Deteriorating Wait

The one thing that I noticed after uploading the picture is that the corner edge on the right side of the frame is suffering some from a perspective shift to the left. I might be able to find a piece of software to correct for it and slightly shift the whole picture right. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think that it is possible to do that within photoshop.

P.S. If anyone has thoughts on a better way to compose, shoot, or develop this subject, I'm interested. It wouldn't be too much of an issue to re-shoot and try again. If anyone is curious, this side of the house is facing NE.

Burning in those highs would tone it down or printing with a low contrast filter might work to tame this one.

I cropped the whole right really bright side and it looked okay. Maybe, if you can go back, you can shoot straight at the window getting some of the information that is on the inside of the building, behind the broken pain.

"masking and adjusting curves/levels in PS". Could you relate an analog/darkroom method for salvaging the negative?

Sadly, I don't have access to an enlarger that can handle 6x7 negatives. They only handle 6x6 and below. For right now I've been scanning the 6x7s in on a Nikon 8000ED film scanner, editing them in PS, and printing them black only on my ink jet printer. The results have been pretty good although I don't think they have quite the same continuous tones or Dmax.

For right now I'm stuck using the school's darkroom. I'm not for sure if I want to go all the way with chemicals in my apartment. It isn't too bad developing film at home, but having an enlarger and extra dark room gear would take up a lot of space and probably result in more chemical odors.

I've been thinking of a compromise though. Develop the film myself and print on an ink jet dedicated to black and white photographs. I received a few samples of Piezography prints and have been particularly impressed with selenium tone and museum black inks on Hahnemuhle photo rag 308 paper. And the piezographs have a much better archival life than normal inkjet. They are 100% pigment ink instead of dye based.

I have a while to think about it before making a decision. Any random thoughts on this are also appreciated.

doughowk, as mark mentioned it would be possible to use a low contrast filter to deal with the nearly blown out highlights on the right side of the image. It would probably be even better to use a split filter technique because the negative has fairly low overall contrast because of being overexposed. Certainly masking and playing with curves in PS is easier, but you can usually accomplish the same result in the dark room with a little more work and practice.

I suspect that you can purchase a 6x7 film holder on ebay to fit the enlargers your school has. If they go to 6x6 they will go to 6x7. That or you could just crop off part of the left had side of the negatie and use the 6x6 film holder. I'd loe to see it done with proper darkroom techniques.

I don't find the "perspective" a problem. Given the technical and aesthetic excellence, what else is necessary to "improve" this image? Certainly PS is not required.

To me the subject matter is fantastic, I think you did good to get what you got! I might even do several angles (views) making every effort to maintain the wonderful textures without the blacks going to soot and the whites to chalk. For that small amount of correction needed to adjust for the verticle try lifting the coresponding edge/corner of the easel (put a film holder under it) and stopping down a bit more to increase your your depth of field. Dont forget to adjust your exposure.