Balanced Rock v2

A much better print - I'd still dodge the lower right corner more, as it is dark enough to be a black hole that keeps drawing the eye.

Looks good Rhys! For my taste the center dodging on the rock is a bit too much. But I like the contrast and the depth of the darker tones throughout.

This looks good. No doubt about it. I note your method of doing things "about face" so to speak and it's worked a treat but I wonder why it's so much better in that dodging the rocks rather than burning the sky might just have as easily resulted in over darkened edges to the top of the rocks as the previous slight white halo of the bottom of the sky?

Could it be that your actual dodging was just simply more accurate or is there an explanation as to why getting the sky exposure correct and dodging the rocks at the appropriate point in the exposure is the better way to go i.e there's more to it than just more accurate waving of the dodger?

I ask this as a seeker of wisdom and as someone who experienced exactly the same problem recently with sky and a church roof and who failed to get it right or anywhere near as good as this.

Thanks

Thanks for the comments,

I agree that the bottom right corner could be a little lighter but its quite hard to fit all the dodging into the exposure time, especially as I don't have a foot pedal for my timer, which means I could do with an extra hand!

I know that the centre rock has been dodged maybe a little too much but I think it actually helps the rock draw the eye and gives it a little 'shine' if that makes sense.

Pentaxuser - I had some very similar thoughts to you trying to figure out why things looked so much better this way around, the only thing I could come up with was that the sky on this print is a tiny bit lighter, which would minimise some of the artefacts of bad dodging and the fact that I dodged each rock separately meant that it was far more random than using one card cut to the shape of the horizon. Other thoughts on this phenomenon would be appreciated though.

Rhys. Thanks for your explanation. Is it possible to expand on the sequence of dodging all three rocks separately during the main exposure which was for the sky?

As there are 3 rocks and only two hands, all I can think is that initially the middle rock and maybe the left rock is fully dodged, needing both hands, while the right rock is being exposed along with the sky. When you get to the point when the time left on the total exposure equals the correct exposure for the left rock, you drop the dodger for this rock and continue to dodge the middle. You now have one spare hand. All the while the right rock is being exposed. At some point you can then dodge the right rock with your spare hand and dodger to prevent its overexposure and eventually drop the middle rock dodger once the time remaining equals the exposure for the middle rock. Now you have only one dodger to concentrate on to cover the right rock which is then dodged until the end of the exposure.

Presumably keeping an eye on all three areas and timings resulted in the right hand rock receiving a little too much exposure.

Have I got this correct? If so, not an easy sequence. Actually I hope you will say that I've over complicated the sequence and that it was easier than that. Just to give me a bit more confidence to have a go!

I have the 1982 " Monochrome Darkroom Practice" by Jack Coote in which he describes a sequence of dodging and burning for a picture called "The Miller" which is a black and white cat sitting on top of sacks in a dark storeroom with the Miller at the open door and bright sunshine outside. It took two people ( 4 hands) to do the print.

He describes the sequence of the dodge/burn and I have read it several times and still can't get my head around even the sequence. A bit like trying to follow Einstein's Theory of Relativity!

Thanks

pentaxuser

Thankfully you don't quite need a physics degree to pull off the dodging sequence I came up with here (one might help though).

I did need two dodgers going at the same time throughout the whole exposure. This was split-grade printed; 16.5 secs @ 00 and 13 secs @ 5.

During the 00 exposure I dodged the whole foreground section of ferns for 6 secs with a piece of card, then took two of my little round dodgers and dodged each of the rocks for 4 secs as well as the little strip of lighter ferns in the lower right of the frame.

During the grade 5 exposure I then dodged the middle rock and the left hand rock for 4 secs at the same time and moved on to the right-hand rock and the strip of ferns again for another 4 secs.

Obviously the timings were a little unscientific as I was counting the dodging times in my head but I would have erred on the side of dodging a little more than 4 secs rather then under doing it (I think).

Thanks Rhys. I hadn't appreciated that you had used split grade. I was looking for your version 1 for a comparison to see what benefits split grading had brought - assuming of course that version 1 wasn't also spit graded but I didn't think it was.

Anyway I can't find it.

My next step is to see what I can do about fitting a foot switch to my timer.

pentaxuser