As I embarked on a late winter afternoon walk through the enchanting districts of San Polo and San Croce in Venice, I couldn't help but feel captivated by the city's timeless allure. Venice, often referred to as the "City of Canals," is a place where every corner tells a story, where history and beauty intertwine effortlessly.
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Hello Tristan, it's great that you're taking the time and have agreed to share with me about your photographic work. Your images can currently be found mainly on Instagram (@gelsenfoto), and they delve deeply into your hometown of Gelsenkirchen. How would you describe your pictures?
Hi Sebastian! I'm really excited about the opportunity to talk about my photographic work and your interest in it. I would describe my photos as a melancholic yet always benevolent perspective on my hometown.
We live here in the poorest city in Germany, with numerous and profound problems that are evident in the urban landscape. I try to counteract the pessimism and negative perception of the city and the region that is inevitably generated on a creative level through my photos. Of course, my photos won't change the often depressing local reality for many. Nevertheless, it's an attempt to show that even here, one can experience moments of beauty, even if it's just a sunset that happens to cast a lovely light on a rundown building. It's often not what the majority would label as aesthetic, but that's exactly what appeals to me in my photographic work and in exploring the city. Anyone can photograph the Cologne Cathedral.
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The large glass surface is perfect for creating digital contact sheets
It’s massive, it’s huge and it’s heavy. Super heavy! Most definitely an impressive machine, a marvelous piece of vintage digital equipment and I was lucky enough to get my hands on one of this excellent scanners which were once used in big agencies for all kind of scanning and reproduction tasks. When digital was not yet standard, agencies used a reliable scanners to produce print ready files. This scanner can do it all and was a workhorse in offices around the globe. It scans both transparent and reflective media in excellent quality up to a fantastic resolution of more than 5000 pixel per inch. In this article I will talk a little bit about my love and hate relationship with the Scitex Smart 340. Even though I really adore this machine and I truly love to work with it, it also drove me to desperation. It’s a steep learning curve and it seemed like with every step forward and new problem came up which I had to solve. Meanwhile I have solved most of them and I can say that I managed to wrap my head around the somewhat quirky scanner software. But let’s start from the beginning.
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This is going to be the final part of my intro post on camera scanning. Once I have covered all the basics and concepts of camera scanning I will have closer look on the workflow itself.
In the last part I talked about the six main elements of camera scanning and I have covered camera choice, lens options and light source. Now it is time for the oremaining three items which are copy stand, the film holder solution and finally the required software for negative conversion.
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What a year! Probably everyone had different plans for the last months and so did I. But here we are and I have new ideas and topics for upcoming blog posts which I want o share with all of you.
For those of you who follow this blog for a little while now, I have always been a big fan of various ways to scan negatives. Home scanning with a dedicated film scanner or a flatbed scanners is a big challenge but if mastered correctly it can provide you the artistic freedom over the final image which a lab unfortunately cannot do, simply because they have to guess your interpretation of the negative. You can make choices that dramatically alter the scan like color and tonal correction. Nevertheless a good lab can do this job for you if you manage to clearly communicate ideas and artistic vision. Most labs do a brilliant job and deliver an outstanding quality mainly due to the fact that they own the best machines for this job like the Fuji Frontier SP3000 or a Noritsu HS-1800. But over the last years or so a new method became more and more popular: camera scanning!
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Night view from the lawns towards the main building.
It was in winter 2016 when I first had the idea to document the small and very beautiful municipal outdoor swimming pool of a little town close to Stuttgart in Southern Germany. What initially began as a sudden inspiration soon developed into a real concept. I wanted to document the whole facility mainly when no people are around. I wanted to show the place around the year, abandoned and left alone on the foothills of a small forrest. It is a silent and quiet place with beautiful trees and wide lawns. Despite the work that is required, it is a valuable location and a visit is often part of the daily summer routine of many people living here. But what serves the community so well in the summer has a life all around the year which many quiet and solitary days during winter.
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I have not yet decided on the the final title of these series and at the moment the working title seems to be a bit misleading. This is an ongoing series that concentrates on the restaurant, shops and stores at night. Many of these places have a very unique architectural appearance and some - like Chips restaurant and Norms in West Hollywood - fall in a category called Googie architecture. As a side track from the mid century modernism, Googie emphasized the futuristic atmosphere of the 1940s to the 1960s with the jagged lines and modern elements.
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After completing my "Between The Light" book I initially wanted to finish the project and concentrate on other series. But after a while this did feel right for me anymore. I had the desire to continue to work on the project, refine the series and re-work it into a slightly different direction. The new images I planned to create should show more of the unnoticed streets and houses, the well kept secrets, the less beautiful and more exciting places. Light would play a even more important role than before. So after a longer break I brought my Hasselblad on one of my latest visits to San Francisco for some more night time shooting. I concentrated on lower Russian Hill, North Beach, Chinatown and Marina.
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In my previous post I mentioned that I try to replicate the work done in the traditional wet darkroom. Today I would like to introduce these techniques to you and show you their digital equivalent.
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Ich freue mich darüber diese spannende Konversation mit Euch allen zu teilen. Jörg Bergs ist der Inhaber und Gründer des "Mein Film Labs" hier in Deutschland. Meine persönliche Freude an der Filmfotografie wurde durch die Entscheidung meine Filme in ein gutes Filmlabor zu schicken noch deutlich verstärkt. Die Ergebnisse welche ich von allen von mir bisher getesteten Labors erhalten habe, haben mich schlichtweg umgehauen. Das Mein Film Lab steht dieser Erfahrung in nichts nach. Das es jetzt ein Filmlabor in Deutschland gibt, welches auf diesem hohen Niveau arbeitet ist darüber hinaus auch noch sehr angenehm. Die Bearbeitungszeiten verkürzen sich allein schon auf Grund der schnelleren Postlaufzeiten. Darüber hinaus freue ich mich über die unkomplizierte und sehr angenehme Kommunikation mit dem Lab. Es scheint, als würde über jeden kleinen Input Buch geführt und versucht dem Kundenwunsch so exakt wie möglich zu entsprechen. Während einer dieser Gespräche hat sich Jörg Bergs dazu Bereit erklärt, mir ein Interview zu geben und ich freue mich es heute hier vorstellen zu dürfen.
Read MoreThe era of the great Point Reyes dairies opened in 1857. Here are images from the Pierce Point Ranch which is under National Park Service management, which is dedicated to the preservation of the Park´s cultural heritage.
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Shadow detail comparison of an underexposed negative (left) and overexposed negative (right).
The way we expose film has a tremendous amount on the quality and mood of the final photograph. Of course exposure affects image brightness and contrast, but also quality and color.
Carmencita Film Lab and photographer Johnny Patience both did a wonderful exposure series to demonstrate the effect of under and overexposure to film. Please follow this link to check their series and read their recommendations. You can also find a good film guide from "Mein Film Lab" which explains a lot about the different characters of film. Unfortunately it is only available in German so far.
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The art of getting a good color print from a negtaive seems to be a dying craft. The modern photographer who still shoots color film normally uses a scanner to get to the desired print. The scanning process is much cheaper, less labor-some and more flexible. In order to learn what is required to get descent scans from color negs, you need to be aware of some important facts.
Read MorePhoto essay by Sebastian Schlueter
The glamorous days of Grand Hotels seem forever gone in days where one Hotel looks like the other. This is why I was so fascinated walking through the entry gate of the "Grand Hotel des îles Borromess" in Stresa at the west coast of the "Lake Maggiore" in Northern Italy. It is like traveling back in time, back to those days where individuality was common and Hotel chains have not yet been invented. Elegant mirrors and marvelous chandeliers decorate the lobby of the Grand Hotel. All the small details bag for attention [...]
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