On making assumptions
Filed in Art - May 7, 2007I had an interesting learning experience today. Well, a re-learning experience. This is something that I have to rediscover from time to time.
I had to be in Inverness for the day. Long and boring car mechanicals story. I’ve spent a lot of time in Inverness over the last year. You might have seen the pictures on Today. I’d sort of got to the point where I thought I knew what Inverness looked like. Although I took a camera, I wasn’t much looking forward to the day. You know, same old same old.
Except that I stumbled into an enormous public park that I didn’t know was there. This was huge. Playing fields, sports grounds, riverside walks, mature parkland trees, natural islands in the Ness linked by walkways, anglers waist deep in the river casting long lines, public sculpture. All well kept, and all looking spring cheerful.
So I knew what Inverness looked like, huh?
One of the things that interests me about seeing is how what we see is conditioned by what we expect to see. Times like today when chance comes along and gives our assumptions a big shove are to be treasured.
And here is one I prepared earlier (using film today. You’ll have to imagine the park for a while):
and that really looks like a film image! Great gutsy tones and some grain to boot!
May 7, 2007 @ 10:26 pm
JohnL,
…and I’m struggling to print it because the grain keeps getting sharpened too much.
May 7, 2007 @ 10:52 pm
Ah, its back to the darkroom then!
May 8, 2007 @ 6:15 am
JohnL,
Then I would struggle to get the tones that I wanted :-)
It is just about learning to control the variables. Delta or Tmax sharpens in a different way from HP5. I’ve pretty much settled on HP5 as the film which does what I want, but I need to improve the transition from lightbox to paper. The screen versions aren’t bad – just a little too crunchy at the moment – I think that is being caused by unwanted sharpening being added by Bicubic Sharper during the shrinking process.
May 8, 2007 @ 8:51 am
I am unaware of your transition system from neg to digital but if like me it is via a scanner that is where I found most of the ‘crunching’ is done.
Regretably I cannot remember the web link but a photographer – maybe a Uwe tutorial, was explaining his localised softening of excess grain in his skies which seems to be where most grain manifests itself to unacceptable levels.
Of course Delta, Tmax and HP5 are such different films ( sorry ‘were’ in my case as I havent used any for around 5 years as due to many circumstances I wrapped up the darkroom some years back ) but imho one cannot beat HP5 for an excellent film with great all round capabilities and rated at 200ISO, devd’ in ID11 1+1 I reckon it to be the best BxW film on the market!
May 8, 2007 @ 2:01 pm
JohnL,
Yes, the first step post scanner is Noise Ninja (using the contrast setting only) to get rid of the grain crunch. This was suggested to me by Doug Plummer – it’ll still be on his blog somewhere with his settings.
May 8, 2007 @ 4:20 pm