[pure-silver] Re: NOW: Exposing paper was Re: POP with papernegs?
- From: DarkroomMagic <info@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: PureSilverNew <pure-silver@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Thu, 16 Dec 2004 21:46:58 +0100
I think you're on the right track. If you can put your feelings and emotion
into a picture, you can't go wrong. I advocate to get to know your
materials, which in most cases means, stick to one film and paper and print
the 'hell' out of it.
A perfect print doesn't need all tones from black to white, but many good
images have it. Not all good pictures live from the highlights, but many of
them do.
The only thing, I'm really sure of, Dmax is over-rated. A good image does
not need a solid black! Open shadows are more important than the paper's
maximum black. However, a print, hiding or excluding tones close to
paper-white, always looks a bit on the dull side to me.
People made perfect prints when papers reached Dmax at 1.5 to 1.7. Making
papers now, which can reach 2.1 to 2.3, has not made those prints obsolete,
but it has provided a lot of prints with too much contrast.
Old printers always knew the value of highlight printing. The obsession with
increasing Dmax got us off-track. Take a look at Sally Man to see what I
mean.
Regards
Ralph W. Lambrecht
On 12/16/04 4:37 PM, "Gene Johnson" <genej2@xxxxxxx> wrote:
> I guess I sort of started this.
>
> I think the business of trying to apply rules to what in the end is at least
> partly art is a tricky business. For good or bad, I find myself breaking my
> negatives into "types" sometimes. I'll see something in the neg that may or
> may not be what was actually there when I shot it and make some kind of
> creative judgement about how I want to approach the printing process to
> achieve that desired "look". Like, "ooh, this is a dark moody forest pic"
> or "this is a twinkling highlights off of wet rocks in a stream picture" or
> " this is one of those nostalgic girl walking across smooth sand at low tide
> on an overcast day shots". I actually try to fight that but it's hard. My
> mind's eye wants things to follow established patterns and it takes effort
> to keep it open and look at things with fresh eyes as much as possible.
>
> I've wandered a bit. What I really wanted to contribute was my feeling that
> I want the picture to guide my approach. I want to let it show me what it
> needs and then print for that, whether it's warm comfortable mid tones or
> glowing highlights or unreal shadow detail or whatever.
>
> Ralph, I'll have to admit that it's hard for me to take pictures of people,
> especially women's faces, without careful attention to the higher skin
> tones. That's where I walk the fine line between that smooth glowing look I
> love so much, and blowing out important texture. Man that's fun. It's kind
> of what got me into the POP question in the first place. There was a French
> postcard studio called Leo with an accent on the e that I'm pretty sure
> printed on POP. A photographer named Mandel shot for them and he's rapidly
> becoming a major photographic hero of mine. It's probably not everyone's
> cup of tea, but aside from Mandel's artistry, I just love the play between
> the highlights and the mid tones and shadows with what appears to be a
> fairly narrow density range. There's not a true black anywhere. I also
> love the orangey red color :)
>
> Here's some of my recent messing around.
> http://gothicsandiego.com/hzao/index.html
>
>
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "DarkroomMagic" <info@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> To: "PureSilverNew" <pure-silver@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> Sent: Thursday, December 16, 2004 3:09 AM
> Subject: [pure-silver] Re: NOW: Exposing paper was Re: POP with papernegs?
>
>
>> I just can't imagine a high-key image in which highlights are less
> important
>> than midtones.
>>
>> Even with portraits, I would still prefer an image with good highlights
>> (probably the most lit side of the face), good open shadows and letting
> the
>> medium skin tones fall in between, over one where the medium skin tones
> are
>> theoretically perfect or 100% realistic, but the highlights are blown out
> or
>> the shadows are dead.
>>
>> The only exception to 'expose for the highlights and control the shadows
>> with contrast', I can think of, are low-key images.
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> Regards
>>
>>
>>
>> Ralph W. Lambrecht
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> On 12/16/04 8:08 AM, "Ryuji Suzuki" <rs@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>>
>>> Highlights are much less important than midtones in many types of
>>> images, including but not limited to portraits. Others are
>>> commercial/product photos and many high key images like scenes in
>>> heavy fog.
>>
>>
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