A/NZ PX Round #4 - Comments and Feedback

[Barrie B.]

Group # 1 - Comments on prints .

In no order :-
Steve R. Rather nice shot of the old pier / wooden groin; well seen and photographed.As there was no 'information sheet ' with your print I assume that this is a wide angle shot . Good tones , and likely to be a slow shutter speed .
munz6869 ,I like the perspective achieved with that road in the distance . A well printed image , there must have been other great prints waiting to be found in that area .
SMbooth ,Shane , a very appearling pinhole image , the central composition really suits this image , and the toning really sets is off .
hoffy ,Ashley , although this image is well printed the composition / subject matter does not grab me .
Oxleyroad .A very well executed 'close-up ' , great detail and very well printed and presented.
Barrie B. -- Myself . In one of the earlier postings there was a comment about the 'DIY' toning of my print. I can`t rember what formulae I used : Last October I attended Tim Rudman`s Workshop : 'A day at the bleach ' at Gold Street Studios , Trentham East , and I now mix up three different bleaches and have various dilutions of toners / redevelopers in my darkroom. I am trying out lots of variations . I time I will post some of my results .
.................................... Cheers Barrie B.

 

[tomalophicon]

anks for the comments guys.
Bring on the next exchange.

 

[Oxleyroad]

Round #5 Sign up.

OK OK. I see some are chaffing at the bit for the next round. Well follow this (there was a url link here which no longer exists).

 

[Yamaotoko]

Hi guys, I'm still here, have just been Internet-less for the past couple months! Will sit down and write up some thoughts on the weekend, as well as the info sheet for my pic

 

[Yamaotoko]

Firstly, details on my print:

Apug Name: SteveR
Real Name: Steve
Image Title: Grove Yard
Image Description: This picture was taken for a collection I'm doing that is loosely based around the passing of time. This one shows one of the old jetty's near Ocean Grove, standing still while time (yes, and tide...) move around it.
Camera: Wista 45 metal field
Lens: 135mm Schneider xenar (4.7)
Exposure: f8 for around 2.5 minutes
Film: FP4
Development: Film-Xtol 1:1, 10min @ 20c. Paper: Bromophen 1:3 @ 20c
Paper: Arista Private Reserve (ie Adox MCP312)
Toning/Special Process: I did a little selective bleaching to bring out some of the higher values in a couple of the pylons (cn you tell which ones? I hope not!). Ended up bleaching with Part A of a Sepia kit, because I had been waiting on more Pot-Ferry but it just didn't arrive in time. The process was a little less controllable, and probably not as nice looking in the final print compared to using the 'proper stuff', but still, it did the job.

The print was then selenium toned @ 1:30 for three minutes. They were all ready to be spotted to get rid of those lovely white chunks (I've been having lots of 'spot' issues lately, after years of spot-free prints), but the deadline loomed and I just ran out of time.


Now, on to the others:

Oxleyroad:
Firstly, thanks for coordinating the exchange!

I wouldn't have guessed that your print was done in Caffenol, not that I have ever used it myself, but I would have expected it to be 'grittier' and with more of a warm tone to it. It looks really good for developer that is 'meant' to be well past it's use-by-date! I like that the picture itself looks very fine and intricate, with the texture of the fungus, but up close it's very grainy and doesn't look as detailed (thanks to the 400 ISO film?). I like the way it kind of tricks me.


Hoffy:
I'm a sucker for night architectural shots, so I loved this as soon as I saw it. The Koni-Omega is a 6x7, isn't it? I love the detail it's given you in the rivets under the bridge, down to the stones and right up to the balustrade, which seems to glow. You say you tried to hold back some areas under the bridge to get more detail in, I love the way it still fades off into black. Very well printed.


SMBooth:
This is great. I've got an Agfa Clack converted to semi (f74) pinhole, you've inspired me to get it out again. I really like the way you've kept detail in the sky and let the bottom left just fade out. I know this is your final composition, but I'd be interested to see the original 6x7 you captured, purely for the fun of seeing what you saw originally that made you take the picture, and how it evolved into this. Or, did you see the picture as a square at the time? I really like the edges of the print, somehow suits the picture, as does the top-biased border, and makes the whole presentation a piece in itself, rather than just a print on some paper. What made you print lower on the page, rather than the 'standard' of printing higher?


Munz6869:
Yep, sure looks Rickety! I like your slightly-off-centre composition, it makes it 'simple, but interesting'... if you can imagine what I mean. I like that you've shown the transition from the road to the bridge, but looking at the way the bridge seems to hang in the air on the far side, I'd be curious to see how the 'feeling' of the picture would be changed in on the bottom and right just a little, taking out the road and road-sign? Just a passing thought when thinking "How would I treat this if it were my picture", what do you think?


Barrie:
Great picture, I love the tight crop that shows us lots of the details of the scene, but nothing of the whole scene itself. It's (to me) a bit of a "here's a few details, now fill in the blanks and write your own story around them" kind of picture, which I really like. It's a basic, well executed picture that, even though it's in open, light daylight, just screams "Mystery!", I really like it. I also like that the picture can work as an abstract in every orientation, the composition just works. On a technical note, I find it very interesting that the image tone doesn't seem to have carried over to the paper border much. Is this basically because you've kept your highlights (and extreme highlights, in te top right area) well controlled and maybe a couple stops down from base-white? If that's the case, I think it's great that all the tones seem to be represented, even though everything is kept within a fairly narrow tonal range. That's something I really struggle with.


...that's all folks.

 

[Oxleyroad]

Thanks for the comments Steve.

I should mention to all that I sent out different pictures to each group. Both prints developed in Caffenol. One set 'The Lizzard' was 1 litre of caffenol used already to develop two rolls of 120 film, left in a bottle for a while and then used to make prints. The second was Caffenol mixed up to develop film, but never got around to it, and I think a month later developed the set of 'Fungus' prints.

To cut down the loooong development times in Caffenol I have the chemistry quite warm 25 to 28°C. This would be what brings out the grain in the paper I expect.

 

[Michael W]

It's interesting to read about the prints exchanged in the other group. I'd love to see them. What do people think about the idea of posting scans of all the exchange images here so we can see all of them, even in digital form?

 

[Oxleyroad]

I like this idea and I have an extra print of each image that I can scan.

In the first round I did not bother to keep a copy of the image and now I do not remember what I used.

Another thought if enough of us at this point in time is that we request a gallery for these pictures. Thoughts everyone?

tomolophicon - I promised to show the rest of the series. I am still in progress of scanning. I am not so great at scanning black and white negs. Just can't get the image right on the screen. I will post them all in the gallery when they are all ready.

 

[hoffy]

I always have spares and have always scanned/uploaded a few weeks after the exchange is complete. I have yet to put this one up yet

 

[tomalophicon]

I have just scanned my print from the latest print exchange. It's in my gallery and entitled 'feathers'.