Help me recreate this look ...

Thank you to those that have replied with helpful, useful and thoughtful responses. I truly appreciate those that share their knowledge! And to those that just like to pop off on others ... as we say here in Texas (where, yes my dear, we do have ice cubes) "Bless your heart". For those of us with manners, it's a nice way to say what we think of others that don't have them.

Back to my issue:

To clarify - in my sample image DISREGARD THE SKY. I am not concerned with the highest value of highlight. The highlight I AM interested in is the highest register in the SKIN TONE. While I have only been developing my own B&W film for a little over a year, I have shot (gasp, digitally) for a long time now. I know exactly how to manipulate an image digitally to get the tones I want. If you look at the histogram, what I want to do is spread the mid tones and get the most range there - with both highlight and deep shadow in the small range that is the skin tone - while keeping the remainder of the image as dark as possible. While I realize that this has A LOT to do with lighting, it also has to do with other things. In making my "conversion" in Lightroom, what I do is shift the slider for white balance to a BLUER hue, which generally FLATTENS out the contrast of the image (which is what a blue filter would do, right??) but brings the skintones to a level where they are overall darker and richer but with maximum lightness in the highlights. THEN - I adjust the contrast and exposure, so that I can manipulate the skin tones to where I want.

SO - I hope that I am not talking too much off limits here about PS, but I would like to apply THIS to what I'm shooting and developing in the darkroom (and subsequently wet printing as well).

All suggestions thus far have made total sense to me and seem to apply to what I have previously done (using a blue filter, reflectors, bluish open shade, overexposing and underdeveloping, etc...). I want to shift the tonal range to get maximum flexibility in the midtones.

I hope I am making sense...

One note with regard to scrimming and artificial lighting.

You Are already using artificial lighting.

In the example shot you provided you made a choice to shoot using an existing "artificial" scrim, the people are being shaded "artificially" by their surroundings, the RVs presumably.

The problem you face is simply one of degree. A softer scrim, say a translucent sheet or pop-up shade, instead of an opaque RV, would also reduce the spread between subject sets.

hi again katie

with regards to the sky .. i only mentioned it because it tends to give
a false light meter reading if it is in more than a small portion of the photograph,
like sand on a beach or snow ... you always have to stop down to get the darker hues.
if you walk close to the subject and take a meter reading off of their skin ( like a spot reading )
you will probably get a good read

i like shooting on overcast days to get the tonal range you a looking for ...

good luck !
john

Katie said:

To clarify - in my sample image DISREGARD THE SKY. I am not concerned with the highest value of highlight. The highlight I AM interested in is the highest register in the SKIN TONE.

Click to expand...

I like your style in disregarding the sky.

In your example the lighting source for your subjects is very diffuse/soft but still has some direction, from above and left as we are looking at it this provides nice definition of your subjects.

Directional light is important in the effect.

One tool I might suggest for your darkroom is something akin to a Beseler PM2L.

What this tool does for me is to make it very easy to place certain tones, like facial highlights, at very specific points on paper. It very much fills a similar roll for my papers, as to what my incident meter does for my films; it pegs the midtones/face tones exactly where I want them and totally ignores the highlight and shadow placement.

It is my preference to adjust contrast around the mid-point peg to place shadows and highlights, they are truly a secondary consideration to getting the faces right.

This is the method essentially suggested in Dunn and Wakefield's "Exposure Manual" for photos that include faces. If you want to read it, it's out of print but normally available used, get the latest version you can find.

Katie, please take this in the spirit it is offered or disregard it if it doesn't fit your vision
but...
I WOULD be concerned with the sky in most situations. It is a part of the composition and I was always taught NOT to have a wide expanse of something that prints paper white with no detail. It can draw the eye initially away from your intended subject/focus.

Now if you just offered this version of this shot as a quick example of the parts of the image you DO like (which I suspect you did), and will deal with the sky via burning or cropping later then most definitely disregard my thoughts.

markbarendt said:

I like your style in disregarding the sky.

Click to expand...

Haha, good to know there is divergent ideas in this area.

Bruce - I will not disregard your thoughts as they are most helpful, but you are correct in assuming this example was only used for the skin example and not meant as a whole image example. When I say disregard the sky; I mean it doesn't apply to my question.

brucemuir said:

Katie, please take this in the spirit it is offered or disregard it if it doesn't fit your vision
but...
I WOULD be concerned with the sky in most situations. It is a part of the composition and I was always taught NOT to have a wide expanse of something that prints paper white with no detail. It can draw the eye initially away from your intended subject/focus.

Now if you just offered this version of this shot as a quick example of the parts of the image you DO like (which I suspect you did), and will deal with the sky via burning or cropping later then most definitely disregard my thoughts.

Click to expand...

BUT - the point of this post is how do I consistently maintain deep midtones with bright but contrary highlights on HP5 and ID11.???


Katie:

The straight-forward answers to your question are threefold. First you must properly expose the film. (There is an old adage which states, expose for the shadow and develop for the highlights. It simply means expose the darkest part of the scene which YOU think is important, and control the lightest part of the scene with development. Shadows are controlled by exposure only whereas highlights are controlled by exposure and development.) According to your earlier post, you metered the shadow side (the important dark area) and processed the film according to your established standard. According to an earlier post, the individual stated your mid-tones were singing and there was good highlight separation. Nicely done.

Secondly, you have to be able to print. Printing is where the magic happens. Printing turns those singing mid-tones and separate highlights into prints of choral harmony. There are no short-cuts and as the young people say..."Printing is bloody..." Printing requires time, experience, patience and a few choice words.

Thirdly, you need to develop a systematic approach. The systematic approach may require film testing (film speed and development times), paper and developer testing, etc. It may require certain processing temperatures and agitation methods. Regardless, a consistent systematic approach is a necessary/important step.

Finally, Texas in the summer time, hotttttt.. The easy solution is to place your processing water film developer & fixer (maybe not fixer) in the ice-box until they reach the desired temp. Regardless how you achieve your desired processing temp, I argue against changing processing times. I advocate adhering rigidly to your established processing times and adjust your temps to accommodate.

Hopefully, I have been of some assistance.

The point of this post is how do I consistently maintain deep midtones with bright but contrary highlights on HP5 and ID11.???


You scan it into Photoshop and go to image > Adjust > Levels.

You can get mid-tones to look like that by underexposing (one stop will do) and overdeveloping a bit. Underexposing pulls the darker areas down a little while overdeveloping pushes up the brighter areas and brings the mids back in the middle. You're essentially dropping some shadow and highlight detail, but you're making the curve steeper in the mid-tones (i.e. it increases mid-tone contrast). It works even better with slower films, since they are fairly high in contrast to begin with.

When you combine this technique with flat and diffuse lighting, you'll get these really nice skin tones. When the light is harsher, it doesn't work so well, however.

There are different ways to achieve overdevelopment. The simplest is developing longer. Increasing agitation, temperature, or developer concentration will work too. I personally prefer to keep my agitation constant, so I normally adjust time or concentration.
ID-11 and Ilfosol are a wonderful developers. They can be quite versatile, so it pays to experiment a little.

I hope this helps and isn't too confusing.

Katie,
The look you are after is reasonably easy to achieve with 400 ASA film and ID11 or almost any other film developer combination if you know what your true film speed is with your exposure and developing situation.

Essentially though, the weather situation has compressed the highlight to shadow situation beautifully. Your choice of a slightly higher contrast film (400 ASA) has given the sparkle of highlight in the subjects that you are so enamoured with.

This is my favourite portraiture weather and film developer situation.

In high summer you may find that your important highlight to shadow situation is about 6 – 7 stops, maybe slightly more. In winter it is often down to 3 stops. I would suggest that the highlight to shadow readings reflected from your subjects in this picture are about 3 stops.

That is the fine light coloured lines in the adults shirt, her nails and hands and the bubble stick she is holding are the highlight where you just hold detail, with the jumper on the little one being the shadow where you are easily holding detail.

Using a high contrast film, which you have, you have with relative ease, gotten a highlight kick that is almost universally liked and brilliantly easy to print.

If you do some reflected light reading tests with some similar subjects outside right now (Winter Equinox) in your hemisphere you will probably have 3 or maybe 4 steps between shadow and highlight. This is generally brilliant portrait lighting.

To get a bit more contrast when developing, especially if the lighting is very flat, then you can add more agitation. This will give a little more contrast. An example is to agitate every 30 seconds for 5 seconds instead of every minute. An extreme is to agitate constantly for the whole time you are developing. You certainly get a slight contrast kick with constant agitation.

I did colour and B&W advertising photography a bit, controlling the highlight to shadow lighting almost always gave perfect to print negatives. I would suggest a print from this negative be made to see just how close it is to what you are after. Then dress your subject up in warm clothes, and go outside on a drab and dreary day and try and replicate, it shouldn’t be hard.

For some time we had a native Texan living next door to us, she agreed that our Australian summer light seemed to be reasonably close in harshness to Texan summer light. Meaning that getting lighting like this is almost impossible from around 0900hrs through to about 1600hrs on a normal summer day.

I also agree that water coming out of taps is often around 24-26ºC and this does present some inherent problems. However if you can get the developer consistently somewhere near 24ºC, then you should be able to get repeatable and excellent results, no matter what. Fiddly but doable.

Mick.

Hi Katie,

Open shade is beautiful light. I don't know if I am insensitive to nuance or if it is so obvious to me that I know exactly how to achieve it.

Take a look at my recent gallery shot Bob and Abigail. Do the lighting and results seem similar to you?

Well, I usually get this kind of results with Medium format film alone, no special tricks.