End of the session!

Wonderful shot Mick, well done.

Very nice portrait... I'm going to have to give FP4 a go, the skin tone looks radiant. It may be the scan, but the blacks in the background seem a little weak, not quite rich enough.

Bertus, thank you for the compliment I believe this is one of my better shots of the year. I did it on Christmas eve and spent Christmas day in the darkroom developing the film and contact sheets. Today (26th) I spent some time doing an 8x10 then I decided to do a 12x16 print, something I rarely do, usually I wait and contemplate.

Suzanne, you are correct the skin tones are glowing in the print, the blacks are far better than on the scan. I had a couple of variations to scan in the 8x10 prints, I chose the print that scanned the skin tones that best matched the 12x16 manipulated print.

I held the right eye and cheek for a 1/4 of a stop, the right hand is burnt in 1/4 of a stop, the right thumbnail is burnt in another 1/4 of a stop on top of the hand burning. This was really difficult to do on the 8x10.

The surrounding background and the vertical edges of the dark green blanket are burnt in 3/8 of a stop. The rest of the print is base exposure.

It is heavily cropped as I wished to use the 150 lens without much bellows draw, thereby eliminating the need to use an even lower shutter speed. I wished to use f22 for depth of field, life is always a trade-off.

Mick.

I just found this after commenting on the other. This is really beautiful! Thanks for sharing your printing technique a bit. Blacks look good on my monitor. I like looking at a same image on different monitors from time to time. The differences are so marked that I rarely know how to edit a scan of my own, knowing they all vary so. Anyway, it looks great here!

very nice portrait and great skin tonality....


Miles

This is great, Mick. Great tones, and very nicely composed.

To jgcull, Miles and Kevin, thank you for the comments.

Kevin if we meet up again, remind me to bring along this and some others.

Mick.