Do you ever flip a print?

[Vaughn]

In effect I create a Bizarro world in which everything is awry except the message on the T-shirt!

I just might have to shamelessly steal this idea for a carbon print...sound like way too much fun!

Thanks! Vaughn

 

[Kirk Keyes]

In labs I worked in, when that result was desired, the work order never had anything but "FLOP" scrawled over it. "Flip" may be correct according to some dictionary or another, but I never encountered it in practice.

That's the same as it was in the lab I worked at. "flop" and never "flip".

Maybe it's a Pacific Northwest thing...

 

[Mike Wilde]

I actually was doing a styilized and abstract multiple generation lith negative sandwich print onto photo paper as a kind of an 'electronic flower' effort.

The last print I exposed under the contact frame I must have flipped as I put it into the tray, becuase as the image came up in the developer, it was upside down.

The abstract image now looked like some kind of space ship, and the part intended as the stem for the flower looked like a smoke trail. I really liked it, even better than the post modern age flower image I had started to assemble.

I mounted it, as the space ship orientation, and submitted it in a large print competition, and it came back with a special award ribbon - serendipity eh!

 

[Larry Bullis]

That's the same as it was in the lab I worked at. "flop" and never "flip".

Maybe it's a Pacific Northwest thing...

One lab I worked for made reduced dupes for ganged separation. Now that we have scanners, almost nobody remembers how expensive separations were. Making them was a skill that required a lot of training and experience in individuals who wore white lab coats. Duplicate transparencies were expensive too, if you needed good ones. Even so, they cost far less than individual separations, especially when you considered the additional stripping, registration, etc. that had to be done individually in quadruplicate.

Since emulsion-up is normal when you make dupes, the "flop" thing could get really confusing if you weren't very careful. I think I must have seen the word "flop" several thousand times.

"Flop" in a photojournalistic context:

The orientation of the image, right reading or mirrored, may or may not be important to the story. If it isn't, art direction will frequently take the liberty to flop an image if graphic considerations require. Why not? It's done all the time.

In one instance in my experience, an image of a train pulling into the station at night was flopped to keep the train from driving off the page. Nobody ever noticed, because the illuminated numbers on the locomotive were halated beyond recognition. It could have been heading north, or it could have been heading south. Maybe someone intimately familiar with the Yakima, WA depot, after studying it microscopically, could have found some clue that would reveal a possibility of "deception" but who'd waste time on that? The value of the image to the story would remain intact, regardless, while the presentation of the image in the layout as taken would have sent the reader hurrying on to the next page, missing the story entirely.

 

[jphendren]

No, never, at least not on purpose. My images are literal representations of the landscape that they represent.

Jared

 

[Anscojohn]

Do you ever deliberately flip a print from the way it appeared in real life, because you thought it looked better? Do you think this is ok to do?

I read about a guy shooting in-camera Illfochromes and they always came out flipped, and he rarely did anything about it unless there was a giveaway in the image, because it really looks fine, to those who were not present at the original scene.

*******
I have done it; very, very rarely. I cannot remember the last neg I flipped. Of course, when my vision for the print was perfect the first time, who needs manipulation in the darkroom.....(Very Big Grin)

 

[Worker 11811]

It's your photograph. Print it any way you damn-well please.
(Unless you live in a Communist country. )

 

[Mainecoonmaniac]

Sometimes as artistic license. But never if there is signage or any writing in the shot. If it makes a print composition better, why not?