Perception and Imaging Photography – A Way of Seeing by Zakia

Perception and Imaging: Photograph – A Way of Seeing     by Richard Zakia This is one of the best books I’ve read which deals with how the human mind perceives imagery.  It’s absolutely fantastic!  After reading even just the first chapters, I feel I have greatly improved both my knowledge of how to construct powerful images, and my understanding of how viewers might likely interpret my images.   This book is a must for anyone serious about improving their photography!Read more

Oh no! Learn from my mistakes

Lesson Learned!  Don’t use fibrous blotter paper to dry your prints in neat little stacks or notebooks! And definitely don’t use any fibrous material to wipe your prints dry either.  Perhaps there are better ways to speed up drying?  I was looking for more images to add to my direct positive portrait gallery and came across this old scan.  It was taken in 2013 while trying out the Harman Direct Positive Paper with my Linhof 13×18 Technika III.     Do youRead more

The Rescued Film Project – and copyright questions

The Rescued Film project has been circulating the blogs lately since they are trying to raise funds to pay for developing and scanning costs for a bunch of film from an unknown photographer.  In one way its kind of cool to open up another view into history by bringing these photos back but I do question the motives of the people behind this project.  The strong copyrights claims and prominent bids to sell prints on their main page seem toRead more

Local Darkroom finder

I’m lucky, I live in walking distance to one of the largest public darkrooms in the country, the Harvey Milk Photo Center.   It’s got something like 45 enlarger bays in their darkroom, a film processing area, a digital lab, and some class rooms.   I just came back from printing in the darkroom tonight and wondered where I might go if I wasn’t in San Francisco. A quick google pulled up Local Darkroom.  It’s a web tool that allows youRead more

Traditional darkroom print vs Inkjet print of scan

In a previous post, I shared some scans of images I took at the ghost mining town with my Hy6 and 40mm Schneider PQ lens with Ilford Delta 3200 film.   I made some very nice traditional darkroom prints from these negatives that I was quite happy with.  I really liked the look of them a lot.  The printing paper I used was some very old Ilfobrom 3F fiber based paper that a friend had given me.  I could have been olderRead more

Photoshop Face Aware Liquify Tool

Is anyone else horrified by the new Photoshop Face Aware Liquify Tool?   I mean it’s absolutely totally freaking amazing! And it works even in video too, but now you’ll never know whose face is real or fake. Here’s how it works: Photoshop identifies all the prominent faces in a photo and gives them a number.  Once you select the face you want to change you just click each slider and move left or right to make the eyes bigger,Read more

The Rilex: A little known American made press view camera

I came across Giovanni Savino’s blog post today detailing the Rilex press camera – a camera I’ve never even heard of until now.  Made from polished cast aluminum and machined parts, it’s a neat little camera for sure and simply amazing that a husband and wife team built over 800 of them on their own perhaps in their evenings.  This takes 2.25 by 3.25 sheet film (6×9 ?).    I have a Grafmatic 6 sheet holder that I bought forRead more

Excellent article by Jan Hubička on scanning with Eversmart Supreme

Since diving back into film, I’ve been fascinated with different scanning technology.  Here in the linked article, Jan Hubička does a great job highlighting both the possible resolution available in historic wet plates and also just what  good scanner like the Eversmart Supreme can do.  He goes on to estimate the resolution in these histroric negatives (taken by his great grandfather btw) and also estimates requirements for equiavlent digital capture in the 2nd part of the post. http://hubicka.blogspot.cz/2016/04/resolution-of-historic-photographs-in.htmlRead more

Wehman 8×10 camera

I recently acquired a Wehman 8×10 Field Camera second hand from Laura C. and it’s really an amazingly light and sturdy camera that folds up into itself and is easily carried into the field.     Sadly these are no longer in production, but you can view them and the instructions and other details on Mr. Wehman’s site. He’s also a talented photographer and has some of his work up in galleries that you should check out too.   The WehmanRead more