Morning haze;
as in a painting of a dream,
men go their ways.
~ Yosa Buson
Read MoreJama Masjid
Monolithos
-- a monochrome study
Far on top of a solid rock, overlooking the Mediterranean sea, the Knights of Saint John have built a fortress in 1480 to protect the island. The castle has never been conquered! (S)
Read MoreBetween the mountains, down by the lake
Lago Maggiore, Italy
Memories from a summer vacation
Making a digital black & white Master Print from a negative (PartIII)
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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Making a digital black & white Master Print from a negative (PartII)
The Digital "Master-Print-File"
In the previous part of this installment we have discussed how we get a flat scan from black and white film in Silverfast 8.8. In the second part of this series we concentrate on the creative process of taking a flat and lifeless scan to a wonderful black & white master print. While we should normally never constrain our creative freedom, I still suggest we try to maintain a believable plausibility, which means we want to maintain the characteristic of the medium. A photograph should be identified as one and as we have already made the effort of shooting film, we want to maintain the beauty of this medium in the final master file. The easiest way of doing this is by replicating the tools a darkroom printer uses when creating a print. Of course we use these techniques digitally. Good care needs to be taken to avoid digital artifacts and a digital look. This is not as easy as it sounds, as digital tools can easily make their marks. We do our best to avoid these marks.
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Hasselblad 500cm - Ilford FP4 PLUS - developed by viertelvor8 lab in Berlin - 4 minutes exposure at f/8
Making a digital black & white master print from an analog negative (Part I)
From a negative to a black & white "Master-Print-File"
Black and White printing has always been a mastery that requires many years of learning, knowledge and dedication. Nothing will ever compete with a carefully printed black and white print. However acquiring these skills, maintaining a darkroom and finding the time to print regularly exceeds the possibilities of most people. Digital made things easier, but still it can be regarded a mastery to skillfully make a digital master print file from an analog negative. This tutorial will show you in detail how to scan black and white medium format negatives and than process them in Adobe Lightroom like the old masters did it in the darkroom.
Read MorePier 24 - Below Bay Bridge, San Francisco
New addition to my "Bayside Impressions" series
I have not done this for a while, but it felt really good to do some black and white long exposure work again. This image and another one were just about right to be added to my series "Bayside Impressions".
Read More"Exploring Hong Kong" - An analog Film Photo Story
Stories from an analog adventure
First time in Hong Kong, first time with my new camera and nothing but several rolls of Kodak TriX in my pocket. I was excited and thrilled to explore the city.
Before I went on my flight to Hong Kong I really thought long about what camera to take on this trip. The decision just to take my new Yashica Electro 35 GSN was not easy. I expected many shooting possibilities and day and night. Nevertheless the city has been captured million times on photographs so I thought committing to black and white film was a good idea. I did not expect to come back home with something exciting or new, I just wanted to explore the city and capturing photographs on film. Well that is what I did.
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