Downtown

Hello, I am still relatively new to b&w developing/printing. This is a print I made a couple days ago in my school's darkroom. Curious what everyone thinks.

Interesting composition--dramatic, angular, geometric, all of which I like in my own work.

If the print is representative of the negative; and if it was not your intention to have the lower/right buildings silhouetted, then your negative is likely underexposed for that shadow detail. Your cloud highlights look mostly good except for a bit of burned white along the left and upper-right building edges.

Keep at it. You're off to a good start.

MikeSeb said:

Interesting composition--dramatic, angular, geometric, all of which I like in my own work.

If the print is representative of the negative; and if it was not your intention to have the lower/right buildings silhouetted, then your negative is likely underexposed for that shadow detail. Your cloud highlights look mostly good except for a bit of burned white along the left and upper-right building edges.

Keep at it. You're off to a good start.

Click to expand...

Thank you.

This is how the negative looks. I used a Red filter and a circular polarizer, then exposed for the sky. I knew the foreground would be silhouetted (and that's what I wanted), but I'm thinking I should have bracketed 1 & 2 stops overexposure just so I had options.

The clouds look a little muddy to me. I could probably make a better print. I had been in the darkroom for about 5 hours when I started making this one, my neck hurt, and in general I was starting to feel pretty run-down.

I like the print.

I like it, and welcome to APUG.

It is a great print, keep up the good work! BTW welcome to APUG.

Jeff

Like it, too. Reminds me of the architecture photographs of Andreas Feininger. Brother of Lyonel and author of a photography instruction book that very much influenced me in my youth. He's my Ansel Adams ;-)

Thanks, everyone. Here are a few more from that outing (I hope it is okay to post pictures here in the forum):

Time to become a subscriber, and post in the galleries.

slack said:

Thank you.



The clouds look a little muddy to me. I could probably make a better print. I had been in the darkroom for about 5 hours when I started making this one, my neck hurt, and in general I was starting to feel pretty run-down.

Click to expand...

I like the pictures you have posted here, and like others I encourage you to keep shooting and printing.

What I do not like are the excuses for prints that are less than the best you could have done. I went through a community college photography program a few years ago with students who were quite often much younger than I. Many times they began their critique presentations with statements such as: "I don't really like this picture...I didn't have time to do it right...I could have made the print better if (fill in excuse)..." I always wanted to know why I was supposed to spend energy critiquing their pictures if they thought they were crappy. And wondered if their days included less than the 24 hours that mine did.

So when you get tired and recognize that you are not doing your best, it is time to quit for that session, keep notes of what went well, and begin another session when you are rested. Make the best picture that you can, and you will have no reason to make excuses. Monte Zucker, a now-deceased portrait and wedding photographer used to say that good enough was not. He said that he went about photography always trying to be the best that he could be. I have always thought that was a good philosophy to follow.

I hope that I do not sound like a cranky old man. I am trying to encourage you to do your best.
Good Luck,
Dan