodak Poly Toner. I put in frames to give them. When Mr Porter here died some few years later, someone got the print I gave him into the hands of the now long expired Dallas Times Herald. My picture showed up on the front cover of their weekly insert mini magazine. I found the print sometime later in an old historical house in Carrollton, Texas, where all this happened. It was upstairs as a part of their small museum. I’m not sure where it is today. It may be there. I’ll go look sometime.
Anyway, I’m glad to have made this my first Pt/Pl print I really like and to have learned how to do better in the future!
