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Image © Cort Anderson

pg. 8

CONTENTS: Feature 24

Tech

Using Camera RAW Workflow

A Step-by-Step Guide

Nine Steps to Better Digital Black and White

Steve Anchell

Workflow for Repeatable Results Cort Anderson

On Photography 5

Textures

“Animal Longings”

Adding Timeless Feel and Emotion to Your Photographs

The Still Lifes of Kate Breakey

Benjamin Edwards

A. D. Coleman

The Modern Alchemist Printing-Out is In: New Collodio Paper Bill Westheimer

Insight 29

Seeing Softly Soft Focus in the 21st Century Tillman Crane

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Stitching Time Make Astonishing Stitched Panoramas Brad Templeton

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Tech 44

The New Hipstanotype Blending digital and traditional technology Tom Persinger

Portfolio 19

Lessons Learned pg. 34

Joseph Holmes

News 12

Image © Benjamin Edwards

A Conservationist’s Adventures in Large Format Digital

pg. 15

Books: The Ultimate Wish List Veronica Cotter

New Products 34

Important New Silver Halide Film and Paper from Kodak and ILFORD Digital Darkroom Tools Harman TiTan 4x5 Pinhole Camera

ioSafe Rugged Portable Data Storage Chrome Niko Bag GearGuard Security

Page 48 Marsel van Oosten On the Cover Joseph Holmes Black Oaks, Winter, Yosemite, California, 1993

Image © Joseph Holmes ___________________

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FROM THE EDITOR

Nov/Dec 2011

Vol. 32 No. 6

Publisher S. Tinsley Preston III Editor Wendy Erickson

Have you heard about the legend of the photographer stuck in an inspiration rut? He felt he was missing something in his life; his photographs had become boring, cheap imitations of what he knew they could be. He took two months off and decided to go on an adventure.

Creative Director Lisa Cordova Production Roberta Knight Online Content Coordinator Bree Lamb Newstand Distribution

He embarked on his journey seeking wisdom to recharge his creativity. Weary but open-minded, he stumbled into the enchanted black oak forest. The light covering of snow created a sense of beauty and calmness in the landscape. He looked up at the rough canyon walls, seeing secret hidden textures and said, “These could add emotion to my photographs!” Later he bolted down the path of the nine steps and learned strategies for making better digital black and white images. Along the road, he apprenticed for a few days with the modern alchemist of Collodio paper. A few days later, taking an untraveled path, he came upon a longhaired, cigar-smoking guru who took him step-by-step through the fields of camera RAW.

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Advertising Sales Manager Roberta Knight rknight@prestonpub.com ______________

His creative block was lifting. After leaving the guru, he magically started seeing softly. With his new soft vision, he suddenly noticed an internationally renowned photo critic. Speaking with perfect elocution, the critic pointed the photographer in the direction of a woman who poetically painted her photographs. The woman put a spell on our hero and (what else would they do?) they went shopping. He bought her a rugged portable hard drive and she bought him a trendy camera bag with a buckle that doubles as a beer can opener. They both stocked up on color film and contemplated sharing a 4x5 pinhole camera. Next, they stopped at a bookstore and loaded up on vintage photography books. On the road again, they met a selfproclaimed omnologist who shared his portfolio. With their lessons learned, they set off again on the trail only to meet the man who started the first dot-com. He taught them how to stitch together their new photographic memories. Later that week, they got hip with a cool cat who introduced them to the Hipstanotype. As the couple walked off into the sunset, their batteries recharged, they paused on Page 48 to view spectacular star trails in the cloudless Namibian sky.

List Rental Rickard List Marketing Gerald Petrocelli 631-249-8710 x 118

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Subscriptions: U.S. - 1 Yr/$29.99; 2 Yr/$49.99 Digital Only - 1 yr/$19.99; 2 Yr/$20.99 For new subscriptions, renewals or change of address call 866-295-2900 or email at circulation@phototechmag.com. __________________

You can experience that same creative adventure right here in this issue. It’s true−the technique is back in photo technique. Thanks for liking us on Facebook−you’ve shared inspiration and beautiful photographs. Please join us there. Also, check out the new Editor’s Blog on our website−you can read updates and ramblings there between issues. Looking forward to 2012, great things are already in place for the upcoming JAN/FEB issue. Best wishes for the holiday season from everyone here at photo technique.

Reader Services Books, back issues and collector prints may be ordered with VISA, MasterCard, or American Express by calling 866-295-2900 Mon-Fri. 8 am-4 pm Central Time or email circulation@phototechmag.com. __________________ See phototechmag.com for guidelines, instructions and restrictions for editorial submissions to photo technique.

Wendy Erickson Editor, photo technique magazine

Mention of any photographic formula/ product does not constitute endorsement by photo technique.

photo technique (ISSN 1083-9070) is published bimonthly by Preston Publications, Div. Preston Industries, Inc., 6600 W. Touhy Ave., Niles, IL 60714-4516. Periodicals postage paid at Chicago, IL and additional mailing ofﬁces. Copyright 2011; reproduction without permission strictly prohibited. Canadian Publications Mail Agreement #40030346 Return Undeliverable Canadian Addresses to: Station A, P.O. Box 54, Windsor, ON N9A 6J5 email: circulation@phototechmag.com _________________

PRINTED IN THE U.S.A. by St. Croix Press Inc.

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ANIMAL LONGINGS: THE STILL LIFES OF KATE BREAKEY A. D. COLEMAN

Vermillion Flycatcher, from the series Small Deaths

“Animal Longings” The Still Lifes of Kate Breakey A. D. Coleman Kate Breakey’s sensuous, sumptuously colored, riveting pictures depict once-living things—birds and flowers, mostly, but also a lizard, a dragonfly, a butterfly, a moth— that have died and found their way into her studio, to lie beneath her lens and undergo what might be described as a solemn, protracted rite of passage. Some of these she herself comes across in her peregrinations; some reach her by other paths. (“My friends...give me small dead things as gifts,” Breakey writes.) In their original form, these images generally measure 32 inches square. The substrate of each is a gelatin-silver print, a considerable enlargement of a 2-¼-inch blackand-white negative of an extreme close-up of the image’s

subject and a decidely larger-than-life rendering thereof. Breakey then slowly, carefully hand-paints each print with transparent oils and colored pencils, producing a complexly worked, densely layered final object. Taken as a whole, they constitute a series of portraits of the dead. Within the medium of photography, these images hark back to the poignant hand-colored postmortem daguerreotypes of the mid-1800s, with the cheeks and clothing of deceased individuals tinted to evoke the subject while alive; and they link themselves to much work that’s been done since, up into the present day, by photographers as different from each other (and from Breakey) as Frederick Sommer, Rosamond Wolff Pur-

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ON PHOTOGRAPHY she portrays them as if they not only have a right to the tree of life but can claim an equal place in any afterlife one might imagine possible, and deserve honoring with no less splendid a send-off than kings and saints receive. Breakey speaks of this method as an “attempt to memorialize these individual creatures as little representatives of all the lives and deaths that we disregard.” Yet those “disregarded lives” are not only the brief existences of plants and small animals but also, symbolically, those of the millions of bigger creatures too—including most humans—who will die without fanfare. We are all tiny and fragile in the larger scale of things; we all want our lives—and our deaths—to matter. This is, I think, part of the reason Breakey’s images touch us so deeply: because they represent a version of what each of us would hope to have happen when we pass on.

Sparrow Poem, from the series Loose Ends

cell, Joel-Peter Witkin, and Jayne Hinds Bidaut, to name just a few. For all their gravity and reverence, Breakey’s studies come across as neither fearsome nor fearful. She consistently presents these creatures—even if clearly defunct, even when stripped down to the bone—as vessels of life. Her treatment of their residual vestiges evokes the sense of touch without the slightest hint of revulsion. The quality of her attention and activity—first the scrutiny of these flora and fauna through the camera, then the painstaking manual re-creation of their living glory—emanates the deepest respect for these beings, along with an evident belief that their passing matters. This reverential treatment of them post mortem functions as an equivalent of the ancient funerary process of embalming: the ritual anointing, perfuming and wrapping of the body that serves at once as a physical farewell to the mortal remains of the departed and as symbolic preparation of the now-freed spirit for its next phase. This caring for the dead contains a poignant mirroring of the birth process, maternal and tender in its feelingtone; not surprisingly, therefore, many cultures and belief systems choose women as the appropriate agents for this procedure. The attentive viewer cannot help but sense the deeply affectional core of this project. Demonstrably, Breakey accepts as a given that these creatures partake of the sacral;

Which is to say that they reveal a philosophical and spiritual premise whose roots lie deep in the history of the still life—which, as a form of art, originates in seventeenth-century Holland. The Dutch term for such work, stilleven, translates simply as “motionless models,” and, from the beginning, many still-life images served primarily as decorative replications in oil paint of the trappings of the successful life of the emerging bourgeoisie. Since shortly after the birth of the form, however, others have been fashioned to operate as meditations on mortality and the flesh; it’s from that branch of the still-life tradition that Breakey’s work emerges, and to that line of inquiry that it contributes. The French version of the term still life, notably, is nature morte–“dead nature.” An undercurrent of lamentation runs through this suite of pictures, which functions overall as a threnody. Understandably, in that regard, many of the images strike a somber, mournful note. Yet these images reveal themselves as not exclusively elegiac. Some radiate a tranquil acceptance of death. Others of them seem to encode screams of anger at fate. Still more appear celebratory and joyful; indeed, many of the flowers, in particular, seem to relish their own decay, proud of the withering of their fleshy forms. All are rendered as noble and heroic. Her latest works—an ongoing series of photograms that describe, in silhouette, the bodies of animals and fragments of vegetation—seem a logical extension of what preceded them. Breakey has been making photograms of the subjects of her hand-colored works for many years; now she’s turning those into finished pieces, sometimes presented as installations. She places her subject—a coyote, an owl, a rabbit, a snake, a floral stalk—directly on light-sensitive paper. After exposure, she sepia-tones the

photo technique N/D 2011

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ANIMAL LONGINGS: THE STILL LIFES OF KATE BREAKEY A. D. COLEMAN

All Images © Kate Breakey

Barn Owl, from the series Small Deaths

Common Black Bird, from the series Small Deaths

one-of-a-kind print, then coats it with a translucent golden-toned paint. The finished prints end up in old thriftshop frames. No two of these pieces are alike. “The photograms,” she says, “burn into the photographic papers with light and love.” Kate Breakey was born in August of 1957 in Adelaide, South Australia, the daughter of nature lovers. She grew up some 200 miles west of there, in the coastal ﬁshing town of Port Lincoln, where she wandered the countryside in her childhood and adolescence, discovering in herself a rapport with the natural world. She earned a B.F.A. from the University of South Australia in 1981. During that period she found photography, or vice versa, acting upon what she calls “my own animal longing to distill color and light into explanations.” Life eventually brought her to the U.S. southwest; presently she lives and works in Tucson, Arizona. Photography is a necessary, inevitable component of her project. Certainly these images would reverberate much differently if they did not give us clues to their photographic basis. By the same token, they would echo in quite different fashion if they prioritized impartial observation over poetic engagement and interpretation. Of the media she blends in her work, Breakey says, “I begin with a photograph—a highly convincing illusion,

a map of reality, a piece of evidence rendered in silvergray tones. This I smear and coat with oil paint in many transparent layers—the layers of emotional subjectivity—lies, dreams, delusions, exaggerations and embellishments. If I am lucky the media combine, become enmeshed and inseparable, a curious marriage of what might be real and what is imagined or desired. They now collude to play with my perceptions about what truth is, my favourite game. I am a sensualist. I admit to my seduction by texture, colour, light and form. It is my deepest pleasure, my lovely addiction.”

A. D. Coleman has published eight books and more than 2000 essays on photography and related subjects. Formerly a columnist for the Village Voice, the New York Times and the New York Observer, Coleman has contributed to ARTnews, Art On Paper, Technology Review, Juliet Art Magazine (Italy), European Photography (Germany), La Fotografia (Spain) and Art Today (China). His work has been translated into 21 languages and published in 31 countries. Coleman’s widely read blog, “Photocritic International,” appears at photocritic. com. Since 2005, exhibitions that he has curated have opened at museums and galleries in Canada, China, Finland, Italy, Rumania, Slovakia and the U.S. © Copyright 2011 by A. D. Coleman. All rights reserved. By permission of the author and Image/World Syndication Services, imageworld@ _______ nearbycafe.com.

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TECHNIQUE

(Left to Right) Original color file with no corrections. Color and density corrected color image. Black and white version after Image > Mode > Grayscale conversion.

Final black and white with Curves Adjustment Layer and sharpened

Nine Steps to Better Digital Black and White Cort Anderson Since my 7th grade science teacher took the time to show me how to develop film and make prints, almost everything I made was on black and white film. As I started shooting digital about ten years ago I wanted to do black and white digitally but was disappointed in the results I was getting. It took a couple of years of experimenting with different methods and various printers but I slowly created a digital black and white process that is simple, repeatable and has great results. Here are the nine steps that make up my basic digital black and white workﬂow. 1. Great digital black and white starts before you even press the shutter. Not every shot is going to look good in black and white. If your goal is black and white you need to think about that from the beginning. One of the hardest things to do is to be able to look past the color in the image and look at the luminance or brightness. Items with very different colors but similar luminance values will blend together into similar shades

of gray when you convert to black and white. Different shades of the same color will often convert to distinct shades of gray. Color can cover flaws in a photograph, people are ‘hit’ with strong colors and often miss small things like an area that is a bit soft in focus or a composition that is a little off. When we take the color away all of those little details become much more important. In black and white good basic photographic skills such as focus, composition and lighting become critical. 2. Good black and white starts with good color. This is something that many photographers miss when converting to black and white. They often see black and white as a way to deal with poor color in an image. A poorly exposed photograph with bad color is not going to convert well to black and white. The problems you have with the color image will carry over to the black and white version and in some cases can be worse. You

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NINE STEPS TO BETTER DIGITAL BLACK AND WHITE CORT ANDERSON will get much better results if you take a little extra time to get the color and density correct on the color version. 3. Keep as much image data as possible throughout your workﬂow. Many processes in digital photography are destructive and remove data from the image. While this may not be a problem early on in a workflow, it can be an issue later when working with that image— the data may be needed but is not there. When possible I shoot RAW and convert to 16-bit ProPhoto RGB files and maintain a 16-bit workflow until I save a final version for printing. This allows for maximum flexibility and quality when making adjustments to the photograph. 4. Get a full scale conversion. There are almost as many different ways of doing color to black and white conversions as there are photographers doing black and white. The problem with many conversion methods is they reduce the tonal range in the conversion leaving you with little or no room to make any contrast or density adjustments after the conversion. Many photographers disagree, but I have found using Mode to convert to Grayscale to be a simple and effective method of doing conversions. You get a good, full tonal range and maintain a maximum amount of image data. For the occasional problem image you can use Channel Mixer to take full control of how much of each channel is included in your final image. This is where you should spend some time and experiment to find the method that gives you the best result for your images. 5. Less is more. Photographers often get caught in the thinking that things have to be complicated to work well. Often there are simple processes and procedures that work as well if not better than the complicated ones. You can use a single Curves Adjustment Layer in Adobe Photoshop to make a variety of density and contrast changes to your image. It is a non-destructive process that takes advantage of a full tonal range and maximum image data. 6. A pure black is key to contrast. If you have areas in your photograph that are black make sure they are a true 100% black in grayscale or 0/0/0 in RGB. If your blacks are even the smallest bit lighter than pure black your final image is going to look flat and weak. Make sure that you have more than just a few tiny areas of black—this may mean sacrificing a small amount of shadow detail to get the needed amount of pure black.

Night Church

This is an example of different colors with similar luminance values being converted to grayscale. Although you start with very different colors you end up with very similar shades of gray. This can be fixed by using different conversion methods that give you control over how much of each color is included in the conversion.

This is an example of the same color with different luminance values being converted to grayscale. Even though the color is the same you have three distinct shades of gray.

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TECHNIQUE

MT’s Gate of Faces

7. Keep in balance. A good black and white photograph is a delicate balance of contrast, detail and tonal range. If you go too far with one, the others suffer. This three-way balancing act is different for each image and you need to be aware of what happens when you weight one side too heavily. 8. Master your files. Preparing files for printing includes some destructive steps like resizing and sharpening. It is a good idea to save a “Master” version of your file after you have completed all of your work but before resizing or sharpening. Then make copies of your master file to use for printing. 9. Know your prints. There are two basic methods, photographic and inkjet with variations of each and hybrid methods combining both. Labs can make black and white photographic prints using standard color paper. The problem with this method is it is difficult to get totally neutral black and white on color material. It usually results in an unwanted color

cast of some kind. This is why many photographers choose to intentionally add an overall color tone to their black and white images to overcome any unwanted cast. A few labs use true black and white photographic paper for digital black and white prints. The digital image is exposed in a digital enlarger onto a special photographic paper designed for digital exposure. This process eliminates any unwanted color cast to the final image. While these prints sometimes cost more and are less available than standard color prints, there can be a big difference in quality and are worth the additional investment. Labs that output using inkjet printers use either color or dedicated black and white ink sets. One advantage of inkjet prints is the wide range of papers available for creative effect. Newer color inkjet printers usually include at least one shade of gray ink in addition to black ink. Getting neutral black and white prints from an inkjet printer is usually much easier than getting neutral results from a color photographic lab.

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NINE STEPS TO BETTER DIGITAL BLACK AND WHITE CORT ANDERSON You can also get inkjet prints using dedicated black and white ink sets that can have as many as six different shades of gray plus black. These inks can produce a range of tones and print quality that is above any other method. The drawback is these prints are usually much more expensive that any other type of prints.

Cort Anderson studied photojournalism at Kansas State University and went on to work for newspapers and a wire service. Cort is the owner of Oypx, LLC, providing graphics software and digital black and white training for photographers. He offers guided trips for photographers in rural areas and along parts of Route 66. Cort enjoys leaving his home in Belle Plaine, Kansas, to travel America’s back roads looking for interesting images in uninteresting places. __________ cortanderson.com

All Images © Cort Anderson

Resources Black and White Photographic Prints: Dalmatian Black & White: dalmatianlab.com, Fromex-trueblackandwhiteprints.com, _________________ H&H Color Lab - _________ hhcolorlab.com, PC Color Lab - ________ pccolour.com, Digital Silver Imaging - _______________ digitalsilverimaging.com; Black and White inkjet: Jon Cone’s Inks - _________ inkjetmall.com, MIS Inks - _________ inksupply.com, Quad Tone RIP - quadtonerip.com __________

Wigwam Motel, Route 66

_________________

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NEWS

The Ultimate Book Wish List The increasing online access to images, archives and exhibits provides an incredible opportunity to view work that might not otherwise be available. The museums, galleries, book shops, public spaces and art walks that feature work by a variety of artists and include various genres of work, offer a very immediate visual experience. For the ultimate delight, the photo book offers the pleasure of spending time with a collection of images that become a source for our expanding visual literacy.

Jerry Uelsmann: The Mind’s Eye Represents 50 years of an artistic career that features Uelsmann’s surreal, dreamlike photographs. modernbook.com

William Eggleston: Before Color A box discovered in the archives of the William Eggleston Artistic Trust in Memphis contained Eggleston’s earliest work steidlville.com

“No one book got me going photographically, but while studying painting in the early 1940’s I saw and liked Walker Evans’s American Photographs published by MoMA around 1938. Later I saw Dorothy Norman’s memorial portfolio of Steiglitz photos around 1940 and liked his pictures, though I had already come to dislike his pretentiousness...” -David Vestal

Mariana Cook: Stone Walls Black & white photographs that display the wall in landscape, as abstract form and their place in nature. __________ damianieditore.it

Elin Hoyland: The Brothers Two elderly brothers living together in a small hamlet in Norway. dewilewispublishing.com

Susan Burnstine: Within Shadows Black & white landscapes that attempt to capture the moments between dreaming and waking. chartaartbooks.it __________

Jeffrey Conley: Winter This ﬁrst monograph includes a selection of 42 images of the essence of winter. ________ nazraeli.com

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NEWS: Veronica Cotter

Ernest Bazan: Al Campo The life and rituals of working Cuban farmland. bazanphotos.com

Syoin Kajii: Kawa Kajii A Buddhist monk, focuses on rivers, using ultra real close-ups. foiltokyo.com

Lewis Baltz: Candlestick Point Images from 1989 Record the developments at Candlestick Point, strongly oriented towards the tradition of Land Art. steidlville.com

Lee Friedlander: The New Cars 1964 A series of images from a never realized photo feature in Harper’s Bazaar, discovered by Friedlander in 2010. fraenkelgallery.com

Mark Schacter: Roads A collection of 160 images made in Canada, each features a road in some way. fifthhousepublishers.ca ______________

Richard Benson: North South East West A display of Benson’s inquisitive observations of both natural and man made creations. moma.org

“Back in the mid-late 1960’s, there were pretty much only three books of real photography−the Sierra Club’s This is the American Earth, Steichen’s The Family of Man, and Edward Weston’s Daybooks. So I guess my most influential single book would be This is the American Earth’s Family of Man Daybooks…” -Alan Ross

Technique and Technical Books Robert Hirsch, Exploring Color Photography, 5e. This classic text has been completely revamped for the digital age. Accurate step-by-step instruction, superb illustrative charts, and inspirational imagery guide your exploration in all aspects of color photo-based work. ___________ focalpress.com Robert L. Shanebrook, Making Kodak Film: The Illustrated Story of State-of-the-Art Photographic Film Manufacturing. Readers have been raving about this book which gives a deep appreciation of the behind the scenes action of Kodak ﬁlm manufacturing. makingkodakﬁlm.com ________________ Ralph Lambrecht and Chris Woodhouse, Way Beyond Monochrome 2e. The new edition has almost double the content, all 542 pages are a must-read, with detailed technical information, and well-illustrated with examples. focalpress.com Lance Keimig, Night Photography. If you love the dark and want to photograph it, this book is for you. Keimig has written an excellent reference for all levels of photographers to learn the intricacies of making photographs at night. ___________ focalpress.com phototechmag.com

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NEWS

Limited Edition Books Photo-Eye, a bookstore based in Santa Fe, New Mexico, founded in 1979 as a mail order photography book source, has one of the world’s foremost websites devoted to contemporary photography. Photo-Eye Editions is dedicated to publishing contemporary photography in the form of limited edition books and portfolios, made in their studio in Santa Fe. Here are two notable editions:

Vintage Books Vintage books are a special treasure and provide great pleasure for both collector and photo enthusiast alike. The range of available titles is extensive, with prices depending on a number of factors, such as availability, demand and condition. The traditional brick and mortar shops that specialize in rare books have adapted to both the downturn in the economy and the impact of web based businesses. Lee Kaplan, owner of Arcana: Books On The Arts, in Santa Monica, CA, (arcanabooks.com) observes that his business has changed significantly during the past five years due to the confluence of information and technology. Amazon impacted his business, giving people an easy option to sell their own books, avoiding the traditional outlets in the process. Buyers, who in the not too distant past might have spent time in a shop looking at a variety of books, now have the option of looking for a specific title online. A number of Kaplan’s customers are not collecting books as frequently, and some, due to financial constraints have had to sell portions of their collections. There are many bright spots. The Internet has allowed Kaplan to share his more than 100,000 titles with the world, and in return, Arcana’s international clientele continues to grow. His list of perennial favorites includes books by Frank, Eggleston, Clark, Sternfeld, Newton, Evans, Friedlander, Gursky and Hido. Tim Whelan of Rockport, Maine owned the very popular Timothy Whelan Photography: Fine Photographic Prints and Books for eighteen years. He decided to close the business in late 2010 due to a lack of traffic in the store. He admits it was tough to compete with Amazon and eBay. The persistent fluctuation in the price of collectible books made it increasingly difficult to predict the business. Whelan has since set up shop in the Maine Media Gallery, (mainemedia.edu/ ____________ gallery) where he has 1,000 titles and categorizes them as “books he loves.” _____ Here are a few of Tim’s picks and his commentary on them:

Tom Chambers: Dreaming in Reverse Soñando Hacia Atrás A series of images of Mexico created to express the concern of cultural loss and the inherent loveliness of Mexican life. Portfolio of 12 pigment ink prints in an archival anodized aluminum box. Published in a limited edition of 30, with two artist’s and two printer’s proofs. photoeyeeditions.com

Debbie Fleming Caffery, The Shadows by Twin Palms Press. “Great images, great design, design, selection and sequencing. Magic when everything goes perfectly. Jack Woody is simply a great publisher. Keep your eye out for his upcoming books on Garry Briechle, and Ryan McGinley they should both be interesting.” Boyhood Photos Of J. H. Lartigue. “A lovely production of delightful images and very funny text. The result of the right person being in the right place at the right time.” Todd Hido, The Road Divided from Nazraeli Press. “A ﬁne press that has produced a lot of great books. This book just has something going on in it that I can not quite understand. Images that trigger memories of places, and times that are sort of familiar.” The Secret Books, by Sean Kernan, with dreamlike writing by Jorge Luis Borges and Chasing the Light by Barbara Bosworth and words by D’Anne Bodman, “… perhaps the loveliest artists book I have sold. There are so many more. As you can see I have a book problem, and this could go on and on...”

David Trautrimas: Habitat Machines Explores the construct of home with a series of residential buildings born of everyday objects. The first book published by Photo-Eye Editions, produced at Photo-Eye Studios in Santa Fe. Handmade, limited edition book of twelve archival pigment ink prints. Limited to 50 copies, two artist’s and two printer’s proofs. photoeyeeditions.com

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Photo books are an expression of our interests, backgrounds and ﬂights of fancy and quickly reach the status of treasured possessions. In a life ﬁlled with sound bites and social media, photo books are a wonderful retreat. Dive into this selection of recently Veronica Cotter started her published books and you may career in the photo industry with discover a must have to give as Oriental Photo, and established a gift or perhaps one to add to their East Coast office. Veronica also worked for ILFORD Imaging your own collection. and was most recently the VP of Education Development for HARMAN technology. She is currently working as a writer and consultant.

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CHANGING YOUR WORLD WITH TEXTURES BENJAMIN EDWARDS

After applying textures

Original image

Changing Your World with Textures Benjamin Edwards We live in an age of endless post-production possibilities. At times, it may feel like it’s all been done before. During those times we must strive to break out of our button-pushing boxes and explore new avenues for our image making. I’d like to share with you one of my favorite ways to enhance images in post-production—the application of texture.Whether you shoot landscapes, portraits, or my favorite, humanitarian causes, utilizing texture in your images can lend a timeless feel, full of depth and emotion. I was surprised to learn that items such as cloth, wire and glass, have been used in the traditional darkroom

development process for some 80 years, most notably by artist and photographer William Mortensen who got his start in Hollywood. Thankfully, for today’s digital photographer, we’re able to employ the use of texture a bit quicker than Mr. Mortensen did and with less of a mess. After struggling to find a streamlined and time efficient way to apply textures to my images, I teamed up with the action hero himself, Kevin Kubota, to try and solve the issue. Using a collection of textures I’ve photographed from various countries and combining them with Kevin’s extremely intuitive Dashboard™

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TECHNIQUE

Fig. 2

Fig. 1

Fig. 1.5

technology, we created a product that allows you to quickly and creatively apply texture to your images, while giving customization tools along the way. By using Kubota Image Tools Bor-Tex (Borders and Textures) I’ve been able to spend less time in post, which means more time telling stories with my images. In this article, I’d like to show you how to do the same by adding a bit of texture to one of my favorite images from Rwanda. The image on the previous page was taken on a small hilltop overlooking a fertile valley in Eastern Rwanda. On the hilltop sits a small school where children come to study and eat porridge twice daily. The school is run by Mamma Naomi, a woman in her 60’s, dedicated to helping widows and orphans left by the 1994 Genocide. This image will be used to help tell her story. 1. Once your Borders and Textures (Bor-Tex) Dashboard is installed, you may need to launch it upon opening Photoshop. The BorTex Dashboard can be found under “file/automate/KubotaBorTexDashboard Pallette.” Once open, you can drag the palette around your working space, collapse it by clicking the banner, or exit by clicking on the dashboard and hitting the escape key. If you’d like to geek out, you may also assign a keyboard shortcut to access it at anytime.

Fig. 3

2. Located on the upper-right hand side of your Dashboard you’ll see a drop down menu (Fig. 1) from which you can select different texture packs, Earth, Industrial or “all” textures. I’m going to select “Earth.” Notice, the preview panel in the Dashboard makes it easy to see thumbnails (Fig. 1.5) of your available textures as well as any installed sloppy borders. You can also enter text into the search dialogue box to find a specific texture or texture pack. 3. I’d like to add some nice grain and warmth to this image, so I’m going to highlight the “Buj” texture and click on “apply” on the lower right hand side of the Dashboard. The texture automatically sizes itself to fit the image. You’ll notice a prompt appear that gives you the option to resize the texture, or you can proceed without any changes. You can drag and resize, in this case, I’m going to leave it as is to take advantage of the natural vignetting of the texture. 4. All textures are applied in Overlay blending mode at a layer opacity of 80% (Fig. 2). Blending modes can easily be changed by simply typing “blend” into the Dashboard search box (Fig. 3). Likewise, typing “opa” enables you to select from various layer opacity settings. You can also make these changes directly on the layer palette. In this case, I’m happy with the default settings and will stick with them. 5. When the texture is applied to your image, a smart filter with a Gaussian blur is applied to the texture as well. This enables you to “paint away” texture from faces or skin without losing the color shift that may result from the texture. In this case I painted away some of the texture on the skin of the people walking

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CHANGING YOUR WORLD WITH TEXTURES BENJAMIN EDWARDS

in the foreground, hardly noticeable on the screen but likely would be noticeable in a large print. When all is said and done, I’ve completely enhanced this image in less than five seconds. Fig. 7

Some “Power User” tips and tricks: 1. Not happy with something you’ve applied? Simply hit “undo” (Fig. 4) and the Dashboard takes you back. 2. Once you get the hang of applying your textures, you can toggle on “Ignore Stops,” located in the settings drop down menu of the Dashboard Control Panel (Fig. 5). 3. Have a favorite texture or set of textures you want to use 99 times a day? Right-click or control click on the name of the texture you adore, you’ll see a red star appear next to it. Now go into the search box located at the top of the Dashboard and type “fav” (Fig. 6). You’ll then see all of your favorite textures (or borders) appear. If your texture offends you, you can repeat the process to take away favorite status.

appear in the populated window. From the “edit” menu you can also select a radio button to mark the texture a “favorite.” 5. Want to get your da Vinci on? Select a texture you’d like to use and, rather than hitting “apply” select “paint” (Fig. 8). You’re now able to paint your texture in at your desired opacity with the effect you want, where you want it.

Fig. 8

Fig. 9

6. Love the texture but not the color shift? No problem. Once your favorite texture is applied, type “remove” in the search dialogue box. (Fig. 9) Select “remove texture color” from the populated window and millions of bits and bytes will take away the color of the applied texture, while leaving the texture. You can also make this feature a “favorite.”

Fig. 4

Fig. 5

Fig. 6

4. Are you a workflow nerd with a bad memory? Try this: Highlight a texture name and click “edit” in the control panel located on the bottom of the Dashboard. You’ll notice a window pop-up with a couple of options. (Fig. 7) From here you can keyword the highlighted texture. Perhaps you want to remember what texture you used on a speciﬁc project. When you type that word into the Dashboard search box, the selected texture will

7. As with all of Kubota Image Tools actions, you can customize your look by playing with blending modes, opacities and stacking textures and actions to give your images exactly the look you’ve envisioned—and beyond. Should you need additional help, you can view the Users Guide located in the “Help” tab of Dashboard or contact Kubota Image Tools for more assistance. Some final thoughts on the use of textures: s )F YOU RE PRINTING YOUR IMAGE KEEP IN MIND THE final output size. A piece of texture that might seem insigniﬁcant on the screen might prove to be distracting when viewed in a large print.

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TECHNIQUE

All Images © Benjamin Edwards

Freedom; enhanced using textures

Congo Fields; enhanced using textures

s 4RADITIONALLY IT S BEEN RECOMMENDED THAT YOU sharpen your image just before output. Keep in mind that when you sharpen a file with a texture applied, you’ll also be sharpening the lines of your texture. Experiment to see where sharpening works best in your workﬂow.

Rock on friend, and with all of your new-found extra time, please don’t forget to change the world. Editor’s Note: For an on-line tutorial on the use of the “BorTexBorders and Textures Dashboard,” visit http://kubotaimagetools. com/webinar_Ben_Edwards-Textures.html

s %XPERIMENT WITH ADDING MULTIPLE TEXTURES TO AN image. Some textures work great for adding interesting color shifts and you may ﬁnd two or three that work very well together.

Benjamin Edwards is a humanitarian, wedding and portrait photographer based out of Bend, Oregon. Benjamin is the photographic artist behind the Kubota ImageTools Borders and Textures pack. benjaminedwardsphotography.com

s 4EXTURES ARE A GREAT TOOL FOR ALBUM DESIGN AND can be used to give you a fine art look to portrait albums. s 6IRTUALLY FRAME YOUR WORK OF ART WITH ONE OF THE many amazing sloppy borders included in the Bor-Tex Dashboard pack.

Resources Kubota Image Tools: www.kubotaimagetools.com

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LESSONS LEARNED JOSEPH HOLMES

Aspens, Eastern Sierra, California, 2006

Lessons Learned Joseph Holmes Starting sometime in the mid-1990’s, it became clear that replacing color film with some form of digital capture was inevitable, but the wait for a workable replacement for my beloved Technika and its 4x5 film for scanning was a long one. About five years ago I met a clever fellow, Roger Howard, who turned me on to VR images built by stitching many frames from multiple rows of 360 degree captures from a Canon 20D. My gears started to turn. I wasn’t interested in 3D spherical results for my own work, but the prospect of quickly making, say, nine exposures (three rows of three) with a Canon 5D, to subsequently stitch together into a single image of roughly 4x5 detail was more than a little intriguing. In early 1996 I still had never seen a properly executed

39 MP capture from one of the new backs, so that option seemed yet inferior to 4x5 film in terms of sheer detail— always an obsession for some kinds of photographers. The costly backs offered the best digital quality around which didn’t involve the cumbersome system required for a scanning back capture, but apparently not quite good enough (subsequent discoveries would change that perception). So I put together a Canon outﬁt with a 5D, two zooms and three tilt lenses and went out traveling a few times to see what I could see. A favorite from among the earliest results is Giants of the Owens Valley, California, 2006. It didn’t take long to realize that setting up additional rows was hard, but making more exposures within a

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PORTFOLIO

Land of the Navajo, Arizona, 2006

given row was easy, so my plan changed to using either one or two rows of vertical captures when stitching was indicated. That in turn led to preferring the higher detail of a Mamiya 645 body with a P45+ back so as to keep it to single row capture when feasible, and still wind up with enough detail to make a sharp print of a horizontal image up to somewhere between 30 and 50 inches tall, by a larger width. Single-row captures with that first Canon 5D were no slouch in terms of detail either, and the speed capabilities are great. Double-row captures are slow and quite limited by wind, movement and changing light, but when they work, they can be spectacular, for example, equivalent to three full frames of 4x5 color or more in a best case. But beyond the expected detail there were exciting properties of this approach that I had not anticipated:

1) The freedom of aspect ratio. I had never realized that the reason I hadn’t wanted to work with different image shapes as a rule was only to do with the hardware limitations. There were simply no solutions to the camera problem. When you’re adding frames to a single or double-row digital capture sequence, all you need to do to change the shape to a wider one is to add more frames. This adds detail, rather than taking it away. So my life has gotten far more complicated vis-a-vis the requirements of presenting my work, as it now comes in a large number of aspect ratios. In the near future my new web site will finally go live and a wide variety of shapes will be shown, each presented in an optimal way on the various web pages. 2) Including more subject matter in the final design than I had thought I wanted. My compositions have typically been thoroughly worked out behind the cam-

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LESSONS LEARNED JOSEPH HOLMES

Sunrise at the Pacific, Oregon, 2007

Giants of the Owens Valley, California, 2006

era, so it was an eye-opener to find that in quite a few cases I preferred a wider view which the stitched pano made possible (by my having shot more at the sides if not also at the top and bottom) to the original design concept. These wider views were inevitably more complex, and I’ve especially enjoyed the added layer of complexity that this outcome has delivered. My photograph Aspens, Eastern Sierra, California, 2006 is an example of this. 3) The joys of cylindrical rendering. When stitching, the two most likely geometries to impose on the result are the conventional rectilinear one (same geometry as a single-frame capture) and the cylindrical one, resulting in an image like one which you would get if you looked at the subject through a rotating vertical slit. This one is particularly useful for wider angles, like 90 degrees and more. As long as the camera is rotated

around the vertical axis, the horizon will remain straight. Very wide views can be captured without the corners being enlarged and distorted, but horizontal lines other than the horizon will be curved. 4) The ability to adjust the white point during the RAW conversion only, with total freedom from color crossovers. For the first time sensors have made the rendering of a perfect grayscale in color photography possible. Often this precision doesn’t play a very strong role in a picture, but sometimes it decidedly does, and I have found (as I think many have) that this precision of gray balance can lend to an image a wonderful sense of solidity, which we might never have realized was lacking had we not seen it. André Oldani, (one of the three ‘ALPAs’) made a picture of an experimental white Porsche against a gray background which exhibits this quality more plainly than any other image I’ve seen.

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PORTFOLIO

All Images © Joesph Holmes

Nobel Cabernet, Sonoma County, California, 2007

Looking at only the front end of the car, one could easily believe that it was a monochrome image. Although it seems ironic, a solid gray backbone can be a precious asset for a color image. The aspen photograph actually illustrates a vital benefit of the post-exposure controllability of the white point. The primary light source was very cool blue sky, but by neutralizing it completely, I was able to bring the image to life and reveal the essential character of the trees. At other times I’ve needed ambient blue to counterbalance the yellow of aspens, but not here. I’ve not used my view camera for over four years. The shift to two digital outfits has changed many aspects of my work that I’ve not yet mentioned. I’ve always found that the camera system (camera, film or sensor, rendering methods) dictate the envelope and that the envelope, in turn, almost automatically limits my seeing. I adapt seamlessly to what I know the camera can do. Some kinds of images are now gone, and some kinds have arrived anew. I’m much more adept at working with skies now, but less inclined to look

for interesting close foreground elements in a vertical composition especially. I still don’t know just how I’ll feel about the sum of what has emerged from these last five years work, compared with my earlier results as time goes by, but it does work, I am happy with the best of it, and I do so love playing with the sky!

Joseph Holmes, a native of Berkeley, California, holds a degree in the Conservation of Natural Resources from UC Berkeley. His photographs have been published in the series of Last Wildlands Calendars for Friends of the Earth and several books, including Joseph Holmes, Natural Light, Canyons of the Colorado. He has been designing RGB working spaces since 1997 and is the author of ColorBlind Prove It!, software for monitor calibration. Along the way he mastered silver gelatin black & white, dye transfer, additive Cibachrome, pigment transfer and finally digital printmaking. __________ josephholmes.com

Resources Cameras: Phase One - _________ phaseone.com, Alpa - alpa.ch; Software: (Image Stitching) PTGui Pro 9 - ______ ptgui.com, Adobe Photoshop adobe.com

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LESSONS LEARNED JOSEPH HOLMES

Independence Celebrated

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FEATURE

Using Camera RAW Workﬂow

Fig. 1

Steve Anchell RAW vs. JPEG Think of RAW files as if they were the digital equivalent of a film negative. Think of JPEG files as if they were prints for distribution. You would not think of passing your negatives around to all your friends. On the other hand, like a print, the JPEG is the easiest format in which to distribute a digital image.

convertor. The convertor comes bundled with the latest versions of Photoshop. It can be used with Adobe Bridge to select and convert one or more images simultaneously, though you do not need to go through Bridge to open a single image. Instead you can locate a RAW image file, either in Bridge or from within Photoshop, double-click on it and it will open in Camera RAW.

A RAW file requires the photographer to prepare the recorded image for viewing, because a RAW file contains everything recorded on the camera sensor. The better the camera and optics the better the RAW file. A JPEG contains what was recorded on the sensor plus everything the camera maker thinks is needed to make a good image better: color correction, sharpening, saturation and contrast. This is why a JPEG always looks better than an un-manipulated RAW file. However, if you want complete control of your image, from capture to presentation, use RAW capture and learn to process your own digital negatives.

Camera RAW vs. Lightroom If you use Photoshop Lightroom you are already using Camera RAW. The Develop Module in Lightroom is Camera RAW with a different layout and enhanced features. An advantage of using Lightroom is that you can use third-party plug-ins, such as onOne Software Perfect Layers, a program that brings the power of Layers into Lightroom, or Nik Software Silver Efex Pro 2, for total control over black and white conversion. These are not available in Adobe Camera RAW. For Lightroom users, do your RAW processing in Lightroom and jump to Photoshop only as needed for special effects. Whichever approach you take, Bridge to Camera RAW or directly in Lightroom, the information in this article will help you understand the powerful tools you have available to you.

Opening a File in Camera RAW To open a RAW ﬁle you need to use a RAW convertor. The convertor most used today is Adobe Camera RAW

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USING CAMERA RAW WORKFLOW STEVE ANCHELL

Fig. 2

Finding Your Way Around Camera RAW Open a RAW image in Camera RAW. At first there appears to be a bewildering number of tools and options inside Camera RAW (Fig. 1). The toolbar across the top of the Camera RAW screen contains fourteen tools (Fig. 2). Taken in order from left to right the tools are: 1. Magnifying glass 2. Hand Tool 3. White Balance Tool 4. Color Sampler Tool 5. Targeted Adjustment Tool 6. Crop Tool 7. Straighten Tool 8. Spot Removal 9. Red Eye Removal 10. Adjustment Brush 11. Graduated Filter 12. Preferences 13. Rotate the image 90 degrees counterclockwise. 14. Rotate the image 90 degrees clockwise. On the far right of the toolbar is the Preview on/off switch followed by the full screen toggle.

Fig. 4

Personal preferences may be set in two places. One is in Preferences on the toolbar (#12). In Figure 3 you can see my recommended settings. The second is at the bottom, center. Double click on the default setting, Adobe RGB (1998), and you can preset the color space, bit depth, size of the image, resolution, and sharpening. The settings can be changed at any time for subsequent images (Fig. 4). Notice I use no sharpening. I save this until I know the size and usage of the image. These are the set-tings I use for the Minolta 7D. The only thing I would change for another camera is the Crop Size. Using the Editing Tools There are two powerful new features in the most current releases of Camera RAW and Lightroom. They are Lens Correction and Camera Calibration. I recommend using them before making any other corrections.

The first four tools use the image editing panel on the right side, below the histogram. Tool #5 accesses either the Tone Curve or HSL/Grayscale dialog box. #8 to #12 each have their own dedicated dialog box. #6, #7, #13 and #14 do not require one.

Fig. 5

Fig. 3

If you see an (!) at the bottom right of your image that means the image was imported with an older version of RAW or Lightroom (Fig. 1). In Camera Calibration (Fig. 5) pull down the Process: menu and choose the current

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FEATURE version, in this case 2010, and the (!) will disappear. Below that is the camera profile. The default is Adobe Standard. Go through each profile, and choose one that looks best to your eye−ignore what the camera company calls them, landscape, portrait, and so on. Doing this establishes a baseline for White Balance and color correction. You can create a custom profile using the sliders, below, and save it as a Custom Preset to be used on future images from that camera.

Fig. 6

Fig. 7

Next open Lens Correction (Fig. 6). Under the Profile tab check Enable Lens Proﬁle Correction, and under lens profile choose the camera and the lens that is closest to the one you were using. Enabling profile correction will correct any lens aberrations or distortions that might be present, such as pincushion or barrel distortion of straight lines, especially near the edges. Once the lens has been selected, you can tweak the corrections under the Manual tab. Back to the Toolbar at top, the sixth tool from the left is the Cropping Tool. If you look closely (you may need a microscope) you will see a tiny down-pointing arrow. This indicates a menu drop-down options box. Click on the arrow to choose preset proportions, create your own custom proportion (for a specific paper or size print), constrain any amount of cropping to the original image proportions, and show a grid overlay for alignment. I’ll use Normal to pull in the left side slightly, and eliminate some of the foreground (Fig. 7). After cropping, click on the first tab in the right hand column, Basic. Here you can set the white balance or correct the exposure. I prefer to correct exposure first because correcting the exposure after the white balance could change the overall appearance of the white.

Fig. 8

In this image there is a lot of white. Here is a trick I use, and it does not have to be used only on white, the highest value that you do not want to be blown-out will usually work. First, enable Highlight Clipping by clicking on the small arrow in the upper right corner of the Histogram. To ensure that it is on run the slider all the way to the right and the highlights should be masked in red. If they are not, check the Histogram. If it shows clipping on the right side then click the arrow again. Bring the slider back to the left until most or all of the red mask has disappeared. For this image that would be somewhere between +1.35 and +1.50 (Fig. 8). Use +1.50, which will put us just over the clipping edge, allowing us to use another exposure correction tool, Recovery.

Fig. 9

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USING CAMERA RAW WORKFLOW STEVE ANCHELL

Fig. 10

Fig. 11

If you look closely at Figure 8 you will see that +1.5 leaves a small amount of red in the far mountain on the left, the top step and the television dish. As these areas have no detail we can ignore them altogether. This allows the storefront to remain white. Next set the White Balance. There are several methods for doing this, each one works equally well, it is just a matter of which is best to use for a given image. Leave the Highlight Clipping Mask on because you may find that if you move the White Balance too much to the right you will clip the delicate highlights. Method One: use the White Balance Eye Dropper Tool on the top tool bar. Start by converting the image to black and white. Go to tab #4 to the right of the Basic tab, HSL/Grayscale, and select Convert to Grayscale (Fig. 9). Next, click on the White Balance Eye Dropper Tool and search for an area that is lighter than middle gray; avoid any area that is middle gray or darker. I chose a white area of the storefront that had an RGB value of 230. Then uncheck Convert to Grayscale to bring back the color. The result on this image was a corrected color temperature of 5350K and a tint of +4 (the image as shot was 6250K and +19). Method Two: pull down the Custom White Balance box (Fig. 10). The default is As Shot, which is, as the

name implies, how the image came out of the camera. Find the one that looks most pleasing to you. For this image, Flash gave the closest result to using the White Balance Eye Dropper Tool, 5300K, 0 Tint. Method Three: play with the Temperature and Tint sliders. See what the image looks like when you move the Temperature slider to the right (warmer), or to the left (cooler). To see noticeable changes in color temperature you will need to move at least +/- 100, depending where you begin on the Kelvin scale. Then see what happens if you move the Tint slider to the right (add magenta), or to the left (add green). Changes of +/- 10 will create noticeable differences in tint. The results of this method will be entirely subjective, but you will learn more about mixing color than you will with either of the first two methods. Clarity, Vibrance and Saturation The process of sharpening an image, film as well as digital, is an optical effect created by increasing edge contrast. Clarity only increases the appearance of sharpening in the midtones. This serves to increase the appearance of sharpness only in those areas. Adding Clarity to the midtones will often improve the visual punch of an image. How much to introduce depends largely on the camera used. The higher the resolving power of the camera and lens (not mega-pixels, but resolving power) the less Clarity required. You will find images from the same camera and lens combination

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FEATURE

Fig. 12

will consistently look best with approximately the same amount added. For example, with the Minolta 7D and an 18 to 55mm zoom something between +45 and +65 is good. With the Nikon D700 something between +25 and +35 seems to work better.

Clarity, Vibrance is not required in every image, though it can really help some images. There is no rule for Vibrance, it is entirely sujective. I found for this image that +49 Vibrance improved the blue in the sky without affecting the neutral color of the white storefront (Fig. 12).

Before adding Clarity, use one of the magnifying tools (Zoom Tool or presets at bottom left) to bring the image to 100%. Find an area of midtone that has defined edges. In this image the Hardware sign is a good choice. Move the slider to the right to increase Clarity, +56 looks good here (Fig. 11).

Vibrance affects primarily the dull colors. Any color already above a certain level of saturation, as determined by Adobe, is not affected. Vibrance is also designed to ignore f leshtones as much as possible. Unlike

Photo © Marcia Brenden

The last corrections on this image are Vibrance and Saturation, two color corrections with similar effects. Saturation refers to the purity of the hue, or color. One hundred percent red means pure red. The Saturation slider increases the saturation of every color in the image on an equal basis.

The best part of working with Camera RAW (and Lightroom) corrections are they are totally non-destructive. At any time in the future, you can open the image in either program and replace all of the defaults, or alter any one, including cropping, without any loss in quality. Because of this you can feel free to experiment without concern for destroying your original.

Steve Anchell is an internationally published photographer, teacher and writer. His books The Darkroom Cookbook, The Variable Contrast Printing Manual and The Film Developing Cookbook are international photography bestsellers. _________ steveanchell.com

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SEEING SOFTLY TILLMAN CRANE

Fog and Tree, Thunder Mountain Peter’s Valley. Shot at Thunder MT PVCC on a foggy summer morning at f/6.3 on the Kodak 305 Portrait lens.

Seeing Softly Tillman Crane I have long admired some of the photographs made during the Pictorialist movement, in particular images made by Frederick Evans, Edward Steichen, F. Holland Day, Clarence White and Alvin Langdon Coburn. I bought my first soft focus lens in 2002 and since then have been learning to utilize its unique look in my images. A soft focus lens can create a mood, a feeling or an atmosphere that is quite different from standard lenses. Not every image should be made with a soft focus lens but they are a fun and challenging tool to use, and can add a new dimension to the range of your work. Traditional Soft Focus Lenses The traditional soft focus lenses designed for use with a view camera work because of the presence of spherical

and/or chromatic aberrations within the lens. The spherical aberrations are the result of the curve of the lens. Parallel light rays focus at different focal points as they pass through the thick and thinner areas of the lens. This results in a blurring of the image. Chromatic aberrations cause the various colors in a beam of white light to be focused at different points, resulting in a margin of colors around the edges of the image. Lenses went through a great period of development from the 1850’s to the early 20th Century. Most modern lenses were successfully corrected for spherical and chromatic aberrations by the turn of the century. In fact, lenses were capable of such sharp focus that amateurs started looking for ways to get a less literal and more poetic

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INSIGHT the photographer wanting a “softer” look to their work. Vintage Dianas can be purchased on eBay and modern Holga and Diana reproductions can be found online and in many art stores. Digital Soft Focus With the introduction of the digital camera the world of small and medium format photography changed. Images were focused automatically and resulted in a tack sharp image. However, before long digital photographers were seeking ways to create softer images and behold−the Lensbaby arrived. This is a system of lenses that fuse selective focus with the unpredictability of the plastic camera. In this system you can choose from four lens bodies, seven optics (including an adjustable selective focus, an evenly soft focus optic, a plastic optic and pinhole optic) as well as a number of accessories for special effects.

Advantages s ,ARGE &ORMAT #AMERAS AND ,ENSES´-OST SOFT FOCUS lenses for these cameras use spherical aberrations to create their soft effects. With a view camera you can place the softness in a speciﬁc location in the image because of the ability to use rise, fall, swing, tilt and shift of the standards.

Camden Harbor Park, Veritar SF lens, Deardorff 8x10

feel into their photographs. As a result, soft focus lenses were designed to incorporate and use these aberrations to give the photographer new capabilities for “softness” in their images. As the demand for the soft focus lenses grew, a number of different lens designs were produced up until the 1960’s. Due to the specificity of the aberrations, no two lenses of the same design and size will give exactly the same results. This gives each soft focus lens a unique “personality” when using it. View camera soft focus lenses can be obtained through the used market. Plastic Cameras In the 1970’s a group of photographers began using the Diana plastic cameras that were given out as cheap Carnival prizes. Diana cameras have a single plastic meniscus lens with both chromatic and spherical aberrations. There are no controls for either focus or shutter speed and they leak light. Each Diana camera produces a singular look and feel to the image. The unpredictability and dreaminess of the image as well as the relative low cost make these a fun and affordable film camera for

s 2OLL &ILM #AMERAS´!LMOST EVERY SMALL AND MEDIUM format film camera company made a soft focus lens. These were specifically designed to create soft focus effects. Each lens has its own “soft quality” and varies from manufacturer to manufacturer and lens to lens. Fast shutter speeds allow the user to work at fairly large apertures in relatively bright light. Many different films are still made for roll film cameras, both color and black and white. s 0LASTIC #AMERAS $IANA "ANNER (OLGA ´,IGHTWEIGHT cheap and (relatively) easy to use. They usually have a single plastic meniscus lens, with individual degrees of softness depending on the lens itself and camera/ lens alignment. Each camera has its own unique “signature” look. s 5SE h(OLGAROIDv BACK AND INSTANT FILM´9OU CAN BUY an instant film camera back for the Holga. Images can be scanned for output. s $IGITAL #AMERA WITH ,ENSBABY´9OU CAN SEE THE IMAGE you are making instantly. Lensbabys come in a variety of arrangements and the lens has the ability to work much like the swing and tilt on a view camera. You can also use a modiﬁed Holga lens adapted for a digital camera.

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SEEING SOFTLY TILLMAN CRANE

Overstuffed Chair, ND. Shot in North Dakota during the Spirit of Structure, Abandoned Farms Workshop in May 2011 with the Kodak 305 and Canham 5x7 at about f/6.3. That is my favorite f-stop with this lens because it is still soft but not obviously soft.

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INSIGHT

Hipstamatic App on iPhone Hipstamatic Garden

100 Cameras App on iPad, manipulated with Nik Silver Efex Pro 2 Afternoon Tea

Lensbaby on Nikon Bed, ND

ability, soft focus doesn’t help make your statement. Images that are about sharpness, texture and detail, like the peeling paint on the side of a house or an image for an architect’s portfolio, aren’t enhanced with a soft focus effect. Situations where soft focus can be used well include some portraits, using the soft focus to surround and accentuate a specific part of your image and using it to enhance foreground and background relationships in your images. Whatever method you use to create the soft focus effect, you have to evaluate each situation to determine if the objects out of focus add or detract from your image. Regardless of how you create your soft focus images, the intent is the same: to create a visual world that is less sharp, less defined and, hopefully, more interesting. Just because you are using a soft focus lens or method does not automatically mean you are making better pictures. In fact, the f64 group came about because it was thought that many photographers were using soft focus lenses as a gimmick rather than as a tool for creating art. This holds true today. Good images come from good ideas.

Disadvantages With all film cameras, you have to process film. It’s getting harder to find places that process color film. Black and white film can be processed in a home or school darkroom. The fastest shutter speed on most soft focus lenses designed for view cameras is 1/50th of a second so working in bright light requires additional filters and very slow film to work at an aperture of f/5.6 or larger. With most of the lenses the softness effect begins to disappear at apertures of f/8 and smaller. Large format film is expensive and color film for large format cameras is getting harder to find, as well as to develop. Plastic cameras tend to leak light, which can either ruin or enhance images depending on luck or fate and where the light strikes the film. The area of softness is fixed and both unpredictable and uncontrollable. Digital soft focus effects from iPad and iPhone cameras tend to be lower in resolution so print size is generally limited to 8 x 10 inches and smaller. When Soft Focus Works Soft focus isn’t always appropriate in an image. When working a documentary project and you want reality or believ-

Neither technique nor gimmick make good photographs−photographers make good photographs.

Photo © Richard Barnett

Holga, silver gelatin print Mendocino, CA, Road to Catharsis Project

s !VAILABILITY OF DIGITAL EQUIPMENT OR specialty software−this includes the use of iPad and iPhone photos, with software such as Photo Fx. The Hipstamatic App for the iPhone is an application that, with the swipe of a finger, you can change your lens, flash or film on your phone camera. Instagram is an App that adds a filter to change the look of your image before you send it to Facebook, Twitter or Flickr. 100 Cameras in One, another App for the iPhone/iPod touch and iPad also has a combination of 100 effects and integration with social networking. Nik Silver Efex Pro 2 software is a dedicated black and white plug-in for use in Adobe Photoshop, Lightroom and Aperture.

Tillman Crane is a large format photographer specializing in platinum prints. He describes his work as using 19th Century materials with a 21st Century aesthetic. Tillman teaches a wide variety of workshops, including a soft focus workshop for large format enthusiasts as well as a workshop for other soft focus techniques. He has published four photographs books and sells these and his platinum prints through his gallery in Camden Maine. _________ tillmancrane.com

Resources Lenses & Cameras: Lensbaby - ________ lensbaby.com, Diana & Holga- __________ lomography.com; Holga Mods holgamods.com; Apps: Instagram - instagr.am, Hipstamatic - __________ hipstamatic.com, 100 Cameras in One - _____________ stuckincustoms.com; Software: Nik Silver Efex Pro 2 - __________ niksoftware.com

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SEEING SOFTLY TILLMAN CRANE

Bella’s Tree, Rockport, ME. Shot with the Kodak 305 Portrait lens on the Canham 5x12 camera. The center is sharp and the edges begin to fall apart. It was shot about f/8 which is why the edges are definable.

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NEW PRODUCTS

Gear & Good Stuff

NEW KODAK COLOR FILM KODAK Professional Portra 160 film is now available worldwide. Available in 35, 120, 220, 4x5 and 8x10 sizes, it features a significantly finer grain structure for improved scanning and enlargement capability. kodak.com _______

BLACK AND WHITE SILVER GELATIN PAPER ILFORD MULTIGRADE ART 300 is the first new ILFORD Black and White Silver Gelatin Paper to hit the streets in 13 years. Produced in co-operation with Hahnemühle FineArt GmbH, its pure fine art paper with 100% cotton rag paper base, acid free but with the wet strength needed to survive chemical processing and archival washing. The surface has both a slight texture and an eggshell appearance. Available in sizes ranging from 5x7 to 20x24. it may be time to dust off that enlarger, and get back into the darkroom. (Look for an article on this paper in an upcoming issue of photo technique). _______________ harmantechnology.com

Digital Darkroom

Slick & Snap! Before

After

MOAB SLICKROCK METALLIC PEARL 260 Moab, a division of Legion Paper introduced a new category of fine art inkjet paper. Featuring an innovative metallic pearlescent coating, it is designed for photographers looking to enhance their images with a metallic look. moabpaper.com __________

SNAP ART 3 It’s the newest version of Alien Skin Software’s artistic natural media plug-in for Adobe Photoshop, Elements and Lightroom. Snap Art 3 turns a photograph into a handmade-looking painting, drawing, pastel, even a crayon drawing. You can expect natural results and it’s easy to use. alienskin.com ________

HARMAN TiTAN 4X5 PINHOLE CAMERA A new ILFORD 4x5 Pinhole Photography Kit, designed in conjunction with and manufactured by Walker Cameras in the UK, is made from injection molded ABS, a with a non-slip finish. An interchangeable 72mm wide-angle cone, stainless steel fittings, built in bubble level and flash mount make for an easy-to-use and robust kit for shooting 4x5 film or paper. It includes the camera, Harman Direct Positive Paper, ILFORD sheet film, exposure calculator and instructions. harmantechnology.com

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Be Safe

LIMITED EDITION METERS Sekonic announces Limited Edition L-308S Flashmate meters in celebration of their 60th Anniversary. Available in red, green or blue metallic colors, this pocketsized meter is the lightest and smallest digital light meter in the Sekonic line-up. It’s designed to read ambient or flash exposures in either reflected or incident mode. macgroupus.com ___________

MINI-L BRACKET ARCA-SWISS presents the first X and Y variable mini L-bracket adaptable for compact cameras such as the Olympus E-PL1 and E-PL2, Samsung NX-100, Canon G series, and Lumix LX series. Check with your dealer for ordering information.

On the Road Again

ioSafe RUGGED PORTABLE DATA STORAGE Using Full Metal JacketTM Technology, the new Rugged Portable from ioSafe has an titanium alloy enclosure, crash resistant to 5,000 lbs. It’s HydroSafeTM Technology with SSD titanium version protects data during immersion up to three days in water up to a depth of 30 ft. It’s backed by ioSafe’s Data Recovery Service. _______ iosafe.com

SMITH-VICTOR Designed with the DSLR user in mind, Smith-Victor offers new photo lighting kits. The kits include the FlashLite 110i, FlashLite Monolight and Quartz Halogen series. Each kit is specifically designed to meet the modern photographer’s photo or video lighting needs. __________ smithvictor.com

CHROMO NIKO A new weatherproof single-shoulder messenger bag designed specifically for photographers, using their traditional seat-belt buckle style (the buckle doubles as a can opener!) Go online to check out their entire line of hip bags. ___________ chromebags.com

LIGHTWEIGHT BHS BALLHEADS The new Induro BHS-Series Ballheads offer well-balanced adjustable support for a wide range of cameras and lenses and are compatible with most compact and professional tripods. A dual quick release locking system and built-in bubble level ensures fast set up. Each includes a matching Snap-in Style Quick Release Plate. ___________ macgroupus.com

GEARGUARD SECURITY New from Gary Fong, Inc., a comprehensive security system that aims to deter thieves. The GearGuard line consists of the GearGuard Camera Body Lock, the GearGuard Camera Bag Lock and the GearGuard Lens Lock. Finally, the GearGuard Security Cable and TSAapproved Combination Lock securely tethers the GearGuard components, adding the finishing layer of protection and loss prevention to ensure safe storage and travel. garyfongstore.com ____________

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TECHNIQUE

The Modern Alchemist: Collodio-Chloride Printing-Out Paper

POP print after processing

Bill Westheimer

In a time that seems long ago and far far away, the earliest photographers made prints which appeared magically without developing. They would rinse and fix to display and extend the life of the image. More recently in the 20th Century portrait photographers used similar technology to make proof prints that would fade as they aged.

ing the collodio-chloride paper and toners made by Alt Photo Products. POP is a contact printing process so my first tests were prints made from collodion wet-plate glass negatives. Using a print-ing frame made by Bostick and Sullivan I exposed test sheets using direct sunlight or on cloudy days I made exposures using an Arri 1K fresnel hot light.

Now we make archival digital prints and have nearly forgotten the art of chemical printing. Many photographers have gladly forsaken silver-gelatin printing for the control ease and simplicity of inkjet. But many of us still enjoy the chemical processes—we cherish the journey as well as the destination. We can still buy 20th Century silver printing materials and an ambitious photographer can mix the chemicals necessary for 19th Century processes. Photographers who want to make prints using a historic style printing out paper (but don’t want to “roll their own”) now have a source for a new collodio-chloride printingout paper (POP). I spent several days in the lab test-

Exposing The Paper The daylight exposures were about two minutes. Using the hot light the exposures were 12 to 25 minutes. The contact-printing frame allowed me to check on the exposure while still maintaining perfect registration. Because the paper is not very sensitive you can work in normal room light and check the exposures and process without a safelight. I found that the exposure is hard to judge because the density lightens dramatically in fixing and then dries darker. The proper exposure gives you an unprocessed print that appears extremely dark. I made test strips keeping careful

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THE MODERN ALCHEMIST BILL WESTHEIMER

Untoned Print

With Gold/Borax Toner

With Gold/Ammonium Thiocyanate Toner

Exposing the paper in a contact frame

records of the exposures and then washing and fixing and drying with a hair dryer before judging the test exposures. Processing After exposure the print is rinsed in a salt and citric acid bath for five minutes and then rinsed in running water for five more minutes. Alt Photo Products provides recipes for all the chemicals. The paper curls quite a lot when wet. The manufacturer recommends two techniques for reducing the curling. One involves a complicated hot water rinse with constant attention for 10 minutes of patting the print followed by more rinsing. I chose the simpler and quicker method of soaking the print in isopropyl alcohol. This is the rubbing alcohol available at the pharmacy. After a few minutes in the alcohol the print flattens and is easier to handle. Then the print goes directly into the hypo—a pretty standard 15% sodium thiosulphate solution with the addition of small amounts of sodium carbonate (baking soda) and sodium sulfite (a rinse agent like hypo clear). When placed in the fixer the print transforms from a dense blood-red crimson color to a beautiful subtle sepia tone. The bleaching is substantial despite the addition of the baking soda. After fixing the print is washed—a hypo-clearing bath is also recommended. Then the print is squeegeed and dried in a blotter book. Each print takes quite a while to process despite not needing a developer. You do not need a dark-

room, just lots of running water and some counter space for the rinsing, fixing and washing. Alt Photo Products also provided two different toners to experiment with. They were provided in very helpful packaging which facilitated toning one print at a time instead of mixing large amounts of expensive toner so you could make just enough for one or two prints. The instructions clearly explained the process—after the alcohol bath, place the prints in the toning bath for five to 15 minutes and then directly into the hypo for the normal fixing and washing times. I found that the gold/ammonium thiocyanate toner subtly reduced the yellow in the highlights after 15 minutes in the toner. I tried the gold/borax toner for five minutes and found the results were similar except the print seemed to have a bit more contrast. The paper emulsion is very hard and less absorbent than the (no longer available) Centennial POP paper that may be familiar to some photographers. This hardness makes for slow toning. I also tested making prints from digital negatives. This is a very intriguing approach to using POP. You can use any image—from a digital capture to a film scan—that you manipulate in the computer to produce a negative with the proper contrast. The digital file is output on a transparent inkjet film using a regular inkjet printer. I started experimenting with some digital files of images that would have been very hard to capture using a 19th Century process like collodion wet-plate. Action

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TECHNIQUE

Original File

Digital Negative

pictures and scenes with very low illumination would have been impossible to capture in 1860. Using this technique we can make 19th Century style prints of images that early photographers would never have dreamed of capturing. I found it very difficult to start from a digital file and create a workable negative to be printed on special inkjet transparency film. I preferred the Pictorico Premium OHP film to the Inkpress 7 mil transparency film because the Inkpress tended to have feed problems due to the material curling when going through the printer. The Pictorico fed through the printer perfectly. Creating these negatives is an art in itself that requires a lot of work and testing. I found it very helpful to add a graduated density step chart ranging from 0% to 100% in 10% increments to the digital negative. I recommend refining the technique with conventional silver gelatin prints before proceeding to making POP prints. Even so, a negative that works for silver gelatin paper will need to be altered to make a good negative for POP printing because the contrast and sensitivity is so different. The Collodio-Chloride Printing-Out Paper should be exposed within 30 days of purchase, although the manufacturer says that once the exposure is made the paper can be stored for a few days before processing. It is hand-coated here in the US, with a collodio-chloride emulsion onto baryta-based glossy paper from Europe. The surface coating was hard and smooth and only a few sheets showed uneven coating. The manufacturer offers packs of

Final print on POP paper

second quality paper for testing and I found the sensitivity varied between the two packs of paper that I tested. Using the paper was fairly simple but time consuming. It was fun to get my hands wet and to be in the lab making prints. I had plenty of time while rinsing and fixing and washing to imagine myself as a 19th Century gentleman with a handlebar mustache printing back in the days when photography was magical. I enjoyed the process and the resulting prints are clearly different from a modern digital print. So if you enjoy chemical photography and don’t have a darkroom, this is a way to make prints and have some fun being a modern alchemist. Since making his first photograph at age 14, Bill Westheimer has been fascinated with alternative processes. At Union College Bill studied with noted painter and educator Arnold Bittelman and later with Jerry Burchfield who introduced him to color photograms and Cibachrome (now Ilfochrome). Early in this millennium he learned the 19th century technique of collodion glass plate photography from France Scully and Mark Osterman. Recent work includes photograms made on collodion glass plates, Ilfochrome and gelatin silver media. He recently published a book MANUAL—The Personalities of Hands and CRICKETS a handmade book created in collaboration with Leonard Seastone. His works are exhibited in galleries and museums worldwide. _______ billwest.com

Resources Alt Photo Products-Altphotoproducts.com; arri. ______________ Arri - __ com; bostick-sullivan.com; Pictorico ___ Bostick and Sullivan- ____________ -pictoricotop.aspx ___________

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STITCHING TIME BRAD TEMPLETON

Stitching Time Brad Templeton Many photographers, particularly landscape ones, have been exploring the new world of digital stitched panoramic photography. The prospect of unlimited resolution and field of view opens literal new vistas in your toolkit, and also can be the least expensive way to get a good quality wide angle shot. In stitched photography, you shoot a series of overlapping shots covering a wide field of view. Then, special software blends the photographs to produce a seamless result. This allows shooting the complete sphere around you, a 360 degree view, or simply a sweeping panorama of any field of view you choose. The latter shots can produce dramatic giant prints, while full spheres and many 360 shots are often viewed on computer screens that allow the viewer to pan and zoom around the entire field. If you’ve ever seen a majestic land-

scape and felt you simply had to capture all of it, You’ll want to explore panoramic shooting. The software for panoramics takes ordinary photos and, knowing the focal length, projects the typical rectilinear image back onto the sphere it really was. (Non-fish-eye lenses all work to keep straight lines straight on the print, even though they are not really straight to the eye). Once projected on a sphere they can be overlapped and blended smoothly. Panorama Mounts For best results, the camera is rotated around a special point in your lens known as the exit pupil or “no parallax point”− often incorrectly called the nodal point. If you spin around anything but the NPP, frames can’t perfectly overlap on foreground objects due to parallax. Many companies sell

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TECHNIQUE

Faithful

panoramic mounts that help rotate your camera precisely. Many also have “clickstops” that make it easy to move the camera by the right angle each time. These mounts range from inexpensive plastic assemblies like the $99 Panosaurus to others such as the GigaPan Epic Pro Robotic Camera Mount at just under $900. The special mounts allow full sphere panorama shooting. For shots that only need a single horizontal row (which means most landscapes and skylines) you can get by with much less, in fact a simple rail on your existing tripod head that spins around the correct point in the middle of your lens does the job. The process to ﬁnd that point is documented with any mount you buy. Software The good news is that panoramic software is very good, and you can often shoot panoramas without too much focus on the NPP, even hand-held, as long as there isn’t much in the near foreground. Many digital cameras come with a free panoramastitching program.These vary in quality and many will need you to use a proper mount, or require a fair bit of work if you didn’t. If you get serious, or

want to go hand-held, I recommend the package AutoPanoPro 2.5, which sells for 99 Euros. APP features a tool known as the SIFT algorithm which is able to very quickly ﬁnd the overlap among hand-held images and generate excellent blends. In fact, you can even consider stitching software as an alternative to an expensive wide angle lens. High quality normal lenses are very sharp and very inexpensive, but a good wide angle is costly. If your subject allows it, you can shoot a quick overlap with a normal lens (even by hand) and stitch the wide angle view. You still get the shallower depth of ﬁeld of the longer lens, and this may not work with close foreground objects or large amounts of motion in your scene. The latest versions of Photoshop Creative Suite (CS3 and later) also have good photo stitching tools. Photoshop is costly, and I would not purchase it just for the stitching, but if you already own it, explore this capability. Another worthwhile package for single-row panoramas is the $79 Panorama Factory. Much slower and more work than APP, it offers the useful ability to draw the blending region by hand, which turns out to be important in scenes with many moving objects.

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STITCHING TIME BRAD TEMPLETON

Making the Photograph Panoramic shooting requires a spot with a wide view. A few trees may not block a normal shot but could make a panorama difficult. Find the one spot that has the truly sweeping scene you seek, and set up your mount. For your first efforts, I recommend avoiding near foreground objects. With every photograph, light is the most important thing. With sweeping panoramas, you’ll find the light is very different in one direction from another. Indeed in a 360 degree shot taken in the golden hour, one shot will be directly into the sun while the other side has it behind. Many panoramic programs will take shots of different exposures and combine them, but I strongly recommend you shoot the entire panorama with the same focus, exposure and white balance settings. You can use gradient filters in your photo-editing program to adjust the intensity curves in the different regions of your panorama. If people, clouds or vehicles are moving, shoot quickly. If you’re not careful you may find that a moving object was tracked by your shooting and appears in several frames in a row. While this is amusing at first, a professional job will avoid

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TECHNIQUE duplicated people. Sometimes rather than shooting quickly, work slowly to allow things to completely move out of your shooting zone. In fact, you can generate artiﬁcially-empty scenes by asking the people to move out of the zone you are photographing. Clouds won’t obey you and if shadows are changing you must work quickly. You always want to make a photograph interesting. One option in stitched photography, if the light is not changing quickly, is blending shots from different times. For example, you can shoot all the frames to cover a scene and then notice something animated in the scene. Shoot it at just the right time, replacing the old more boring shot from the earlier sequence. For example, I once shot Old Faithful this way. You can’t shoot the whole 360 during a single spurt of the geyser, but I was able to shoot most of the shot at another time but made sure I used a frame of the water at maximum height. You may consider this a bit of a cheat, but it’s a scene that really existed. I have set a custom mode setting on my Canon DSLR. It’s set for manual exposure of “sunny/16” with autofocus moved to a different button, sunshine white balance, a fixed ISO and a long poweroff timeout. I usually have to tweak the exposure,

and I focus once with the AF button and shoot a nice even panorama. Shooting at night is challenging for panoramas. You may have to take dozens of exposures, and if even one is wrong (you get some blur) it may ruin your panorama. Unlike single shots, which you can check and take again, doing it for 30 shots is a chore. You need a sturdy mount and a cable release is strongly advised. Frames of pure blackness can’t be blended with other frames by the software. As you get more experienced, you will be able to handle more, including night shots and close foreground shots, even hand-held. Blending AutoPanoPro 2.5 is by far the easiest and fastest tool, though it sometimes fails and manual adjustment is needed. It also features a “Smartblend” approach that attempts to deal with things like moving objects. A simplistic blend will create ghost objects when something moves, or even objects cut in half if the blend region is short. The smartblend tries to do the blend over zones with nothing moving, but it doesn’t always succeed. When this happens APP lets you hand edit your source images to erase the moving objects and tell it not to blend over them.

People’s Square

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STITCHING TIME BRAD TEMPLETON

Display Because you can blend together huge numbers of photographs, including multiple rows of long-lens shots, people are blending truly huge images with billions, in some cases close to 100 billion pixels. Even modest panorama efforts will result in photos with 50 to 100 million pixels. Some are so large that you can’t really even print them at full resolution unless you have a giant wall and a lot of money. These are only viewed in pan-zoom viewers, such as krpano and at the gigapan web site. Viewers are good, but I like to print select images, and print them very big. It’s truly amazing to see an image 20' long that’s tack-sharp even if you put your nose up to it. You can easily shoot with more resolution than the human eye could see sitting where your camera was, and reproduce the experience of being there for those who see your photo. Printing like this is not always inexpensive. Most commercial printing houses have large format printers which can print 44" or 60" high by as long as you want. Prices typically will be $7 to $10 per square foot. I have often used a site named bigphotohelp.com which prints for $3.50 per square foot up to 96" long. Today I have my own 24" wide printer that allows me to print for around $1/square foot in ink and paper. My walls

are covered with “like being there” photographs. It can also be a challenge working with photographs that are gigabytes in size. You’ll want a fast multi-core computer and lots of memory. Indeed, I recommend running a 64 bit operating system so you can make use of 8GB or 16GB now that such memory has become inexpensive. It will help the stitching (though the best programs do it all from disk and keep memory usage down) but also your other manipulations. Get your gear ready and when one of those amazing clear days comes, head out when the light is good and try to capture more than you ever have before.

Brad Templeton founded ClariNet Communications Corp (the world’s first “dot-com”). He is a Director (and was Chairman 2000-2010) of the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), the leading cyberspace civil rights foundation, and a popular photographer at Burning Man. He is currently working on software plans for robotic cars. www.templetons.com

Resources Websites: Canon.com; kolor.com; gigapan.org; ______ gregwired. com; panoramafactory.com; krpano.com; bigphotohelp.com ___

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TECHNIQUE

The New Hipstanotype Tom Persinger What do you do when you’re tired of the digital sterility of the cell phone photograph, but you find its convenience too tempting to leave behind? Download one of the many available photography apps! These offer a stunning variety of capabilities ranging from panorama to HDR. Many are even designed to remove an image’s sanitary perfection by inserting “process artifacts.” Among these you can find interesting applications that replicate a variety of different photographic looks ranging from the scratches and peeling of wet plate collodion and the creamy smoothness of Polaroid, to vintage black & white film grain and the flares and light leaks of plastic toy cameras. And of this group

of apps, none is more popular and has garnered more attention than the Hipstamatic. For a mere $1.99 the Hipstamatic will turn your phone into a camera with an amazing variety of lenses and film types. Used in combination these allow for a stunning assortment of effects. Some may scoff at the ease of this virtual processing, but the truth of the matter is, it’s fun! When I recently began testing and experimenting with the Hipstamatic, I quickly capped off a number of shots. The application is marvelous at postprocessing, though the most important aspects of the picture−subject, cropping, and composition

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THE NEW HIPSTANOTYPE TOM PERSINGER

Final hipstanotype image

This is what the digital negative looks like on screen- note the layers.

are still up to you. The axiom is true: a poor picture cannot be saved by clever effects. With just a few taps, clicks and mouse movements, I created and printed an assortment of perfectly homogeneous vintage-looking photographs. The images were very nice, but it almost seemed too easy. And while I enjoyed the pictures, I found them ultimately too bland. With my background in the practices of the wet darkroom, I felt as if I had no real connection with these pictures. I stood in my studio with the pictures spread out before me, looked around and thought: why not combine Hipstamatic image capture with cyanotype printing? The cyanotype is a classic historic process invented by Sir John Herschel in 1842. It’s simple, easy and inexpensive. Thus began my journey into creating the Hipstanotype. Should you wish to try it for yourself, here are the steps of my adventure. Create The Digital Negative Creating the digital negative can be a complicated affair full of step wedges, test prints and curve adjustments. Alternately, you can try a great and, I believe, under-appreciated system developed by Clay Harmon. Using his simple process with just the creation of just four Photoshop layers, you can simply and easily create a negative that yields

good results. The first thing you’ll need to do is to get his free article in pdf format (see resources) in order to download and install his custom ‘ratio’ curve which is one of the key components to his simpliﬁed system. 1. Open your image in Photoshop. 2. Add and convert to black & white adjustment layer. (The order of the following layers is important, so please add them in the order listed. See screenshot for reference.) 3. Create a curve adjustment layer and load the ‘Ratio Curve’ that you’ve downloaded from the Clay Harmon article. 4. Add an Invert adjustment layer. 5. Add a regular layer and set the layer type to “Screen.” 6. Open your foreground color square and enter the following numbers into the RGB fields: R:127, G:255, B:0. Hit enter and fill the ‘screen layer’ with this green color. Your entire image should transform from a black and white negative to a green/ white negative. This green color provides what’s

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TECHNIQUE 1. Solution A: Mix 4g Potassium Ferricyanide with 50ml of tap water. Stir until dissolved. 2. Solution B: Mix 10g Ferric Ammonium Citrate with 50ml of tap water. Stir until dissolved. 3. When ready for use, mix 10ml of A and 10ml of B together in a small cup. 4. Dip your foam brush into the working solution and apply to an area of your paper that’s slightly larger than your negative. 5. Let the paper air dry for five minutes. Then use a blow dryer to dry it completely. The sensitized area should have a nice, even, light-yellow coloring. All Images © Tom Persinger

6. Place the negative on top of the sensitized paper, place in a contact frame or between two sheets of glass, and then place into UV light until the shadows have reversed and the entire image looks extremely overexposed.

known as “spectral density.” This step provides one way of holding back the appropriate amount of UV light so that the negative prints a cyanotype with the fullest possible range of tones. 7. Load a sheet of transparency material (I use Inkpress) into your inkjet printer and output your digital negative using the appropriate settings for your printer and inkjet materials. I’ve been making my negatives on 8.5x11" transparency with a 6.5" square image size.

7. Remove the cyanotype from the frame and wash in cool, lightly running water for 15-20 minutes until there is no trace of yellow staining. Be sure to check the highlights. 8. Hang or lie flat to dry. It’s that easy to go from a cool Hipstamatic photograph to an even cooler, handmade Hipstanotype. Editor’s Note: Tom has written and produced a series of inexpensive Historic Process Quick Reference Cards. The 8.5x11" waterproof, stain-resistant, laminated cards are designed as a quick and concise reference and facilitates early success. These inexpensive cards are currently available through Freestyle Photographic and can be found on their website. Tom Persinger is an artist, photographer, writer, and the founder of F295, an international organization that believes in the value of a heterogeneous photographic approach in which digital, historic, and self-made methods are employed and combined in the creation of a new “21st Century Photography.” Tom is also currently working on a book that will further illuminate this approach. Contact Tom at tp@tompersinger.com ____________

8. Now, set aside your digital negative so that you can prepare the materials you’ll need to create a cyanotype. If you haven’t yet begun to experiment with historic processes, the cyanotype is a marvelous place to begin. It uses two inexpensive chemicals and a sheet of watercolor paper and develops in plain tap water. You don’t even need a darkroom, just a place with dim lighting. Mixing The Chemistry & Creating The Print The ﬁrst step is to create stock solutions of the chemistry and store them in brown bottles. Stored separately they last quite a long time, but once combined they should be used within several hours. NOTE: Handle chemicals carefully and read and follow all warning labels.

Resources App: hipstamatic.com; Article: The Color Ratio Method, by Clay Harmon - ________________________ alternativephotography.com/wp/negatives/ digital-negatives-color-ratio; ________________ Paper: Inkpress-inkpresspaper. _________ ___ com; Interactive online forum-f295.org; _____ Cyanotype chemicals and pre-coated paper: ___________ freestylephoto.biz

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Marketplace

Ad Index

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Adorama Camera, Inc. adorama.com

Delta 1/C.P.M., Inc. cpmdelta1.com

EZWebPlayer.com EZWebPlayer.com

Focal Point www.fpointinc.com

HP Marketing Corp hpmarketingcorp.com

photo technique Magazine phototechmag.com

Schneider Optics schneideroptics.com

Sony Electronics, Inc. sony.com

C2-1

Sto-Fen Products stofen.com

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Gene Federov - Gypsy Moth

To Advertise Contact: Roberta Knight rknight@prestonpub.com ___________________

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underexposed [emerging photographers]

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Page 48

Namibia is not only the least densely populated country in the world; it is also one of the driest. The clear desert air is perfect for shooting stars and star trails. I had planned the trip to coincide with the new moon so that we would have pitch-dark nights with lots of stars. For my first exposure, I waited until the sun had set and the sky was already quite dark, so no need for any filters −the foreground was lighter than the sky. The 30-second exposure with my Nikon D3, AF-S 17-35/2.8 lens, was enough to pick up some glow on the dunes in the background. It was followed by 47 four-minute exposures ( a total of 188 minutes) @ f/4, ISO 100, using a tripod and programmable cable release. The set up was left in the desert overnight, 40 miles away from our camp. Back home, I stacked the star trail shots on top of the base layer in Photoshop to achieve the final result.

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For Marsel van Oosten, taking photographs began as a way to escape from life in the fast lane. After a trip to Tanzania, the Serengeti fueled his passion for wildlife photography. Five years later he swapped his established advertising career for the precarious life of a nature photographer. In 2011 He won the title of Nature Photographer of the Year. His images are published worldwide, in advertising, design and in magazines such as National Geographic. Marcel currently lives in Amsterdam, The Netherlands. He and producer/videographer Daniëlla Sibbing organize specialized wildlife and landscape photography tours and workshops all over the world. ______ squiver.com

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