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Look ma, no camera!
Ever since I placed this rose (a Bourbon rose called Rosa 'Reine Victoria') on my Epson 1640 SU scanner I have not looked at the plants in my garden in the same way. I suspect if I tried to reproduce this image with a camera I might need a 4x5 and lots of electronic flash to get the same depth of field. If during the next few days you may get tired of looking at scantily clad women you could feast your eyes on some of the roses from my garden.  Jul 21 05 09:44 am Link Can anybody figure out this image? No camera like the previous one.  Jul 21 05 09:51 pm Link Helicon focus would do that for you Jul 21 05 09:57 pm Link No helicon focus. Think simpler. Jul 21 05 09:59 pm Link Beautiful! Jul 21 05 10:28 pm Link Posted by alexwh: I don't undertand the question. are you asking the variety of rose? how the image was captured? what? Jul 21 05 11:25 pm Link The b+w rose is Rosa 'Mrs Oakley Fisher'. Like the previous image of Rosa 'Reine Victoria' no camera was involved but it is not a scan. Jul 21 05 11:31 pm Link could be held over a color copier Jul 21 05 11:36 pm Link No. I inserted the rose into my darkroom enlarger ( a Beseler 23C-2) where you would normally put your negative. I had to remove the colour head first so that once the rose was inside the glassless negative carrier it would not be crushed. Technically this is almost a photogram but not quite. I then projected the resulting image on to b+w photographic paper. If you go to my port you will see more of my garden rose scans. In two years I have done all 75 varieties in my garden at 100% size and 1200 PPI. Jul 21 05 11:40 pm Link Posted by alexwh: come on, you're supposed to let me have a few more guesses before you explain! Jul 22 05 12:06 am Link There seems to be very little interest in posts on some of the tricks of photgraphy so I wasn't going to make you guess. The fact is that this technique of inserting flowers and plants in my enlarger has been successfull in the gallery that represents me as they have sold quite a lot of this work. I wish you could see me zoom in on the 600 meg scans of my roses. They just don't pixilate. I use the scans to compare with rose growers elsewhere the colour and size of bloom and to ID diseases. The scanner can be used in photo illustration. I am enclosing here an example of conventional b+w photography and the scanner to illustrate (in a Vancouver weekly) a profile on American opera singer Elizabeth Futral. These are really fun to do!  Jul 22 05 10:52 am Link Posted by alexwh: First thing, just cause folks ain't responding doesn't mean they aren't reading. Jul 22 05 11:00 am Link KM Some years I worked on a one trick pony just to prove a point. I chose some roses from my garden that had names like Fimbriata or Mary Webb. I found that many strippers at that time in Vancouver had names that suggested flowers. I zeroed in on a delightful dancer called Victoria Lace and photographed my roses on her crotch. She assured me that she had a "pristine clam" for this kind of photography. The resulting transparencies I had made into Cannon Fiery transparencies and I mounted them on silver card. The work sold for $1000. You can see a close approximation (the work doesn't scan well) of it in my port. I can not post it here without having theda get angry (she must be joy when she is). When you place a b+w or colour transparency on a silver card there is a bit of gap that suggess some 3D effect particularly in the lighting of gallery walls. The title of the work is Roman de La Rose which was a French 13th century poem which is supposed to be the world's earliest erotic poem. Jul 22 05 11:18 am Link Posted by alexwh: Unlike your first example captured without a camera, I see you didn't get rid of box for these flowers. Jul 22 05 11:22 am Link Clams sir, Clams! Jul 22 05 11:38 am Link Here is another example of a scan image. I originally photographed the playwright with a ring flash and a white background. I made a 5x7 inch b+w transparency with an old stock of Kodalith. I scanned an American dollar bill to get the seeing eye image. I printed the seeing eye image on to normal white paper. I sandwiched the b+w transparency with the seeing eye image and placed both on my scanner. This is the result which was published in a weekly arts magazine. I would think that an inventive MM photographer could do something down this line with bondage.  Jul 22 05 01:48 pm Link Very interesting! Without doing it in Photoshop, it must have been a little bit of trial and error to get the face and eye to the correct proportion. Jul 22 05 02:10 pm Link It was very easy as the scan light going through the paper that had the dollar bill enlargement was just right. I only played with contrast and a bit of sharpening. I have a good stock of Kodalith in 4x5 sheets and in 8x10 to keep doing these projects. I am taking a course in Photoshop CS (as an instructor in a photography school I can take such courses for free) and I am sure that I will eventually be able to do it with layers. What did blow me away was the scanning of the dollar bill and getting such an incredible detail from it. I like the hybrid quality of being able to use old style film and combine it with digital technology. Jul 22 05 02:38 pm Link I really like this stuff, esp the scans of the roses. I bet you could make money with those. Jul 22 05 08:10 pm Link here's mine (we'll actually the wife's, LOL)  Jul 22 05 08:45 pm Link JvR I make good money in editorial photography with my hybrid film/scanner generated photo illustrations. It keeps me competitive at 62 in a city where most photographers are under 30. The rose scans don't sell because no gallery owner seems to understand the concept. They all want to make huge prints. As a gardener I am much against anything that gets away from accuracy. Perhaps I may bite the bullet and go for larger prints. I have put these photo illustrations and plant scans here because I think that when everybody shoots with similar cameras and use Photoshop CS the end result can be very similar. I remember in the early 80s when stock agencies wanted pictures of young executives making cellular phone calls in the street (with those early Motorola clunkers) . They also wanted people by computer monitors. That market (thank God) is now gone and forgotten. Jul 22 05 09:41 pm Link Posted by alexwh: A beautiful image. I like the way how the rest of the plant disappears into a black abyss. Jul 22 05 09:52 pm Link DeSimoni that flower is much too perfect to be real! Your wife must be a painter. Another trick with women who are past 50 (in this case a Canadian mezzo soprano of note whose previous official photo (before this one) had been taken perhaps 10 years ago is to play with levels and the contrast settings of Photoshop. I first photographed Jean Stillwell with a large ringflash in which my lens is crooked so that the lens reads the ege of the flash.  Jul 22 05 09:53 pm Link I miss the days when I used to put two negatives together to produce a final image in the darkroom. *sigh* Those were fun times, but I don't miss the smell of brown tone chemicals. Rotten egg fart smell. *gasp* Jul 22 05 09:55 pm Link Joe if you look at my image called Rosa 'Mrs Oakley Fisher', the sort of photogram, the colours you see are the effect of a very strong selenium solution on good photographic paper. This particular one I made from a box of Agfa Portriga I had kept in my freezer for special situations. Alas, it's all gone and the only camparable paper, Forte, which is made in Hungary is having cash flow problems. The fact is that in the fine art portrait business that I am getting into (besides my editorial and commercial) there is a big demand for "real" photographs printed in "real" paper. I guess if I sit tight they will soon come clamoring. Jul 22 05 10:21 pm Link Isn't a C-Print real? I only make C-Prints, not inkjet. Jul 22 05 10:25 pm Link double throuble Jul 22 05 10:26 pm Link Posted by alexwh: Interesting. A bummer many of those companies producing high quality paper and chemicals are being affected that way. Jul 22 05 10:33 pm Link By a real print my clients mean b+w images printed on quality photographic paper. I used to snub C-prints until I noticed (quite a few years ago) when I visited MOMA in New York that at least 40% of the colour work up was in C-print stuff. On the other hand I went to a show in Seattle of photographs taken by the old European photo agency called Gamma and all the colour prints (the show was sponsored by Kodak) were dye transfer prints. If you ever saw a dye transfer you would go home and weep. The only thing better than a dye transfer is the colour carbro print. One of the pioneers of this now almost lost art was Paul Outerbridge. The particular pinkness of the skintones of his nudes is something quite unreal the skin looks so real. If you compare giclées made with matte and slightly textured paper of my rose scans with a semi matte paper made to look like photographic paper there is no comparison. The matte giclées look like "art" and the glossy ones look lurid. I have enough C prints printed 40, 30 and 20 years ago to verify the fact that C prints are most unstable. Jul 22 05 10:36 pm Link those flowers are fuckin' incredible, I loved Mapplethorpe's flowers,and these, though done without a camera are beautiful. great work Jul 22 05 11:23 pm Link Joe, I work both as a commercial photographer and as an art photographer. The commecial side is two-sided as I work for magazines, national newpspapers and weekly art tabloids. While Vancouver is not Toronto or Los Angeles my competition is still the kind of folks represented by the likes of MM. These are young photographers who shoot digital and master Photoshop. I am an old guy still having to work to keep the house and help the children and grandchildren. I compete by offering work that is different and that has a style. Many in MM are trying to be like everybody else. For a long time printers (for magazines and the like) like to scan from my selenium toned prints. This all began about 20 years ago when most magazines started printing four colour. Suddenly b+w prints could be reproduced as four colour and could jump out of pages. If you want to see what I mean look at good books that compile the photographs of the 19the century . Until about the early 80s all these books were not published in four colour. Suddenly those old photographs have wonderful tones. For years I printed b+w photographs so lousy printers could do a half ass job and still produce a photo on a page that looked somwhat good. The same preocupation keeps me busy scanning my images so that they will look good in magazines, brochures or newspapers. Many of the photographers in MM don't know this and produce images that have too much contrast and no separation between head with black hair and black background. In short you make an image knowing beforehand if the image will be viewed: 1. On a monitor. 2. On a gallery wall. 3. On a glossy colour magazine. 4. On a newspaper where usually the colur pic you send is printed on a b+w page. I always send a b+w version besides the colour. I am getting an increasing demand by wealthy clients who want me to either photograph them in my studio or at home and they want the final result in a classic b+w photographic paper. These jobs get me a minimum of $1200. There seems to be nobody else in Vancouver who does this kind of work. Most photographers are too busy with their digital work flow! The jury is still out for fine art giclées. I have sold quite a few but my b+ws on photographic paper sell better and for more. I believe though that giclées do sell when the photographer does not make these images look like photographs. I think that the Epson Ink Jet Art Print can be marketed if is is not seen as a replacement to the photographic process but something that is unique on its own. Jul 22 05 11:40 pm Link Posted by alexwh: Thank you for the information! Jul 22 05 11:44 pm Link Joe, You would then understand that at one time in order to get real blacks in newspapers or magazines they demanded prints that were glossy. Only glossy prints produced real blacks. With the advent of the drum scanner and then good flatbeds this demand died. In fact only drum scanners or scanners with a vacuum effect could avoid the reflections inherent to glossy prints particular those that were printed on plastic coated graded paper. When I scan my b+w prints I used Ilford satin as my scanner will read the texture of pearl type papers. For his books Ralph Gibson insists on drum scanning his prints and he would never consider scanning a negative. But then he is old-fashioned. The digital revolution has pretty well made Fedex irrelevant to me as I press and send most jobs. Jul 22 05 11:49 pm Link I love scanning negatives. I process my own B&W negs and can produce a dye sub at home with a slight color cast, or get a C-Print that looks like true black & white. Jul 22 05 11:55 pm Link Xtreme I would go as far as saying that I find the look of very good giclée print from either a colour negative, a transparency or a digital file from a digital camera to be better overall than a C print. The control of contrast by a good giclée printer is phenomenal. The giclée made Cybachrome rightfully obsolete. I hated the colours, the contrast and the gloss. I buy some very nice transparent sleeves that come in 4x5, 8x10, 11x14 at art shops. They have a flap so that you insert your giclée or photo in them and then remove a strip and the flap sticks to the back. You put these images in a nice box and when you see your client you put on a pair of very white cotton gloves (you should have a pair for your client) when you hand out the images. I assure you that you can charge more. Jul 22 05 11:57 pm Link Posted by alexwh: I like the sound of that. Can you recommend a good service bureau or lab that makes giclée prints? How much should I expect to pay for an 11x14? Jul 23 05 12:03 am Link The one I take my work to is in Vancouver. They are at: http://www.large-format-printing.ca I first met the then young owner Grant Simmons when I had no scanner and the Globe & Mail newspaper demanded pics on the same day. Grant had pawned his mother (so he told me) to buy what was then an incredibly expensive $50,000 drum scanner. With this machine he would scan my transparencies and send them to Toronto. A couple of months ago I shot 95 lawyers for their web page and for their brochures. With a couple of lawyers I put too much powder on their bald heads and one lawyer closed his eyes in 9 out of 10 photos. The firm demanded I pruduce the eyes of exposure 5 in the face of exposure 8. Grant did it all in under five minutes. When I appear with a digital file I don't pay that much more for the giclée than you would for a C print. The price goes up when you switch from the normal photo type paper to the art paper. Jul 23 05 12:11 am Link Alex..Thank you. Why you ask? As I pleaded when you deleted your Porrtfolio.You have so much to offer this Forum.Myself being one of them.Though I shoot alot of digital the last 6 months.I started with FiLM.I too Joe process and print my own B&W Negs.So I too find this thread extreamly informative and educational. Welcome back Alex.I apreciate your presence Mike Lister Jul 23 05 12:22 am Link Posted by alexwh: Thanks Alex, and welcome back, too. Jul 23 05 12:29 am Link |
