[pure-silver] Re: fence row project negatives


On Sep 21, 2007, at 9:47 PM, Nicholas O. Lindan wrote:


"Shannon Stoney" <shannonstoney@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
I was working on a project this summer where I photographed every fence post along a fence row on my road in TN. ... the leaves and branches and vines in the foreground are all the same value. 

Er, if they are all the same value then it's a uniform sea of grey with
no detail where the leaves, branches and vines are supposed to be...

I take it you mean the fence and vegetation are flat and boring.


Yes, no contrast within the foreground.



Could you post a link to the images?  It would help a lot to see
what you are talking about.
I'll do that later today. I haven't printed them yet but I can scan the negatives.
I sort of knew it wasn't a great idea to meter the leaves and then meter the sky and not meter anything in between but I did it anyway. 

So you had two readings.  Which did you use?
Both: one to determine the exposure and the other to determine the development. 




In fact there wasn't anything in between those two values usually.


So the pictures are an accurate representation of what was there?


Yes.  And maybe that's ok.  But I think it's going to look flat.



What sort of image did you have in mind when you took the pictures?
I didn't realize that the overall contrast in the negatives (and the prints) might be low, at least in the interesting areas. The sky is usually only a small patch.
What do other people do in this situation? Go out earlier in the day? Ignore the sky and let it blow out? 

1) Expose and develop for the foreground.
This is what I think I should have done. It might have been hard, though, because there was basically NO contrast in the foreground, because of the time of day.
Oddly this also sometimes happens at mid-day, because there's so MUCH sunlight that it acts like a fill light. 



2) If the foreground is flat then underexpose and overdevelop
3) Use a green or magenta filter to get the vegetation to stand out. I use Rosco filter sample books and a gel holder and peer 
  through the filters until I find the one giving the best contrast.
Hmm. I don't have any of those but I will look for them. I never heard of the green filter! 

--shannon

=============================================================================================================
To unsubscribe from this list, go to www.freelists.org and logon to your 
account (the same e-mail address and password you set-up when you subscribed,) 
and unsubscribe from there.

Other related posts: