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THE WORLD’S NEWSSTAND®
__________________________
______________________________________
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pg. 26
Baby Toss, archival pigment print, Julie Blackmon
Contents
DOMESTIC VACATIONS
Julie Blackmon
Jerry O’Neill
6
4
12
Tom Millea: After Platinum
21
Olivia Parker
Books, Pages and Tablets
David Vestal
18
Commentary on the promise and inherent responsibilities
of change
A journey of exploration from platinum to new
photographic vision
Illuminating glimpses of the relationship of the
visual and verbal
Homage to the passing of Irving Penn and Marty Forscher
TRANSITIONS
Nolan Preece: Chemograms
& Nolangrams
Beautiful experiments in cameraless photography
26
Depictions of family life with an enchanting twist
Genius Behind the Lens
Portfolios / Articles
34
Bruce Barnbaum
STONE: the Slit Canyons
Discovery and capture of pristine black and white
images of Arizona’s Antelope Canyon
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Jan/Feb 2010
Vol. 31 No. 1
Formerly PHOTO Techniques Magazine
from
the Editor
Publisher S. Tinsley Preston III
Editor Paul R. Schranz
Sales Manager Heidi Melendrez
Circulation Marketing Janice Gordon
Creative Director Lisa Cordova
Copy Editor Bonnie Schranz
With full respect for the photographic history and practices that have come
before us, and dedicated to the vast array of exciting contemporary practitioners, I welcome you to a rejuvenated photo technique magazine. With this
issue we begin our 31st year.
Production Roberta Knight
Online Content Coordinator Bree Lamb
Project Manager Norma Vechot
Newstand Distribution
From the tradition of assembled works of Oscar Rejlander and H. P. Robinson,
we present the exciting and impeccably fresh work of Julie Blackmon.
From the early investigations into cameraless imagery, we present the
Chemograms of Nolan Preece. From the rich presentation in the making of
platinum prints, we offer the digital alternatives of Tom Millea. From the
tradition of superb silver printing we present a special series of images from
Bruce Barnbaum. We also include new explorations of narrative work by
the remarkable Olivia Parker.
Curtis Circulation Company
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You will find extended technical articles on Color Balance by Ctein and an
interesting insight into the history of Kodachrome by Abhay Sharma and
Paul Sergeant.
We welcome back Jerry O’Neill, who will offer expanded coverage of news
from all fields of photography, and we hope you will appreciate the new
Innovations section that showcases interesting tools that slip by mainstream
coverage, but can prove invaluable to your photography.
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not as ends in themselves, but as critical tools we need for creating the most
professional photographic images.
For new subscriptions, renewals or change
of address call 866-295-2900 or email at
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We are in transition, with dozens of new multi-national contributing photographers.
Also note that you are invited to respond to each article by going online to the
Photo Tech Forum at www.phototechforum.com where you can join ongoing
discussions of issues that affect how and why we make photographs today.
We promise more surprises to come from photo technique.
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photo technique magazine
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photo technique (ISSN 1083-9070) is published
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PRINTED IN THE U.S.A. by St. Croix Press Inc.
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Innovations
41
42
D-Roller a handy tool for flattening your prints
Lensbaby introduces their new 12mm fisheye
lens and a 50mm soft focus lens
Image Rights protect your images with an
online image search service
X-Rite ColorChecker Passport a quick
and easy tool for reliable color balancing
Purosol two new eco-friendly products
guaranteed to leave your lenses and
screens squeaky clean
News
5
pg. 12
Instant Film is Back
Winning the 2009 Nobel Prize
2010 Call for Entries
Tech
39
KODACHROME
the film that changed the way we see
Abhay Sharma with Paul Sergeant
43
Color Correction Made Easier
Ctein
pg. 21
Next Issue...
DOPPELGÄNGER
Cornelia Hediger
SYNTHETIC CITYSCAPES
Lori Nix
DIGITAL PAPER NEGATIVES
Chris Woodhouse
AERIAL PHOTOGRAPHS
Al Weber
NIGHT IN DAY: ultra neutral
density photographs
Front Cover
Cole Thompson
Julie Blackmon
Cherry, 22"x 22"
Edition of 25
LIGHTING: Jewelry
David Barowsky
Insect Photography in Nature
julieblackmon.com
Doppelgänger 15, Cornelia Hediger
Gene Fedorov
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TRIBUTE:
Genius Behind The Lens
Jerry O’Neill
Top Left
The cover of one of
Penn’s many books:
his famous 1957 portrait
of Picasso.
Top Right
One of Penn’s first
Vogue covers is also
one of his best known.
Irving Penn, 92, and Marty Forscher, 87,
both died recently. Both were highly
regarded in the world of photography²Penn for highly stylized fashion
photography and straight-on portraits, Forscher for his ability to repair
nearly any damaged camera and to
construct cameras and accessories
that didn’t exist but should have.
Penn’s photographs, wrote Merry
A. Foresta, co-organizer of a 1990
retrospective of his work, showed “the
control of an art director fused with
the process of an artist,” according
to The New York Times obituary. “A
courtly man whose gentle demeanor
masked an intense perfectionism, Mr.
Penn adopted the pose of a humble
craftsman while helping to shape
a field known for putting on airs.
Schooled in painting and design, he
chose to define himself as a photographer . . . [his photographs] precisely
describ[ed] the profile of a Balenciaga
coat or of a Moroccan djellaba in a
way that could almost mesmerize the
viewer.”
Many of his fashion photographs
were of Lisa Fonssagrives, his favorite model and also his wife for 42
years, until her death at the age of
80 in 1992. “Mr. Penn’s photographs of
Fonssagrives captured a slim woman
of sophistication and radiant good
health and set the aesthetic standard
for the elegant fashion photography
of the 1940s and ‘50s,” said the Times.
Penn worked for, and with, two leading magazine art directors, Alexey
Brodovitch (Harper’s Bazaar) and
Alexander Liberman (Vogue).
Sarah Greenough, the senior curator of photographs at the National
Gallery of Art in Washington, worked
with Penn on an exhibition and says he
was “amazingly kind and generous. .
. He was, I think as you can see in his
photographs, an extraordinary gentleman in everything he did.”
For many professional photographers³and also for “threadbare
students, bejeweled celebrities and
anxious tourists,” according to the
Times³Marty Forscher was “for decades the most sought-after camera
repairman in the country.” For more
than 40 years (from 1946-1987) he ran
Professional Camera Repair Service
(PCR) in midtown Manhattan. Much
more than simply a repairman, he
could adapt nearly any lens to fit any
camera and invented several camera
accessories, including an early compact motor drive for 35mm cameras.
In 1982 he patented his best-known
invention, the Polaroid film Pro-Back³
which finally gave 35mm photographers what medium and large-format
photographers had had since the ‘60s,
an immediate proof print that precisely showed exposure, lighting, and
composition.
Forscher believed news photographers played an important role in the
struggle for social justice, as well as in
documenting history. His “attitude was
that these photojournalists are the
ones that have to stick their heads up
out of that foxhole to get the pictures,
so their cameras damn well better work,” Noah Schwartz, a former
machinist’s assistant at Professional
Camera Repair, told the Times. “So
every camera we fixed was with that
attitude.”
Along the same lines, in the early
1960s Forscher “began begging discarded cameras from magazines,
fixing them and sending them South”
so the Student Nonviolent Coordinating
Committee could document the civil
rights movement. “When the cameras
were dashed to the ground or
drenched by police fire hoses, Mr.
Forscher repaired them and sent them
back again,” the Times commented.
The photography blog The Online
Photographer reminisced that Marty
Forscher was “a sort of unofficial
support staff for generations of independent photographers, from lordly
Richard Avedon on down to the lowliest wet-behind-the-ears student . . .
and that he “famously called the Nikon
F ‘a hockey puck that could take pictures.’ He was a gadfly who prodded
the camera manufacturers to making
better, stronger, more resilient, more
reliable, and more easily repairable
gear.” And the_online_photographer
quotes photographer Rod Sainty, who
remembers a talk “Marty made to
an annual gathering of pro news
photographers some time around
1978-80. ‘Though acknowledging the
increased features that cameras had
which enabled amateurs to make
photos more easily,’ Rod says, ‘he was
dismayed at the increasing frailty of
cameras with which pros had to work.
I remember his opening statement
that he had been appointed keeper
of the flame of cameras past, and a
later one that ‘camera manufacturers
should decide whether they are in the
tool business or in the toy business.’”
And photographer Rob Atkins commented, “I met Mr. Forscher in the mid
‘80s, when I took my 15mm Nikon to
PCR for a custom job. (Replacing the
built-in filters with an 80A and 85B.) I
remember him as a very kind and
gracious man. He gave me his business card and told me to call him in a
week to see if my lens was ready. I still
have his card. . . . “
Jerry O’Neill is a veteran photographer
and writer who has been involved in the
photographic industry for more than
three decades.
4 photo technique J/F 2010
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NEWS
INSTANT FILM IS BACK
Fujifilm has been making instant films for the Japanese home market under an
agreement with Polaroid. When Polaroid announced plans to discontinue making instant film, Fujifilm began planning to provide film to the U.S. and Canadian
markets in addition to Japan. Its first product will be a pro film, Fujifilm FP-100B
4x5 black-and-white instant film, an EI 100, positive, “peel-apart” panchromatic
material with rich gradation, fine grain, and high resolution that develops in 30
seconds ² think “similar to Type 52.” FP-100B is designed for the Fujifilm 4x5 Pack
Holder PA-45, which fits 4x5 cameras, and provides 10 sheets per pack, with a
suggested retail price of $42.40 per pack. Fujifilm U.S.A. has not yet announced
if it plans to also import the companion product, Fujifilm FP-100C Color Instant
Film, also an EI 100 4x5 pack film.
Meanwhile, for amateur photographers, Utah-based Summit Global Group
has a worldwide exclusive license agreement to distribute instant film under
the Polaroid brand. The film will be manufactured by Fujifilm in Japan and
Impossible BV in the Netherlands, among others, with expected availability in
North America in early 2010. Starting with the 125i film (B&W), a color version
is expected later in the year. Summit Global plans to bring back many of the
famous instant film formats, while Impossible BV is developing the Impossible
Project, a new product for vintage instant cameras. And finally, Polaroid itself
has announced it will resume production of instant cameras by the middle of
2010. More info at www.fujifilm.com; www.thesummitglobalgroup.com; and
www.the-impossible-project.com
Bending Light Wins Three
Scientists The 2009
Nobel Prize In Physics
Since photography is “writing with light,” being able to control light precisely is at the
heart of our art and science. In the mid-1960s,
Charles K. Kao, then working at the Standard
Telecommunication Laboratories in England,
provided the groundwork for the important
field of fiber optics. He discovered that the
glass used to make early glass fibers was not
pure enough, causing 99% of the light to dissipate within 20 meters. A purer glass would be
more transparent, allowing the light to travel
much farther. This was proved in 1970, when researchers at Corning Glass Works produced an
ultra-pure optical fiber more than a half-mile
(about 800m) long. Fiber optics have become
so widely used that if all the optical cables in
use today were unraveled, the fibers in them
would total more than 600 million miles long!
The other two scientists, Willard S. Boyle and
George E. Smith, of Bell Labs, invented the CCD
sensor, the first electronic imaging chip and
the core of many of today’s digital cameras.
The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said
the scientific work honored by this year’s prize
“has built the foundation to our modern information society.” Kao will receive half of the $1.4
million total prize, and Boyle and Smith will split
the other half.
Call for Entries:
The Figure Now
Embracing Our Differences
Fontbonne University Fine Arts
Gallery juried exhibition, Feb 5-26.
Cash prizes. U.S. and Canadian
artists. All mediums portraying
the human figure; must fit through
standard door. $35 up to 3 entries.
Prospectus: www.artshow.com or
SASE to Fontbonne University Fine
Arts Gallery, 6800 Wydown Blvd,
St. Louis, MO 63105.
7th annual visual art exhibit
celebrating diversity. 39 billboardsized selected images displayed
April 2010, Sarasotan and North
Port, FL. Entries must reflect theme,
Embracing Our Differences, and
effectively adapt to outdoor
billboard size. Professional jurors.
$3,000 in awards. No entry fee.
Email __________________
[email protected].;
call 314-719-3580.
Contact Michael Shelton
[email protected];
___________________ call
941-928-0567.
Deadline: Jan 6
Deadline: Jan 12
PhotoSpiva 34th Annual National
Photographic Competition
12th Annual International Juried
Photographers in U.S. and
territories. Original work, all
photographic processes; not
previously exhibited at George
A. Spiva Center for the Arts. March
6-April 25. JPG files 2000 pixels
RGB. Juror Deborah Klochko.
Portrait Competition
Portrait Society of America
international competition/exhibition,
portraiture and figurative works.
Final judging at annual conference,
April 22-25. $55,000+ in prizes; Entry
$40 for 3 submissions. All mediums.
Enter at http://www.photospiva.
org/l10/.
Contact Amanda Oliver 877-7724321, [email protected];
___________________
www.portraitsociety.org.
Deadline: Jan 8
Deadline: March 1
phototechmag.com 5
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Grams, Grams, Chemograms
& Nolangrams
Nolan Preece
Digital photography is now taking on the burden once carried by conventional
photography, but artistic exploration will continue with many outdated processes
in the years to come.
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GRAMS, GRAMS, CHEMOGRAMS & NOLANGRAMS NOLAN PREECE
Photography lends itself to producing a multitude of
effects difficult to obtain otherwise. Chemistry may
be the least explored area when it comes to new
image invention without a camera. The popularity of digital capture has pushed photography so
far ahead that unexplored processes have been
left behind, as was the case in the early days of
photography. It is a new day for chemical experimentation in the wet darkroom.
My first serious exploration into some of the nuances of photography began in 1978 while pursuing
an MFA at Utah State. I was working feverishly to
come up with new ideas, as grad students usually
do. Of interest at the time were the sabbatier effect
(solarization), cliché verre (handmade negatives on
glass) and the photogram (I borrowed the word
“gram” for these techniques). These were often
considered rouge techniques outside the realm of
“true photography” defined as photography that involved a camera, film and a darkroom. I wanted to
work contrary to the convention, as Moholy-Nagy
had suggested. He stated that photography was all
the results that can be achieved by photographic
means with or without a camera. At that same time
Surrealist painters Max Ernst, Yves Tanguay, Roberto
Matta and Man Ray also influenced my work.
NOLANGRAMS
During research in 1979, I came across an interesting
account of the painter Corot who had held a piece
of glass over a candle and smoked it with soot.
Then he drew into the soot and contact printed the
resulting image on photo-sensitive paper. The technique he was working with was called cliché verre
in French or “glass negative.” I had to try this out.
A kerosene lamp worked fine, so I cut some
small squares of glass and pre-tested them in the
enlarger to see if they would fit. I applied soot to
several pieces of the glass and started making
scratches with an etching needle. Accidentally,
my hand bumped the kerosene container, and as
the oil spread out across one of the soot covered
glass squares, the most incredible patterns and
designs started to take shape. It was so strange
it was surreal. I had found something I had never
seen before, either in the history of photography
or art. I decided to include the new discovery in my
master’s thesis, and I set to work laying a foundation
of images.
The glass negatives could be printed directly onto
photo paper with an enlarger, or inter-negatives
could be contact printed from the glass negatives.
I tried solvents other than kerosene, and it seemed
that mineral spirits worked the best. The technical
addition of selenium duo toning in 1999 increased
the color and added another dimension to the
work, plus it gave greater longevity to these silver
prints. Scanning the glass negatives has now taken
Nolangrams to the digital level, and also makes
retouching much easier.
Meeting Douglas Kent Hall in 2000, I asked him what
I should do with my process. He told me, “Become
the maestro, name it, teach it, present it to the
world.” So I jokingly started calling it the Nolangram
process. For those interested in work done along
these lines, Henry Holmes Smith, Fredrick Sommer
and Francis Bruguiere are worth researching.
Above
“Legs” (Nolangram
#000) 1979
Glass negative
printed in enlarger
on Agfa Portiga Rapid
silver gelatin paper.
Duo-toned in selenium
toner.
Facing Page
“Chemical Nuptials”
(Chemogram) 1987
Silver gelatin print with
printed image
Thiourea/Sodium
Carbonate stains on
Oriental Gold toned in
GP1 for six hours.
METHODOLOGY
Creating a Nolangram is really very simple. Take
a kerosene lamp, remove the chimney, extend the
wick, light it and rotate a piece of glass over the
flame. Layers of soot will start to build up until you
have a fairly opaque quality to the glass negative.
Using eye droppers, or whatever tools you can
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PORTFOLIO:
PHILOSOPHY OF THE WORK
Above
“Carbonscape”
(Nolangram #023) 2001
Digitally scanned glass
negative, printed to 12”
x 16” with a 3800 Epson
printer on Radiant
White Watercolor
Paper. Originally
printed on Ilford
Warmtone Multigrade
FB silver gelatin paper.
Facing Page
“Ag Encounters Au”
(Chemogram) 1983
Thiourea/Sodium
Carbonate stain on
Oriental silver gelatin
paper with printed
image. Gold toned in
GP1 for six hours.
dream up, apply mineral spirits to the cooled soot
and watch the solvent spread. Stop application
when you see something that works for you. This
procedure should be done outside where the
danger of fire and fumes can be prevented. To go
digital, scan the image on the glass, clean it up with
Photoshop and print it as large as the output you
select.
CHEMOGRAMS
For photographers who like to peruse old Photo Lab
Indexes, try taking a look at old toning formulas. In
1982 I noticed that the “Varigam” toners by DuPont
included the use of Thiourea (Thiocarbamide) and
an alkaline base such as sodium hydroxide, sodium
carbonate or potassium carbonate (these chemicals
are available at Photographers Formulary). By
putting each of these chemicals in salt and pepper
shakers and applying them to a wet sheet of silver
gelatin paper, the magic begins. The resulting
unpleasant silver sulfide stain is then toned in a GP1
gold solution to open it up into yellows, crimsons and
reddish browns. This is the method I use to make
a Chemogram. An enlarged printed image can
be incorporated into the overall print, and can be
selectively fixed under the safelight with a brush
where you don’t want staining action to take place.
Then apply the chemicals with salt and pepper
shakers to achieve the selective staining desired.
Finally, fix the entire image, hypo clear and wash
normally. Chemograms scan beautifully and can be
combined with other digital images. (Remember to
treat all chemicals as if they are toxic.)
The aesthetics of these processes are grounded
in surrealism. They bring into play the accidental,
whereby the photographer becomes a controller
rather than a creator. This method of working
often produces multiple levels of meaning brought
together to create a sense of connection that is
intuitive, unconscious and abstract. The images are
more accurately felt than observed. With some of
these photographs, especially the Chemograms,
the juxtaposition of a printed image with chemical
staining creates a form of spatial interaction in which
the illusion of depth is provided by the printed image.
When chemical staining alone is used, dark tones
advance and light chemical coloration recedes,
creating another form of spatial interaction. Both
of these effects tend to produce a warm/cool
contrast. These techniques may seem draconian,
but it is the result that counts. Imagination comes
into play with critical thought processes about
control and the use of materials. Many ideas and
combinations of ideas are passed over in search of
the one single personal vision for the final print.
The fact that brilliant permanent color effects
can be created by chemical means on B&W photo
paper leaves many questions unanswered. It is
gold chloride that does the work to transform olive
drab into vibrant color, and at the same time gives
great longevity to the print. The Nolangram, printed
on silver paper from a ghost matrix on glass then
duo-toned in selenium, brings forth new exploration
being done with cameraless photography.
It is artistic nature to struggle with oneself and
then come to some sort of subjective conclusion
in resolving the work. A recent paradigm shift has
occurred in photography, not unlike the one in both
photography and painting more than a century
ago, but all indicators point to a bright future for
photography. Digital photography is now taking
on the burden once carried by conventional
photography, but artistic exploration will continue
with many outdated processes in the years to come.
Nolan Preece is a fine art photographer and art professor/
galleries curator at Truckee Meadows Community College in
Reno, NV. He teaches digital photography, platinum printing and
alternative photo processes. www.preece.myexpose.com
To ask a question or comment on this article, visit our online Forum:
www.phototechforum.com
Product Resources
Chemistry obtained at Photographers’ Formulary;
Oriental paper: Kodak Dektol developer; Ilford fixer;
Apple iMac computer; Adobe Photoshop CS4 software;
Epson 4990 scanner and Epson 3800 printer; Beseler
45MCRX enlarger with a Schneider -Kreuznach 150 mm
Componon-S lens; Beseler darkroom timer and easel
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PORTFOLIO:
“Chemical Storm Event”, (Chemogram), 1990
Thiourea/Sodium Carbonate stains on Oriental silver gelatin paper
with solarized Dektol painted lines. Gold toned in GP1 for eight hours.
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“A Simple Solution”, (Chemogram), 2008
Thiourea/Sodium Carbonate stains on Bergger silver gelatin paper
with Dektol stamped rectangles. Gold toned in GP1 for five hours.
phototechmag.com 11
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Left
(Figure 3) Photoshop’s
Variations tool creates
a ring-around that will
help you evaluate the
type and magnitude of
color error in your photograph. Unfortunately,
Variations only works
on 24-bit color files.
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“It is the final image standing alone that counts.
How we got there is simply a wonderful story.”
TOM MILLEA
AFTER PLATINUM
It all came together in 2004. That was the
year I closed down my Platinum workshop
and knew I would never make another
Platinum print. Oh, how traumatic that
was after 45 years of Platinum printing.
My health demanded I stop. I had become
toxic after breathing in the heavy metals
and hydrochloric acid for 35 years.
Add to that the technical component. The films I
used were discontinued, as were many of the
chemicals. I loved using a small camera and
then enlarging the negative to make a final print.
Kodak discontinued the film I used to make the
enlarged negatives, and Polaroid stopped making
the Polapan film I used in the camera. It seemed
my days were numbered.
I decided to retire and live off the sale of the
prints I had made for so many years. I would be
like Frederick Evans, who also retired when his
beloved Platinum paper was discontinued after
World War I. So I dismantled my studio, gave the
equipment to people who needed it and sat back
to enjoy my new life.
That lasted about two months. I simply could not
do it. There were too many images still inside me
waiting to be made, so many images to complete
and give to the world.
What to do? I really didn’t know. For a while
it was a real quandary. I had been using the
computer for many years, but had always
rejected it as a tool because I felt it did not come
up to my standards for making images. It was
time to take another look. I sensed I might be able
to make it work if I tried hard enough, so I took my
retirement savings and put together a complete
digital studio
I asked other photographers how they felt
about the digital process, and I was shocked by
the response. Most felt that the digital process
was not photographic. It was too easy, too
mechanical, too cerebral, too artificial. It was
not a tintype, a daguerreotype, a cyanotype, a
pigment print, an autochrome print, a platinum or
palladium, printing out paper, or most importantly,
a silver gelatin print. In their minds if it was not
a silver gelatin print, it was not real or pure
photography. A digital print was an imitation of
other processes, a bastard process, not a new
and unique technique.
What seemed most outrageous was the feeling
digital prints were somehow not pure the way
traditional silver prints were. As if somehow a
person was more of an artist if he used any other
process other than digital. I didn’t know a single
person who made their own silver paper; they
simply went to the store for paper and premixed
chemistry, or often had someone else make the
print. I guess if you got your hands wet, you were
a photographer.
I never thought this way. I did not want digital
prints to imitate my platinum prints; I wanted my
digital prints to express my vision as closely as
possible. It took me years of work to get to that
place, but I now feel the prints are unique and
beautiful and match my vision perfectly.
When I had first experimented with color
photographs, I never liked the results. But I found
myself really excited by the possibility of making
color photographs using the computer. The color
palette of the inks fascinated me. They were so
rich and deep and produced hues I hadn’t seen
before. I really wanted to learn how to use them.
One concern that stayed with me as I began
working in color was that most photographers
I knew who were great B&W artists failed when
Facing Page
Lindsey,
platinum print
Tom Millea
phototechmag.com 13
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PORTFOLIO:
Top Left
Victoria,
platinum print
Tom Millea
Facing Page
Malika,
platinum print
Tom Millea
they tried to use color. It was as if they took one
of their great black and white images and simply
put color on top of it. I was afraid I might do the
same. So I made myself a promise. If the color in
my color image was not completely integrated
with the photograph, I would stop immediately
and go back into retirement.
I began with flower arrangements and soon
discovered the limitations of digital cameras
and lenses. I tried every camera and every lens
I could get my hands on looking for the right
combination to make the images I wanted. It was
back to school to teach myself all over again the
basics I needed to know to be successful. I had to
throw everything I knew about platinum out the
window and begin again to see with new eyes
and work with new hands.
One day, after months of frustration I went to a
friend’s house and in his front yard was a Banana
tree. A Red Banana tree to be exact. I took one
look at this tree, which is really a huge fern-like
plant, and realized this was my new project.
Within the leaves I felt a life and death struggle
that matched what was going on in my own life,
a struggle I felt deeply, and I wanted to engage it
and wrestle it to completion.
This began what turned out to be a five-year
odyssey. I worked almost every day. In summer
fog, winter rain, early in the morning, mid-day,
and late in the evening, I made images. There was
no right time to photograph, there was only to
photograph.
I tried several cameras. I bought Nikons, Leicas,
a Hasselblad, and finally a small Canon point-and
-shoot. Each camera had different lenses, and
I worked with them all. Each camera and lens
combination did something wonderful, but could
not do something else I wanted to do, so I would
sell it and buy another. I knew it was crazy, but
I did it anyway. Working my way down this path
seemed the only important thing at the time.
As days turned into months and then years as I
continued working, I realized that my color work
was unique. These were not B&W images with
color added; rather the color was unique and
completely integrated. I found myself completely
committed.
One day I went to my friend’s house to
photograph the plant again and discovered the
gardener had cut it down! Cut it down in the
prime of my series! I was shocked. Devastated is
a better word. I said to myself, “Well, I guess the
series must be finished,” trying to be philosophical
about it all. However, no matter how I put the
work together, it was not finished.
I have always photographed found objects,
like finding the Banana tree in my friend’s yard.
To go out and buy one in order to continue was
something I did not do. Yet this series demanded
I do it. So I did. I bought a small tree and put it
in my yard. I began photographing again almost
immediately, and I found the new photographs
magnificent and very different from the earlier
ones. So I continued for another year.
While I was creating the Palm series, I looked
around my studio and realized I had boxes of
negatives and slides piled to the ceiling from 30
years of work. I decided to begin scanning some
of the slides and tried to make good B&W prints
from them digitally.
For months of frustrating experimentation, I
tried everything I could think of. Nothing worked. I
would discover little pieces of the puzzle, but the
final print was terrible. Answers acceptable for
other people did not work for me. After printing in
platinum for so many years, my photographs did
not work on glossy paper. I did not see the world
with a glossy surface; I wanted a rich, deep, print
with a matte surface, and what I was getting was
just the opposite. I worked for months testing
everything I could find. Papers, inks, software, and
every different combination I could think of. Each
time I would run into a blank wall.
I eventually decided to find experts in the field
to try to find answers from them. I would call
them up and have my questions answered over
the phone. With both of us sitting at our computers
and doing the things together, I found the answers
I wanted. Or rather I found ways to look for the
answers myself. Finally the prints began to look
exactly as I wanted them to look.
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AFTER PLATINUM TOM MILLEA
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PORTFOLIO:
Top Left
Book of Palms I, #41,
pigment ink print
Tom Millea
Top Right
Book of Palms II, #47,
pigment ink print
Tom Millea
Facing Page
Nicole,
platinum print
Tom Millea
This was the process of learning I loved so much.
No one was out there giving me direct answers;
rather they were pointing me in the direction I
needed to go. How wonderful that was. Craft is
not an end in itself. It must always be subservient
to vision.
I have chosen to use the digital process because
it allows me to manifest my vision better than any
other process. I cannot say it would also be true
for anyone else. Your vision is process specific.
There is only one process that allows an artist
to actualize his or her specific vision in its purest
form. There is no right or wrong photographic
technique. Finding that process, finding that one
technique, is critical in the making of the final
image. It is the final image standing alone that
counts. How we got there is simply a wonderful
story.
Minor White, famous photographer and teacher,
once said it takes a full ten years to learn your
craft. I believe he is right. It seemed that all at
once things came together. After all those years
of learning and frustration, I now have completed
three portfolios of B&W images and two of color.
It has been a long and difficult journey, but
worth every minute of it. For me, this work was
only possible using digital techniques. Nothing
else would work for me. So it no longer matters
what other people think. I know I have brought
forth my vision in the best possible way, and I am
completely happy with it.
Tom Millea
www.tommillea.com
Product Resources
B&W images were shot with a Nikon; digital images
were made with a Hasseblad H2D, Leica SLR, Nikon
5000 and a Canon G-10; Millea prints digitally with
Epson 4800 and 9800 printers on Moab paper.
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AFTER PLATINUM TOM MILLEA
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COMMENTARY:
TRANSITIONS
“We can’t step in the same river twice. It’s not only the river that changes. We change, too,
although we seldom notice it at the time. And we are set in our ways. So we contradict
ourselves? Constantly. Don’t worry; it’s normal. Unexpected things happen, and good or
evil, or both, result.”
By: David Vestal
What to do? We can panic if we choose to; we’d better
adapt to the changes. Let’s try them. We may like them.
If not, what can I say? The changes are here, and so are
we. But we and the river are not all that change. The
changes also change. Make what you will of that. Some
will see it as a dilemma that leaves no hope, which may
be true for them. But I think that constant change gives
us good chances to grab the brass ring as we go by.
Now there’ll be changes in this magazine. I can’t
judge them at present. It may get better than before, and
I’m for that. So, what changes would I like to see?
For one thing, more pictures. I think that’s on its way,
with five portfolios planned per issue. For another, better pictures, an iffier matter. This depends partly on
judgment and partly on luck. I’ll have no opinion until
I’ve waited and seen. And when I arrive at an opinion,
of course I may be wrong. Everyone’s personal “better”
consists of how a picture or piece of writing affects him
or her, and no two of us are enough alike to allow any
hard-and-fast certainty. I’ve sometimes come to dislike
what used to please me, and to like what I didn’t like
before. Patience and attention are called for, and I can’t
predict my reactions, let alone yours.
What else? I’d like to see more serious, not solemn,
discussions of photos and what matters about them. I’d
like to see less obsession with gadgets and with unnecessarily complicated techniques. On this I have a position
after 60 years of photographing and seeing photos. I like
working simply. I try to get the best results I can by the
simplest means. I’m sure this approach is right for me,
and I’m sure it’s not right for everyone.
My wife, Ann Treer, by her nature, printed in more
complicated ways than mine, and did it well. We often
photographed together. Sometimes her photos were
better than mine, and sometimes mine were better.
With our different ways of working, we turned out to
be equal. I worked as simply as I could and she didn’t.
Each of us was right in not working like the other. Yet
her photos and mine are much alike. Long after her
death, in printing the pictures for an unpublished book
of our travels in Brazil, I was glad I had her permission
to use her photos. Many are better than mine of the
same people and places. In a 1977 show in Sao Paulo,
which included many of my Brazil photos from 1961, the
man who hung the show included some of her photos,
thinking they were mine. They fitted right in.
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TRANSITIONS DAVID VESTAL
I have learned that it’s not for me to judge how others
work. It’s the results that count. Still, I’ll continue to
stand up for those who work simply and produce well,
as did Edward Weston, Henri Cartier-Bresson, André
Kertész, Lewis Hine, Eugéne Atget and Helen Levitt,
among others. These are a few of my guys.
It’s also not for me to judge what kinds of photographs
others should make. Let’s have variety. Photographers
can’t, don’t, and shouldn’t all see and work alike, and that
is good. There are many photos that I don’t get. Is that
because they’re no good, or is the failure mine? I can’t
always tell from here. If I were a collector, I’d be right to
pick only what I like. As a teacher and writer it’s not for
me to reject all pictures that I don’t get. I’m more broadly
receptive than many, but my
reach isn’t universal. I’m not
photo technique’s picture
editor, which is just as well.
There are others who can
appreciate photos that I don’t
get, and I must respect their
judgment.
In judging photos I also consider the photographer as a
person. But that is too iffy. Some delightful people make
poor photos, and some awful people make good ones.
In the world of scholarship and criticism, some Great
Authorities have been wrong. I’ve read what they
wrote about photography, and it’s an ignorant return to
the fussy scholasticism of the middle ages, when supposedly wise men argued bitterly about how many
angels could dance on the head of a pin. Popular false
authorities include, to name only dead ones, Walter
Benjamin, Roland Barthes, and Susan Sontag. I believe
these educated fools were sincere and didn’t know they
were phonies. Alfred Stieglitz, a special case, was a very
good photographer but a lousy guru. His eye was better
than his mind. I have more sympathy for Minor White,
a good man and a good photographer, who nevertheless
believed, spoke and taught a good deal of absolute bilge.
So it’s complicated. I rant with pleasure on such dead
celebrities, trusting, as I do, that I am right. As someone
said, holy cows make the best burgers.
Of course I may be wrong, but I’ll take that chance.
There are also living fake gurus and photographers who
fall in the same class. I don’t argue with them because
I don’t want to add to the publicity they thrive on. If
any of their nonsense appears in PT ²and it probably
will²that won’t be my fault. If you notice my silence,
you’ll know what I am thinking. Or will you?
There is something more substantial to consider than
false philosophy. Taste enters into it, but this issue is
factual. It concerns how designers treat photos. I have
recently resisted, in a thing I publish, a strong temptation
to photocopy and print the murder of a good photograph
by Cartier-Bresson. It was destroyed by running it
through the gutter between two pages of a little book
which is informative and good, except for its bad designing. It’s even inexpensive. Copyright stopped me,
and also, I’d rather use that space to present good undestroyed photos. This all too common crime is generally overlooked. I find it depressing and incredible that
many, perhaps most, book and magazine designers seem
unable to see what is right in front of them on the pages
they’ve designed. It’s vandalism through ignorance, and
it enrages me. Here is what some “visual professional”
did to the photo in question.
It’s an early, excellent HCB photo that shows a beatup, eroded wall on which irregular white areas and spots
show through dark paint in a rough pattern. A child runs
beside this wall, looking up. It’s a beautiful and evocative photo, unexplainable
but strongly lyrical when
it’s presented so you can
see it. In this case, the
running child has been
swallowed up by the
deep crack between two
pages. It’s largely gone in
a dramatic case of photocide. The layout sheet, of course,
was flat, and the designer could clearly see that he’d
centered the child’s image exactly in the gutter, but this
one ignored what we all know happens to a picture in a
deep fold. Here we can see less than half of the child on
each page. Much of it is hidden in the gutter. Few book
designers or magazine art directors run words through
the gutter, though I’ve seen that, too. In general, words
are considered sacred, and photographs are treated as
disposable tissues. As photographer and picture editor
Charlie Reynolds once truly said, “Art directors cut up
photographs to make pretty pages.”
If I must, I will make a nuisance of myself to keep
this from happening in photo technique. I can expect
to be ignored and considered crazy, but I’m used to that.
Everyone seems to think running photos through the
gutter is just wonderful. But the evidence of the eye
shows that those who believe that are the real crazies.
Look attentively at what’s in front of you, and unless
you’re a designer you will see it as it is. I suppose they
are taught somewhere that chopping and folding photos
improves them. It doesn’t.
I also object to words printed in the picture area of
photos or otherwise interfering with our seeing the
picture intact. Again it’s self-evident, and again it’s the
done thing, so being against it shows that I am crazy.
Even if I am, you still have no chance to see a picture
without distraction when words invade it. Get out of our
pictures, words, and stay out. Exceptions, of course, are
words that are part of the pictures. They should be allowed to speak for themselves without competition. My
madness is unfashionable sanity. So listen up, “professional designers.” Self-evident facts seem to be received
by designers the way politicians receive good sense that
“Let’s have variety.
Photographers can’t, don’t, and
shouldn’t all see and work alike,
and that is good.”
phototechmag.com 19
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COMMENTARY:
__________________________________
6HH5HVSRQG5HDFW
doesn’t follow their party’s line or a lobbyist’s advice with
hysterical denial. If you claim intelligence, let some reality
in. Consider facts as important as the nonsense you were
taught.
Let’s make this transition work as it should, always toward
something more real, more valid and more useful. This is a
photo magazine, so let photography and pictures rule. Treat
them as the most valuable thing we have. Treat them right.
Celebrate, don’t mutilate photos, especially since mutilation
is “how it’s always done.” If we don’t do our work better
than “what’s always done,” we should be ashamed.
There is always, in magazines, a temptation to cave in
to advertisers and put their demands ahead of the reader’s
needs. Some self-respect is called for. Consider the New
Yorker, back when it was intelligent. For a long time they
had the advertisers buffaloed. The old New Yorker refused
to run dumb ads, and the ad agencies caved in. That policy
might be worth reviving. The rumor now is that, along
with the decline of print news, because of the Internet,
even advertising is imperiled. PT, I gather, will now put
online everything it prints on paper.
I use the Internet only to get information. No email, no
website, nothing like that. I got along without it before, and
I get along without it now. I like my freedom. But my
odd attitude won’t influence this magazine, which needs
the net. The same principles that apply to the magazine on
paper also apply in cyberspace. (But maybe there isn’t any
gutter to run pictures through between Internet pages? If
that’s so, Hallelujah.)
Let’s not imitate the slick, bright noise of TV commercials,
although it’s true that, because of the money, the commercials, even with their dishonesty and idiocy, are generally
better than the shows, which exist only to provide watchers for the commercials. We see that in photo magazines,
too. People buy them for the ads.
How’s this for a transition? Let the online and the printed
form and content of photo technique constitute a wellmade continuing program to present and support the true
art of photography, without the usual bullshit. We’d have
something real.
Readers, you can help. If you see photos mistreated here,
complain. You have some power to influence the magazine’s course, and I hope you will use it thoughtfully and
calmly. Courtesy helps criticism work. Meanwhile, I trust
you are with me in favor of the lively and pertinent journal
that PT can and should be. Accept no substitutes.
David Vestal is a photographer, critic, and teacher, whose publications
include The Art of Black and White Enlarging (1984) and The Craft of
Photography. His photographs are exhibited internationally and are found
in numerous collections including New York City’s Museum of Modern Art
and the George Eastman House in Rochester, NY. The wit and wisdom
of his commentaries have long earned him a strong following among
readers.
technique
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Books, Pages and
Tablets
OLIVIA PARKER
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PORTFOLIO:
Previous Page
Astroblabe Adrift,
multi-media
Olivia Parker
Bottom Left
The Other Half,
multi-media
Olivia Parker
The images you see here, part of an ongoing
series of Books, Pages and Tablets, reflect my
interest in the history of science. Although I work
digitally, my images remain photographic in that
they are dependent on light for more than general
illumination. When I was working with view cameras
in the seventies, eighties and nineties I was always
looking for light or shadow that coalesced into its
own shapes. In black and white I could control my
contrast range in order to use many kinds of light
and shadow shapes. Because of contrast issues in
color, I had to wait for digital technology to allow
colored light to take form in my prints.
Words and pictures gain authority as soon as
they enter books, tablets, and pages. Until very
recently we lived in a culture of words. If I am
waiting in an unfamiliar room, my eyes dart around
for something to read. If there’s a cereal box
on the table, I start reading. I particularly like 17th
century science books, because some authors
observed things for themselves, some relied on
verbal hearsay that had traveled down the years
like an extended game of telephone and others
made things up as they went along. Many early
science books contain illustrations, but a lot of the
pictures are masterpieces of verbal misinformation;
their creators had only words about the subjects,
verbal information handed down for generations
that yielded monsters and fabled lands. Other
illustrations came from first hand observation;
vision informed the visual.
As I make images I am exploring the relationship
between visual and verbal thinking. ‘What does
this picture mean?’ is a question I am asked over
and over. Trying to explain what a picture means
is much harder than paraphrasing a poem, and
both endeavors usually give out only clumsy bits of
information. I will try, however, to offer a bit of my
approach and process.
A tablet can be many things: a message, a
slate that has writing to be erased, a blank
surface awaiting words or symbols or drawings,
an account-ing, a poem, a gravestone, proof of
identity, or an undecipherable message from
another time. Both of my tablets: Astrolabe Adrift
and The Other Half began as a 3” x 3½” pieces
of found metal that I photographed in natural
light that was passing through shapes cut from
blue and red gels. I am working only with natural
light. Once I have established a base that I like, I
experiment intuitively using other photographs or
scanned material, building up layers in Photoshop.
For Astrolabe Adrift, I tried lighter light shapes on
paper. After finding something that seemed to
work for me, I switched to a deliberate editorial
mode in seeking and placing the line scan of an
astrolabe (a navigational instrument once state of
the art, now a footprint along the path of science).
Back in intuitive mode, I placed the moon and stars.
The Other Half is a split tablet referring to those
used for identification of the individuals carrying
the matching parts. The figures on each half are
of unknown origin from a site in southern South
Korea. If the sides close in a match, the bearers are
identified but the unknown path ahead closes. As
I have traveled I have gathered photographs of
clouds, so I had plenty of material to work with to
achieve the right balance of light and fog.
Mosca is a fly made of light and shadow formed
by light passing through a chunk of slag glass onto
a piece of paper. One of its wings reveals itself
as a dragonfly wing that I have photographed, but
a very solid bug from a 17th century book peers in
from the side.
In my black and white work I often used animate
and inanimate shadows of beings and things outside
of the image. In Experimentum I have combined
illustrations from books by Anathius Kircher (A 17th
century polymath who had his own system for how
everything earthly and unearthly works) with a
reaching human shadow. The paper, the aqueous
red light and the shape that the small tree is on
comprise the base photograph. The rest I added
via computer.
The base of Opposites is a blank book with
another little blank book stuck inside it that I
found in a flea market in western China. As I was
pushing around some blue gels and pieces of glass,
I saw the bright circle and the dark one that for
me immediately connected to the phases of the
moon. After that it took me a while to find the other
elements and some trial and error to balance the
tension between them.
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BOOKS, PAGES AND TABLETS OLIVIA PARKER
Two and a half years ago I moved into a spacious
studio, and for the first time have plenty of room
for my piles of glass, broken and unbroken, metal
reflectors and an assortment of stuff that I’ve been
working with for 40 years. The good books I do
take care of, but the ratty ones live with the rest
of the stuff. Because of the random juxtapositions,
I often see new combinations that I might not have
discovered if the place were too organized.
In both straight- and digitally-made photographs,
luck favors the prepared mind. That idea has been
attributed to several people, but whoever thought
it up was onto something important. I like to think
that I can stay open to new ideas and surprises.
Olivia Parker, recognized for photographic innovation and
experimentation, has created luminous work using a variety of
processes and formats since the 1970’s. Her photographs are
found in collections including the Chicago Art institute and the
Museum of Modern Art, NY, as well as in books devoted to her
work. Her current explorations include her work with books,
manuscripts, insects and light.
Above
Mosca,
multi-media
Olivia Parker
Product Resources
Camera: Canon 1Ds Mark II; Computer: iMac intel Core
Duo, 2.33 GHz, 24”, 3GB RAM; Software: Adobe Photoshop
CS4, Nik Viveza, Color Efex Pro 3; Printer: Epson Stylus Pro
7800; Paper: Epson UltraSmooth Fine Art Paper
phototechmag.com 23
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PORTFOLIO:
Experimentum, multi-media
Olivia Parker
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BOOKS, PAGES AND TABLETS OLIVIA PARKER
Opposites, multi-media
Olivia Parker
phototechmag.com 25
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Julie
Blackmon
Domestic Vacations
by Paul Schranz
There is a constant ying and yang in the act of motherhood, encompassing
both the amazing and the tedious. Photographer Julie Blackmon talks of
contemporary life as being overscheduled and frantic. Facing the pressure of being a perfect mother, while avoiding the possibility of losing her
self, she has melded her situation to her work, successfully balancing her
connection and her escape.
Blackmon says that her photography is grounded in her experience of
being raised as a member of a large family and her relationship to her current large-family life in her Missouri town. Her work continues the journey
of motherhood. Her portfolio Domestic Vacations offers a detailed look at
events, which together can reference a one-act domestic comedy. How
she accomplishes this is by neither happenstance nor luck.
Julie Blackmon’s photographs are a flawless combination of the spontaneous and the skillfully orchestrated. The first response is a willing
suspended disbelief in what we see, much like our response to viewing a
motion picture. Nothing initially appears strained or unusual in her familial
tableaux. Then comes a realization of the number of subplots developing
within a single image. Her work is simultaneously real and surreal, awesome, while at the same time comforting.
Blackmon explains that her work is heavily influenced by her sister, who
is an author and illustrator of children’s books. But unlike an illustrator, who
can create an event synthetically, the photographer creates her event in
real time analytically. The succinct moment of capture is critical. Even if
several takes are needed to capture the right mix for the complete visual
narrative, each exposure has to contain the critical information for her
concept to be photographically realized.
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DOMESTIC VACATIONS JULIE BLACKMON
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FEATURE:
Previous Spread
Candy, archival
pigment print, 22" x 22"
Julie Blackmon
Once Blackmon’s “script” is set, it’s time for her
“stage” and “actors.” Her visual narratives are wellplanned concepts of a number of common childrearing activities that uncommonly occur in a single
hysterical moment in time. Her sense of humor regarding parenting is obvious. Her actors, referencing the historic works of Julia Margaret Cameron,
are her own children, relatives and neighbors, who
respond to their roles of appearing in photographs
as just part of their normal day-to-day life. Unlike
in Cameron’s completely posed shots, Blackmon’s
subjects are permitted spontaneity once they are
placed in the scene. Each actor undeniably comes
to the stage with a personal agenda, based on an
idea suggested by Blackmon. When the individual
initiatives are combined with those of the other inhabitants of the shared frame, they often result in
unusual and sometimes combustible experiences.
Blackmon has perfected the balance between total
directorial control and openness to the moment to
allow the story to unfold before her camera.
With this in mind, it is understandable why her
process, as in cinema, requires some edits and
retakes. In these cases, Blackmon re-photographs
the moment for the individual actor in exactly the
same location, and then meticulously replaces that
segment using Photoshop to achieve the perfected
final image. She doesn’t attempt to montage images from different scenes. Props that will show up
in the final image may also be shot separately, in
their actual location, and will later be montaged in.
Blackmon creates a believable reality in each individual actor’s portrait. However, viewing the piece
as a whole, we are delighted by our recognition of
the mannerisms and relationships that form the collective image.
Photo conceptualization has certainly been made
more believable through the advent of digital photography, but it isn’t new to the field, as referenced
by the historic work of Oscar Gustave Rejlander and
H. P. Robinson, as well as the more contemporary
assemblages of Jerry Uelsmann and Scott Mutter.
What is different about Blackmon’s work is that in it
we find the extraordinary in the ordinary.
Blackmon’s early work was made using a film
Hasselblad. She has since moved to a digital HD3II
- 39 megapixel Hasselblad with a 28mm wide angle
lens. Although her image frame has transitioned
from a square to a rectangular format, her composition retains a circular choreography, where visual
information can be found in almost every part of
the image.
For example, in the image “Stolen Kiss,” what we
see is candy being taken away from a baby (humorously referencing the familiar idiom), along with
the excruciating expression of abandonment of the
child from whom the “kiss” is taken. We catch the
“thief “as he is already leaving the image frame.
This is a very successful technique employed in a
number of Blackmon’s pieces. Her subjects come
and go, creating motion in and out of the frame,
yet viewers require no additional information from
a previous or subsequent frame to understand the
impact of the narrative. All you need to know is
set neatly inside the square format of each unique
image.
Blackmon’s approach results in some of the most
skillfully complex photographic work being produced. Her directed performances of people and
light in each image again reference cinematic production. The background lighting, while on site, has
the control supremacy of complex studio lighting.
Using a combination of both Novatron lighting systems and natural light in a perfect blend, Blackmon
is able to mask this combination to perfection. She
says that she doesn’t use an HDR auto system because she feels it’s too contrived. Instead, she carefully masks to get the effect she wants. The result is
similar to that of Flemish painters, who managed to
throw light into dark corners, far from the actual light
source, in obvious violation of the inverse square
law. The light in Blackmon’s work is comforting, and
it is also a neutralizing factor that gives enhanced
importance to the actors. She photographs the children using a strobe to stop action, but she may also
shoot with an open shutter to capture reflections
and shadows to add realism to the image.
The wonder of Blackmon’s work is that despite obvious direction and manipulation, the photographs
in Domestic Vacations resonate with a sense of
ironic reality and call forth a resounding and empathetic “yes” from anyone who has been part of the
complex experience that is a family.
Award-winning photographer Julie Blackmon was named
American Photo’s Emerging Photographer of 2008 and was among
PDN’s top 30 in 2007. Her work is included in the collections of the
George Eastman House, Rochester, NY and the Museum of Fine
Arts, Houston, TX. Her book, Domestic Vacations, is published by
Radius Books, Santa Fe, NM (2008).
Product Resources
Camera: Hasselblad HD3 39; Lighting: Novatron (interior shots),
Bowens Explorer 1500 with QuadX (outdoors). Printer: 44” Epson
9880; Inks: Ultrachrome; Paper: Hahnemuhle Fine Art Pearl paper.
Computer: Mac OS X Quad-Core Intel Xeon with an Apple 30”
cinema display
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Birds at Home, archival pigment print, 22"x 22"
Julie Blackmon
phototechmag.com 29
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FEATURE:
Stolen Kiss, archival pigment print, 22" x 22"
Julie Blackmon
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Floatie, archival pigment print, 22" x 22"
Julie Blackmon
phototechmag.com 31
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FEATURE:
Loading Zone, archival pigment print, 60" x 40"
Julie Blackmon
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Wicker Swing, archival pigment print, 44" x 32"
Julie Blackmon
phototechmag.com
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STONE BRUCE BARNBAUM
STONE
the Slit Canyons
Bruce Barnbaum
On Jan 1, 1980 I walked into a whole new world, one that
I could never have imagined. Entering Antelope Canyon
was so alien and unearthly I was dumbfounded …literally
from the moment I took my first step into it. In fact, I was
rendered speechless. Antelope Canyon, to my eye and
mind, was totally unbelievable, unquestionably cosmic
and absolutely perfect.
Although it’s a tiny place by any realistic gauge,
it is a whole universe unto itself. Holding degrees in
mathematics, I have always been fascinated by both
the cosmological forces that shape the universe and the
subatomic forces that hold atoms and nuclei together. I
saw them all as one and the same years ago when they
were generally viewed as completely different. I’ve
watched over 40 years as physicists inevitably linked the
two into common theories of the origins of the universe.
The forms I saw in Antelope Canyon were the exact
forms of both the cosmological forces and the subatomic
forces. I thought, “I could have been researching this
theoretically, but now I’m in it!” I couldn’t have been
more excited. Another realization was that this was a
subject that had never been photographed before. I’ve
always heard that everything has been photographed,
but this was new subject matter…never previously
photographed. If anyone had ever photographed it, I was
certainly unaware of such imagery.
In a location that exceeded the contrast range of anything
I had ever encountered, I realized I had just acquired the
technical tools to control the extraordinary range that
film encompasses, which gave me the confidence to
photograph this stupendous subject. The method I had
just learned was “compensating development,” using an
extremely dilute concentration of developer with periodic
agitation over an extended development time to prevent
bright highlights from becoming too dense to print.
I improved that procedure years later with a further
invention of my own, the two-solution compensating
developer, which begins negative development in a
normal dilution developer for a very short time, then
switches to the dilute solution for the remainder of the
development period, yielding more detail in the shadows,
while controlling the highlights to an even greater extent.
I use HC110 developer with Tri-X film as my basic film/
developer combination. The two solution compensating
process is actually quite simple: starting in the standard
dilution of developer that I use for “normal” processing (i.e.,
first a 3:1 water/developer dilution from the syrup out of
the bottle for the “stock solution” and then a 12.5/1 water/
stock solution as the working dilution) with 45 seconds of
initial agitation followed by 45 seconds of non-agitation.
(This develops Zones 1 and 2 almost completely, but is
well short of full development of higher zones.) Then I
Facing Page
Circular Chimney,
silver gelatin print
Bruce Barnbaum
phototechmag.com 35
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PORTFOLIO:
Facing Page
Wall With Two Ridges,
Bruce Barnbaum
promptly move the negative into the extremely dilute
(i.e., 45/1 of the stock solution) compensating solution with
initial agitation of 30 seconds. (At that point it’s 2 minutes
of development.) The next full minute has no agitation
(bringing total development time to 3 minutes). Then
from that point onward, I agitate for the first 15 seconds
of each subsequent minute until I reach 10 minutes of
development time. Then it’s into the stop bath and fix.
I first entered Antelope Canyon late in the afternoon
without my camera. It would have been too late and too
dark to photograph then, anyway. Yet as I walked along,
I quickly saw my first photograph without even breaking
stride. All I had to do was refine my camera position
the next morning. I made “Circular Chimney, Antelope
Canyon,” which I had seen the previous afternoon. To
me that image represents the black hole at the center of
every spiral galaxy including our own Milky Way with
the galaxy swirling around it. It was an amazing way
to start out a new decade, and a whole new chapter in
photography.
Over the years, I have photographed Antelope Canyon
extensively, along with its two major companions, Lower
Antelope Canyon, just two miles down the same desert
wash, and Upper Antelope Canyon, more than six miles
up the wash. Today, flooded with tourists, Upper Antelope
Canyon remains unknown, with Antelope Canyon
renamed “Upper Antelope Canyon” to distinguish it from
Lower Antelope.
My first entry into Lower Antelope Canyon was by
rope, rappelling into it in 1983. Tourists were not part of
the scene then, so entry was a real challenge. Though
more open and somewhat lower in contrast, I again
resorted to compensating development procedure to rein
in the contrast. I exposed seven negatives that day, with
four of those images appearing in my first book, Visual
Symphony, including the cover image, “Wall with Two
Ridges, Lower Antelope Canyon.”
As the years passed, I photographed a wide range of
slit canyons in many areas, all in Northern Arizona or
Southern Utah, on the Colorado Plateau. The exceptional
sandstone and limestone layered land created over the
millennia by incoming and outgoing oceans, and layer
upon layer of sand dunes, was later carved by wind and
water into a myriad of extraordinary shapes. In virtually
all cases, I’ve used the narrow sandstone canyons to
express my thoughts about forces in nature. For example,
neither gravity nor electromagnetic force is bounded by
size (they are universal), nor directionality (there is no up
nor down). The canyon images, too, are devoid of size and
direction (i.e., it’s hard to tell how large the subject matter
is or if the camera is aimed up or down or straight ahead).
An extremely narrow slit, one that I discovered with
several friends in 1984, yielded “Hollows and Points,
Peach Canyon.” While my friends lounged around after
lunch above the deep crevice in the ground, I wandered
a mile to its shallow start then back down it to the
image site, realizing that the others were directly above
me. Responding to my calls, they lowered my camera
backpack and tripod to me by rope, allowing me to make
the photograph. Too heavy to haul back up, the pack
had to be carried out via the full length of the canyon.
The narrow twisting trip back, much of it accomplished
by walking sideways, left the pack shredded. But, who
cares? I made the image, again showing the lines of force,
and also the refinement of natural sculpting, so delicate
and perfect that it would make a Michelangelo or Henry
Moore jealous.
In 1998, back in Antelope Canyon, I made my longest
exposure ever to get “Layers, Antelope Canyon.” I
opened the shutter at 12:30 p.m. and closed it at 4 p.m.
By 1998 I had created the two-solution compensating
development, yielding more detail down into the deepest
shadows and into the brightest highlights.
The Escalante River harbors an astounding complex
of tributary side canyons, each with its own character,
and many harboring extremely narrow sections, slit
canyons, to be sure within its length. Peekaboo Canyon
and Spooky Gulch are shallow, parallel slit canyons at the
upper end of Coyote Gulch, a major Escalante tributary.
“The Pinwheel, Spooky Gulch” represents a time lapse
image of millions or billions of years of an accretion
disk the dust, rocks and rubble swirling around in outer
space in a progressively narrower disk pulled together
by gravity as it compacts around into a giant spiral,
eventually coalescing under gravitational forces into stars,
planets, moons, asteroids and comets to form a galaxy or
a solar system. (Spooky Gulch, by the way, is so narrow,
that it, too, must be traversed sideways, with the walls
coming together below your feet so that one side of your
boot touches one wall, while the other side of the same
boot rests on the other wall. If you’re claustrophobic, or if
heavy rain is falling, this is not the place to be.)
Neither Peekaboo nor Spooky is very deep, so no
exceptional development procedures are necessary
in either³perhaps a slight reduction in contrast, but
nothing more heroic.
Nowhere else have I encountered either the forms or
the light that I’ve encountered in the slit canyons. Most
images have required long exposures, and nearly all
require a contrast reduction. These, and so many other
slit canyon photographs, have now been embedded in a
much more extensive portfolio of related images named
Stone. Within the broad umbrella of that title I have
put a wide variety of imagery together with a sense of
related cohesiveness. These are images from the natural
and man-made worlds, from the worlds of realism and
abstraction. The Stone portfolio also includes cathedrals,
monasteries, ancient towns and cities of Europe, mountain
and canyon images, and Mayan and Inca ruins of Central
and South America.
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STONE BRUCE BARNBAUM
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PORTFOLIO:
Top
Hollows, Points Peach
Canyon,
Bruce Barnbaum
Bottom
Pinwheel, Spooky Gulch,
Bruce Barnbaum
The slit canyons were chosen for my first portfolio in
the new photo technique magazine because these images
are dearest to my heart. They have brought my life full
circle from my academic days studying mathematics and
physics to my life in photography. I have drawn from a
background in the world of science to express myself in
the realm of art.
Bruce Barnbaum teaches photography workshops throughout the year,
focusing on the art of seeing and the art of conveying impressions of
your photographed world (real or imagined). He has two monographs
in print: Tone Poems - Book 1, 2002; and Tone Poems - Book 2, 2005. Both
are collaborative efforts, featuring a CD of classical piano music
performed by Judith Cohen. www.barnbaum.com
Product Resources
Camera: 4 x 5 Linhof Master Technika; Film: Kodak Tri-X;
Film Developer: Kodak HC110; Developer: Kodak Dektol;
Paper: Forte neutral tone variable contrast
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KODACHROME ABHAY SHARMA
KODACHROME:
the film that changed the
way we see
Abhay Sharma with
Paul Sergeant
Kodachrome was a beautiful film²
bright vivid colors, low grain and
images that jumped out of the
screen and filled the projection
room with the awe of mountain
landscapes, close-up portraits and
children playing on backyard
swings. After a successful 74-year
run, Eastman Kodak announced
in June 2009 that it would soon
discontinue sales of Kodachrome.
It’s interesting to take a look at
both the history and science of
this remarkable product.
The Leopolds
Kodachrome was not the first color film
(color photography had existed with
techniques such as Autochrome and
Dufaycolor), but Kodachrome was the
first practical film for a mass audience.
The inventors of Kodachrome, Leopold
Mannes and Leopold Godowsky, met
as teenagers. Both were fascinated
by the popular Brownie camera, and
both longed for a way to take color
photographs themselves. The Leopolds
were musicians by trade, but were
invited to join Kodak in Rochester to
realize their invention. They worked
for Kodak for a number of years before
both returned to their musical roots.
Within the company this duo was
known as “Man and God!” Mannes
died in 1964, and Godowsky in 1983.
After their deaths, both were inducted
into the Inventor’s Hall of Fame.
Color Film 101
In the 1930’s Kodachrome was first
sold as 16mm movie film, and within
a few years as 35mm slide film. Most
color film in the world is based on the
3-layer principle, where each layer of
the emulsion is sensitive to red, green
or blue light.
In general, most color film is actually
individual layers of black and white
film. At the moment of exposure, light
through the camera lens hits silver
halide crystals in the film emulsion,
creating an excited chemical state in
the crystals termed a latent image.
During development, the exposed
silver halide crystals² latent image ²
grow rapidly into dense clumps of
black silver.
Where there was a lot of light, we
have a lot of silver; where there was
little light, we have less developed
silver, and thus an image is formed by
different amounts of silver distributed
throughout the frame in relation to the
amount of light that hit the film.
In black and white film this is the full
story, but in color film there is a twist
to this process. Color film (negative
and transparency) has at least three
different layers of silver halide
suspended in the emulsion. Through
a system of filters and sensitizers, the
manufacturer creates silver halide
layers that react to a third of the
spectrum each. Each layer is sensitive
to the red, green or blue part of the
spectrum. This is the fundamental trichromatic theory of color that states
that you can create any of the colors
you want by the addition of varying
amounts of red, green and blue light.
In color film, dye coupler molecules
are suspended in the emulsion near
the silver halide crystals. During
development, the silver halide gets
developed and the by-products of this
(essentially monochrome) development
Top
The original Kodachrome
box, 1936, format 828
2nd from Top
1961 box for European
sales, most likely in
England. The little box on
top contains a pre-paid
mailer bag so that the
film could be sent in for
processing.
3rd from Top
A 1980 reproduction of the
original 1936 packaging
4th from Top
Kodachrome box from
1987-1990
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TECH:
process called K-14. Due to this lack of
in-situ couplers, the emulsion layers
are thinner, causing less light scattering,
allowing sharper results. This unique
solution meant that Kodachrome was
a lot slimmer and sharper than other
slide film. On the downside, it also
meant that Kodachrome needed special
processing, and so was not compatible
with E-6 systems³one of the major
reasons for its imminent extinction.
George Eastman House
Above
The George Eastman
House Museum of
Photography and Film,
is part of the Ryerson
University photographic
research program.
Today, the George
Eastman house is the
repository for the last
Kodachrome film batch.
trigger the dye coupler molecules and
turn them into colorful dye clouds.
After development the unused silver
halide and the unused dye couplers
are removed from the emulsion.
This is a very simplified description
of what is actually a very complex
process. For example, manufacturers
may use sophisticated techniques,
such as special chemicals, to ensure
the color chemistry stays within each
layer or corrects for imperfect spectral
absorptions of each dye layer.
So we see that black and white and
color chemistry are very similar; color
film consists essentially of three black
and white film layers. This similarity is
exploited in films such as Ilford’s XP2,
which is a fine grain, black and white
film processed in C-41 type processing
chemicals alongside color negative
films.
Kodachrome Secrets
There are a few technical secrets
behind Kodachrome’s success. Kodachrome was always only available at
lower speeds, usually 25 and 64 ASA,
thus it was a fine grain emulsion. The
smaller grain captured less light, thus
the film was slower, but the small
silver halide grain did not show up
during enlargement. Kodachrome was
slide film, so we shot and processed
and viewed the same piece of film,
unlike negative stock where there are
two generations, a negative and a print.
Finally, the biggest advantage
of Kodachrome is due to its “nonsubstantive” film type. A big difference
between normal transparency film and
Kodachrome is that Kodachrome has
no dye couplers incorporated into the
emulsion layers. Unlike all other color
films of the time, the color couplers
were contained within the processing
baths. The dye couplers are only
introduced during the processing stage
of development, in the development
The last batches of Kodachrome film
have been sent to the famous Kodak
historical archive and repository³The
George Eastman House International
Museum of Photography and Film
in Rochester, NY. The museum is
located alongside George Eastman’s
colonial revival mansion and is the
house where George Eastman lived
before taking his own life by gunshot
in 1932. The George Eastman House
is the world’s oldest photography
museum, with a mission to collect,
preserve, and present the history of
photography and film. The original
collections included the Medicus collection of Civil War photographs,
Eastman Kodak Company’s historical
collection, and the massive Gabriel
Cromer collection. The Eastman Kodak
Company has been a major benefactor
to the house and museum. If you are in
the Rochester area, this historical site
is well worth a visit³try to guess the
combination of the large safe that is still
there after all these years.
Photographic Preservation and
Collections Management
A unique educational program
developed by Ryerson University in
Toronto and the George Eastman
House is a post-graduate MA degree
in Photographic Preservation and
Collections Management. Paul Sergeant
is studying in this program and is
spending a year at the George Eastman
House in Rochester. The program’s
curriculum is specially designed to
deepen students’ understanding of the
history of the photographic medium,
particularly its social, cultural, and
instrumental uses, and the purposes
and functions of photographs and
photographic collections. The intensive,
two-year program deals with the
materials of photography, historical film
processes, preservation and storage of
film and the socio-cultural context of
photographs in the last 150 years.
Kodachrome Today
Interest in slide film and the home
slide projector started to wane from
1980 onward. Strong competition from
Fujifilm Velvia and Provia further
damaged Kodak’s market share.
Finally with the widespread use of
digital cameras, Apple Aperture, Adobe
Lightroom, Photoshop Camera RAW,
Kodak had to give in. Kodachrome
products were gradually discontinued,
and on June 22, 2009, Kodak
announced Kodachrome would no
longer be manufactured. Today,
Kodachrome represents just a fraction
of 1% of Kodak’s total sales of stillpicture films.
We have noted that Kodachrome
needs special processing. As stocks of
this film slowly dwindle, there is only
one processing facility left, Dwayne’s
Photo(www.dwaynesphoto.com)
in Kansas who have committed to
continue to process Kodachrome films
through the end of December 2010.
As part of a tribute to Kodachrome
film, Kodak will donate the last rolls of
the film to the George Eastman House.
Steve McCurry will shoot those last
rolls and the images will be donated
to the museum. Today the legacy of
this great film lives on via internet sites
such as the kodachromeproject.com
and A Tribute to KODACHROME:
A Photography Icon, a great site on
Kodak.com.
Although Kodachrome has very
distinct characteristics and no film
will give the exact same results,
current users are encouraged to try
other Kodak films. Kodak (surprisingly)
continues to bring other new film
products to market; see for example
Review: Kodak Ektar 100 Color Film,
PHOTO Techniques, May/June 2009.
Kodachrome was more than just a
slide film²the images and messages
captured on this medium will inform,
amaze and resonate with audiences
for many years to come ² but of
course we will be looking at scanned
versions of those masterpieces…
Dr. Abhay Sharma and Paul Sergeant are
members of the Photographic Preservation
and Collections Management program at
Ryerson University, Toronto, Canada, where Dr.
Sharma is Program Chair.
To ask a question or comment on this article,
visit our online Forum:
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INNOVATIONS:
The D-Roller
In an age of roll-feed printing paper, a method of
effective print flattening is a critical concern. The
D-Roller is simple, fast, and it works. The D-Roller is
an ingenious and effective way of taking the curl out of
prints. It’s available in two sizes and works with most
papers. The process is simple. First, unroll the D-Roller
plastic sheet from the weighted core; then place your
paper on the sheet with the head of the curl facing up.
Re-roll the D-Roller and hold for about 60 seconds.
Holding it longer frequently causes the paper to curl in
the opposite direction. The hold time, however, does
increase as you get near the end of a paper core
where curling is more prominent, especially when using
a 2-inch core.
The D-Roller can be purchased from Shades of Paper
at $249 for the 24" model and $289 for the 50" model.
www.shadesofpaper.com
Image Rights Search Service
There are a number of products being developed
for the industry to insure the authenticity of a
photographic work and to help protect copyright.
One such product is offered by Image Rights
International, who has recently launched a
service targeting commercial photographers’
individual collections of images.
Lensbaby Expands Optics
For those of us who upgraded to the Lensbaby Composer
or Muse Optic Swap System (required), Lensbaby is now
expanding its image enhancement optics with a 12mm fisheye
and a 50mm soft focus. Company philosophy seems to be
moving from offering only soft-focus to adding creative
enhancements. The fisheye is a six-element multi-content
design at f/4 with aperture discs from ƒ/5.6 to f/22. It
focuses from one inch to infinity. The 50mm soft focus is an
f/2 glass doublet with aperture rings for f/2.8 to f/22. The
cost of the fisheye is $149.95. The Soft Focus Optic is $89.95.
www.lensbaby.com
Images are uploaded to Image Rights
International content files where an advanced
image search technology searches the web for
image matches. Photographers whose images
are matched are notified of possible violations
via a weekly email report. The report gives the
URL for any matches for the images placed in
the Image Rights International database.
The service is inexpensive, ranging from a
package covering 250 images at $4.95 per
month to one for 1,000 images at $34.95 per
month. More info. at www.imagerights.com
phototechmag.com 41
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INNOVATIONS:
__________________
X-Rite ColorChecker Passport
The X-Rite ColorChecker Passport is a set of three objective targets designed to create
accurate white balance, corrected camera profiles, and objective targets for corrected
image color enhancement. The Passport includes a true spectrally-neutral White Balance
target, a 24-patch ColorChecker Classic, and a ColorCheck Creative Environment target.
While useful as a general objective target, the Passport offers one of the easiest ways
to create a custom camera profile in Lightroom, Photoshop, or Photoshop Elements.
Photograph the ColorChecker Classic target in the lighting scenario; then load the file into
one of the listed software programs to output to DNG.
Drag the DNG file into the window of the Passport software and it is automatically
identified. Just click, and it creates a custom camera profile. This profile loads into one of
the Calibration menus, and the new files are adjusted. The system can also be used with
a Tif output in Bibble or Capture One software.
What is excellent about this system is its dual-illuminant function, where a capture of the
targets in two different, but frequently mixed, lighting scenarios is made. The Passport
software will read both targets and create a dual-illumination camera profile.
The X-Rite ColorChecker Passport’s hard plastic case opens like a booklet for a freestanding display and comes with a lanyard for easy carrying. The cost of the X-Rite
ColorChecker Passport is $99. More info at www.xrite.com
Green Cleaners from Purosol
Purosol has two new cleaning products for photographers.
Both products come in handy 2 fl. oz. spray bottles.
Purosol Optical is a solvent-free molecular lens cleaner that
quickly removes dirt and smudges from your lens. It uses or
plant extracts and leaves no residuals found with traditional
solvents. Purosol Optical is non-toxic, hypoallergenic, nonflammable, sterile, and biodegradable. It works extremely
well and is a safe product in any environment.
Purosol Plasma is a molecular screen cleaner that also
uses natural enzymes to remove residuals from your monitor
display screen, camera display, or any cellular screen or MP3
player. Available at www.internationalsupplies.com.
___________________
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Color
Correction
Made Easier
Ctein
I originally planned to give this article the
admittedly glib title, “Color Correction
Made Easy.” Upon modest reflection, I
realized that title would be extremely
misleading. Color correction isn’t easy. It’s
never going to be easy.
(Figure 1)
Let’s face it, if good color correction (and, correspondingly, good tone
correction) were easy, everyone
would be a great photographic
printer. There would be no need
for custom labs, professional printers, and the myriad craftspeople out
there whose business is converting
decent photographs into more-thandecent prints. What I’m trying to say
is that if you find color correction
an occasionally frustrating business,
that does not reflect ill upon you. It
only makes you part of a very large
community that really cares about
the quality of its work and is always
looking to improve.
Good color correction requires
a minimum of a good eye and an
understanding of basic tools, but
sometimes cleverness is demanded.
None of us ever stops improving our
craft. Certainly not me. There’s one
trick in this article that I only came
up with in the last couple of years,
solving a problem that had been
vexing me for a lot longer than that.
Fine color printers have always
relied upon tips, tricks, and tools. In
the darkroom, we had ring-arounds,
print viewing filters, reflection
densitometers, and video analyzers, ordered by increasing cost and
rarity. Few “home” printers owned
reflection densitometers; hardly any
owned video analyzers. One of the
great things about digital printing
is how level the playing field has
become; any semi-serious hobbyist
can afford a photographic-quality
printer and a computer and software
sufficient to the task.
Speaking of software... I rely
heavily
on
mondo-expensive
Photoshop, but this is my stock in
trade, and I need a certain amount
of insane capability. You don’t need
Photoshop to do color correction.
Although this article is Photoshoporiented, you can do great color
correction with free and low-cost
programs like GIMP, Photoshop
Elements, and my favorite, Picture
Window Pro. The latter is a wonderful
bargain for Windows users and has
capabilities even Photoshop doesn’t.
It’s fully 16-bit capable and has been
for a long time, and it has the coolest
color correction tool that I’ve ever
encountered. This tool alone makes
it worth the price of the program.
More about that later.
Where to begin
For the purposes of this article, your
source material doesn’t matter.
You can be scanning color slides or
negatives or even old color prints (I
do that all the time in my restoration
work). If you’re starting with original
digital photographs, you can color
correct JPEG, TIFF, and RAW files.
Still, some things will make your
tasks a lot easier and the results better.
If you have any choice in the matter, start with 16-bit-per-channel
files (a.k.a.,”16-bit color” or “48-bit
color”). When starting with a digital
Above
(Figure 1) The mixture of
incandescent and
daylight in this scene
threw off the automatic
white balance in the
digital photograph
(top), and it’s too cold
for my taste. Using
the black, white, and
gray eyedroppers as
described in the text, I
quickly generated the
Curves shown in Figure
2, which produced the
much better balanced
photograph at the
bottom of this illustration.
phototechmag.com 43
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TECH:
First Principles
(Figure 2)
These Curves turned Figure 1, top, into Figure 1, bottom.
They were created “automatically” using the three
eyedropper tools on the left side of the control panel.
photograph, that means RAW or 16bit TIFF files. If you’re scanning,
choose the appropriate setting in
your scanner software.
If at all possible you want to be
working in at least Adobe RGB color
space; ProPhoto RGB color space
would be preferable. Your color film
and your digital camera can capture
tones and colors that Adobe color
space can’t handle (just forget about
sRGB). The out-of-gamut pixels will
come up as pure white or pure black
in one color channel or more; it will
be very difficult to do good color correction on those extreme colors, and
they are often the ones that are in
most need of help. Note that getting
satisfactory results in ProPhoto RGB
color space requires using 16-bit
color; trying to work in such a large
color space with 8-bit data is a guarantee of banding and contours.
You may not have any choice in
these matters; your photograph may
be an 8-bit JPEG in sRGB color space,
in which case you make the best of
an awkward situation. I’m just saying
that if you’ve got the opportunity,
more bits and a bigger color space
will make your life a lot easier.
A photograph with good color usually
has a rich range of values from nearwhite to near-black. Somewhere in
that color print you’ll find a bit of deep
shadow that approaches black and a
bit of a highlight glint that approaches
white. They aren’t necessarily large
or important parts of the photograph,
but they’re usually there.
This is nearly always true when
you examine each color channel
separately. The photograph may not
have any true whites or true blacks,
but somewhere in the photograph
there will almost always be pixels
that will have values near 0 or 255
for one of the individual colors. This
idea may take some getting used to,
so here’s an example. The purest,
most saturated yellow will have a
blue value of 0 and red and green
values of 255. You don’t need a white
or black pixel to get extreme values
in the individual color channels of a
color photograph; any pure color will
have some color values near black
or white.
One more thing, somewhere in
the photograph there’s likely to be
some small area that is pretty close
to a neutral gray. Put this all together and it makes one really useful technique for balancing overall
color. If the darkest points in your
photographs are near neutral black,
and the brightest points in your photograph are near neutral white, and
that patch of neutral gray in the photograph really is neutral, the overall
color balance will be good 90% of the
time. How do you achieve this? With
curves and eyedroppers. Here’s how
that works (with just about any software out there, including most scanner and RAW conversion software).
The first thing to do is to get the
eyedroppers set properly. Usually
double-clicking the eyedropper icon
brings up a control panel in which
you can set the values for that eyedropper. Software defaults are RGB
values of 0,0,0 and 255, 255, 255 for
the black and white eyedroppers
respectively. We want to pull those
in a bit, to make sure that we don’t
accidentally clip the highlights or
shadows. Set the black eyedropper
RGB values at 15, 15, 15 and the white
eyedropper RGB values at 240, 240,
240. That gives some headroom so
that your pixel choices don’t have
to be perfect. Some software will let
you make these new values permanent defaults, so you don’t have to
set them every time you launch the
program.
Normally the middle gray eyedropper works well at its default
RGB value of 128, 128, 128. If the neutral patch in your photograph is far
from middle gray, you should adjust
that. For a dark gray, try RGB values
of 70, 70, 70. For a light gray, RGB
values of 170, 170, 170 are good.
If there is a radius control for the
eyedropper, set it for three pixels for
digital photos and five pixels for film
scans. That prevents digital noise or
film grain from throwing off your
settings. This is especially important
with film scans, where the darkest
parts of the scan are likely to be very
grainy.
Now you’re ready to go. Click the
black eyedropper on the darkest
area you can find in the uncorrected
photograph (shown in Figure 1, top).
Click the wide eyedropper on the
lightest air you can find. Very often,
the overall color balance will look
pretty good with just those two adjustments. If the photograph still has
a substantial overall color cast, click
the middle gray eyedropper on a
mid-toned part of the photographs
that you want to come out neutral
(Figure 2). Most of the time, this will
give you good overall color balance
(Figure 1, bottom). Not perfect by any
means, but refining that is where the
art, skill and your keen eye come in.
Individual Color
Adjustment
Many times you’ll get the overall color balance roughly correct
and still find that you’re unhappy
with the way colors are rendered.
Further Curves adjustments will
correct most of those color errors,
but learning how to do this is a matter of practice and skill; there aren’t
any simple principles and tricks that
I can offer. Other tools, though, do
provide some quick and easy fixes.
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COLOR CORRECTION MADE EASIER CTEIN
(Figure 4)
(Figure 5)
(Figure 3)
(Figure 3) Photoshop’s Variations tool creates a ring-around that will help you evaluate the type and magnitude of color error in
your photograph. Unfortunately, Variations only works on 24-bit color files.
(Figure 4) The Selective Color adjustment allows you to individually vary the color components of each of the primaries, as well
as the blacks, whites, and middle grades.You can use this to tweak narrow color ranges in a photograph. In this case, I converted
Figure 1, into Figure 5. Knocking 39% cyan out of the reds made them brighter and richer. Subtracting 6% magenta and adding 70%
yellow made the yellows more brilliant.
(Figure 5) The results of applying the Selective Color adjustments in Figure 4 to the bottom photograph in Figure 1. The red and gold
trim in the woodwork is clearer and stands out better, and the candle glow looks more luminous.
Photoshop contains two such tools
under Image|Adjustments: Variations
and Selective Color. Variations has
one huge handicap; it is limited to
working on 8-bit color in Photoshop
CS4. But if that’s the kind of file you
happen to be working with, it’s a
good tool to try when you feel like
the photograph has some overall
color casts and you’re not sure how
to correct them. It’s a computerized
combination of the classic darkroom
ring-around and print viewing
filters. Ring-arounds are especially
valuable when you’re having trouble telling which direction the color
needs to go.
Launching Variations brings up a
control panel that shows the original
photograph in direct comparison
to lighter and darker versions and
versions shifted towards each of the
primary colors (Figure 3). A slider
controls the degree of the shift, from
extremely slight to gross, while
selection buttons control whether
you’re emphasizing a color shift in
shadows, midtones, or highlights.
Clicking the variation that looks best
makes it the central choice, and a
new ring-around is created from
that. It’s a way to fiddle with the color
balance of a photograph that many
people find comfortable and intuitive
to work with.
If you feel that the overall color
balance is good but certain colors
didn’t come out the way you’d like,
Selective Color is one way to attack
that problem. Its drop-down menu
will let you independently adjust the
color qualities of all six primaries, as
well as the blacks, middle grays, and
whites. For example, suppose you
have a photograph of foliage where
the greens don’t seem to have the
intensity they ought to. Launch
Selective Color and pick Greens from
the drop-down menu. You’ll see
sliders for Cyan, Magenta, Yellow,
and Black. If the greens look desaturated, move the magenta slider
in the minus percentage direction.
Magenta is the complement of green,
so reducing the amount of magenta
in the greens will make them purer.
If you want, you can shift the greens
towards the yellow by increasing the
percentage of yellow and decreasing
the percentage of cyan. If the greens
are too light or too dark, moving the
black slider will correct that. I used
the Selective Color settings shown in
Figure 4 to create Figure 5.
By far, though, my favorite
color correction tool isn’t a part of
Photoshop. It’s the color correction
tool that’s built into Picture Window
Pro, available as a Photoshop plug-in
called Color Mechanic Pro. This is
extraordinarily powerful and intuitive
and unlike any other color correction
phototechmag.com 45
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TECH:
tool you’ve ever used. If you already
own Photoshop and have no desire
to add Picture Window Pro to your
ensemble, purchase that plug-in.
You won’t regret it.
Color Mechanic Pro takes advantage of the way we naturally think
about color correction. We can look
at a photo and immediately identify
the colors and tones that are off, but
we can’t simply tell Photoshop, “That
skin tone is too pink and that gray
too blue ² fix it!” Color Mechanic Pro
comes close to doing just that with a
remarkably simple way to correct
color. It presents you with a view of
your file and a color-space hexagon.
Click on a point in the image, and
the corresponding color is selected
within the color hexagon. You can
drag that color into any other place
in the color space. The color space
warps smoothly around that change,
as if it were a rubber sheet change,
so related colors adjust to fit; greatly
different colors aren’t affected at all
(Figure 7). Changes are immediately
reflected in the “after” image and the
color hexagon. There are also slid-
ers to control the brightness and the
strength of the color changes.
You can do this to as many color
points as you like, custom-tuning the
color palette to fit the photo. You can
lock down a color so that it doesn’t
change by adding a correction point
but not dragging it to a new location.
That pins the color at its original
value, no matter what other warps
you make to the color space.
Fixing Skin Tones
The Hue/Saturation adjustment is a
powerful and underappreciated tool
for modifying ranges of colors in subtle ways that are difficult to achieve
by other means such as Curves. For
example, used in a masked adjustment layer, Hue/Saturation works
amazingly well for smoothing out
blotchy Caucasian skin tones.
Caucasian skin tones can be
blotchy for many reasons: the age or
health of the subject, the harsh effects of on-camera flash, the dubious
quality of old photographs that are
being restored. Regardless, blotchy
(Figure 6)
Fluorescent light is never a good choice for illuminating
a subject, but sometimes one doesn’t have much choice.
The top figure shows the photograph as it came from
the camera. The bottom photograph shows the degree
of color correction I achieved using the Color Mechanic
plug-in settings shown in Figure 7.
(Figure 7)
(Figure 7)
Color Mechanic is an intuitive way to selectively adjust colors
in a photograph and improve its overall color balance and
rendition. The top illustration shows the control panel as it
opens up. In the bottom illustration, I zoomed in on the color
space to give me finer control, and I selected points in the
snow, white feathers, and silver gray feathers. I dragged all
those points close to the neutral center of the color space
to eliminate the color casts in the photograph. Then I added
a point in the greenish rock steps and dragged it towards a
more neutral yellow, to make the rocks more naturally tan.
The results appear in Figure 6, bottom.
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COLOR CORRECTION MADE EASIER CTEIN
skin tones look that way because
they have some patches that are
too pink or red and other patches
that are too yellow. If one were to
make the yellows a little ruddier,
they’d look a lot more like a proper
skin tone. Similarly, making reds and
pinks a little yellower would suppress that flushed look.
Create a Hue/Saturation adjustment layer and set the control sliders
for the red and yellow channels as
shown in Figure 9. Moving the Hue
slider to the left or right shifts the
whole spectrum. By moving it to the
left for the yellow channel, we’ve
shifted the yellow colors into the red
and the reds into the pinks. For the
red channel, moving the slider to
the right shifts redder colors into the
yellow range.
It doesn’t take a lot of hue shift to
get the desired effect (Figure 8, right).
I exaggerated the changes here so
they’d be visible in reproduction. Be
careful not to overdo this in practice,
or you’ll wipe out most of the color
variations in the face and it will look
like the subject is wearing too much
pancake makeup.
The reason for doing this in an
adjustment layer is that usually you
won’t want to change all the colors
in the photograph, just the skin tones.
So, the final step is to fill the mask
channel with black and use a white
brush to paint in the mask areas for
the skin that you want to alter.
(Figure 8)
Photo by Bern Schwartz. Copyright ©1978
Blotchy Caucasian skin tones occur when some parts of the skin are rendered too yellow
and others too pink. In this photo, it’s most evident in the knuckles and fingertips, the
nose and the cheeks. This blotchiness is quickly and easily removed using selective Hue/
Saturation controls as shown in Figure 9, resulting in the photograph on the right.
Ctein is a technical writer and expert
printmaker. He is also the author of Digital
Restoration and Post Exposure³Advanced
Techniques for the Photographic Printer.
© Ctein 2010. __________
[email protected]
To ask a question or comment on this article,
visit our online Forum:
Product Resources
Software: Adobe Photoshop CS4,
Adobe Photoshop Elements, Picture
Window Pro and Color Mechanic Pro
by Digital Light Color, GIMP by
GNU Image Manipulation Program
(Figure 9)
The key to eliminating blotchy skin tones is to shift the reds in the Hue/Saturation adjustment towards the
yellow (a plus Hue adjustment) and shift the yellows towards the red (a minus Hue adjustment). The shifts will
often be comparable in size, but you can favor one over the other, depending on how pink or tan you want
the skin to come out overall. In this case, I corrected the yellows more strongly and slightly darkened them to
keep the lightness of the skin tones the same.
phototechmag.com 47
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Marketplace
Ad Index
_____
______________
______________
For Advertising Information
contact:
heidi @phototechmag.com
___________________
Adorama Camera, Inc.
C3
Alien Skin Software
www.alienskin.com
C4
Antec, Inc.
www.kyantec.com
48
Artcraft Chemicals, Inc.
www.artcraftchemicals.com
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Darkroom Automation, Inc.
www.darkroomautomation.com
42
Delta 1/C.P.M., Inc.
www.cpmdelta1.com
42
EZWebPlayer.com
www.EZWebPlayer.com
20
Focal Press
www.focalpress.com
C2
Mesilla Digital Imaging Workshops
www.mesillaworkshops.com
48
Photo Technique Forum
20
Regal Photo Products, Inc.
46
Sto-Fen Products
www.stofen.com
48
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Mesilla Digital Imaging Workshops
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___________________________________________________
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___________________
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Titelmelodie James Bond Casino Royal

Transcription

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