How would you tackle (darkroom) printing this?

[snusmumriken]

I think the grey windswept desolation works well as is. It just needs a caption to set the right tone.

View attachment 346490

Good one. But I don’t like to provide captions or titles or even background info. If flatulence is what the image suggests to a viewer, that’s fine. The next person may get something else from it.

 

[pentaxuser]

Good one. But I don’t like to provide captions or titles or even background info. If flatulence is what the image suggests to a viewer, that’s fine. The next person may get something else from it.

Certainly flatulence was not what it suggested to me but attention to the two gents' rocks on which they sit did remind me of the old saying told to me when I was a youngster that sitting on a cold rock gave you a cold in the head

Since then I have always wondered how a cold in the bum transferred itself to the head

pentaxuser

 

[KitosLAB]

Yes, I agree with Don_ih, first of all, I would crop the picture. But I would crop it like this. Now I can't print behind an enlarger, but in those days when I typed with a mask or with my hands, I would shade the sky and some areas of the edges a little. I would print on photographic paper "Bromportrait" Something like this)))

 

[snusmumriken]

Yes, I agree with Don_ih, first of all, I would crop the picture. But I would crop it like this. Now I can't print behind an enlarger, but in those days when I typed with a mask or with my hands, I would shade the sky and some areas of the edges a little. I would print on photographic paper "Bromportrait" Something like this))) View attachment 346601

Don’t you think that transfers interest away from the two figures to the steps and the thin path that trails off into the distance?

Anyway, please no more cropping suggestions: see post #9.

 

[KitosLAB]

Don’t you think that transfers interest away from the two figures to the steps and the thin path that trails off into the distance?

Anyway, please no more cropping suggestions: see post #9.

They look in the direction of these lines, so it seemed to me that in this way the frame acquires logical harmony. No problem! Let's not crop!

 

[Alan Edward Klein]

Interesting and helpful ideas, thanks. I should probably have said at the outset that both partial and 100% cropping are options I don’t want to consider! So actually the first few suggestions are what I needed to hear.

The fact that several of you suggested cropping illustrates the problem: that unless I can emphasise it by printing you will miss the point. This was taken at the highest point in Brittany (France), a site used by the occupying German army in WW2 as a radio station. It’s a wide, desolate landscape, much cut about by man - not at all the kind of thing I had expected to see in Brittany. These two guys could have been war historians or pilgrims or lepidopterists for all I know, but they had chosen to turn their backs on the little chapel, the disconcerting gun emplacements and the other tourists, and instead to sit apart looking out over this barely-covered rockscape and overcast sky.

If the point is lost, this photo is for the bin. But I still need to learn to deal with those overly-uniform tones, because this is a problem I face too often. This will do as an learning-piece. I will try split-grade along the lines suggested and see what I can achieve.

Frankly, the point is lost. It's two guys who's faces you can't see, sitting in a drab landscape with snow here and there causing a cluttered look. No one would guess there are gun emplacements, chapels or anything else that denotes the location and adds drama and a sense of place. Those should have been in the shot. Photoshop can't dress it up.

 

[snusmumriken]

Frankly, the point is lost. It's two guys who's faces you can't see, sitting in a drab landscape with snow here and there causing a cluttered look. No one would guess there are gun emplacements, chapels or anything else that denotes the location and adds drama and a sense of place. Those should have been in the shot. Photoshop can't dress it up.

That’s fine, Alan, I’m quite happy to see this one as a failure. Heaven knows, I am used to that.

But I didn’t ask for judgement of the image, I just asked how you would print it (ie darkroom print) to bring out the sense of distance among what seem to me to be very similar tones. It’s all a fun learning exercise for me, always has been.

On reflection, perhaps I should have said ‘darkroom print’ in the title. Maybe a moderator could fix that for me?

 

[MattKing]

On reflection, perhaps I should have said ‘darkroom print’ in the title. Maybe a moderator could fix that for me?

A moderator could certainly do that, and has.

 

[Alex Benjamin]

Frankly, the point is lost. It's two guys who's faces you can't see, sitting in a drab landscape with snow here and there causing a cluttered look. No one would guess there are gun emplacements, chapels or anything else that denotes the location and adds drama and a sense of place. Those should have been in the shot. Photoshop can't dress it up.

The point is lost only if you decide to add to the photograph a bunch of stuff that aren't in the photograph. This only because snusmumriken chose to give us full context.

But that's not how looking at a photograph works, and not how the frame in a photograph works. Frames are dynamic. The frame either makes what you don't see important, or closes the outside-of-the-frame world off to make what you see, and only what you see, the meaning of the photograph.

In this case, the photo holds independently of what is outside the frame, of whatever context there is. As I mentioned in an earlier post, there is an ambiguous story told by us not knowing where they are, what they are talking/thinking about, what their relationship is, to themselves and to the landscape, the improvised nature of them sitting there (that it just happened to have two concrete blocks for them to sit on is serendipitous). And in all this, I understand why snusmumriken saw something interesting and decided to take the picture, and I understand why he would want to see what he could bring it to say in the darkroom.

I'm also against cropping on this one. And I wouldn't burn the sky. Gives drama to a scene that hasn't any. There's something reflective about it, not dramatic. Maybe they are reflecting about what they have seen in the chapel, or maybe about what happened in front of them a long time ago, and, in that sense, it seems normal that the drama is not in front of them but behind them, both physically and time-wise.

The challenge of the darkroom work becomes making the viewer aware of, and feel, the reflexive quality of the moment, while keeping the context absent.

 

[Sirius Glass]

Frankly, the point is lost. It's two guys who's faces you can't see, sitting in a drab landscape with snow here and there causing a cluttered look. No one would guess there are gun emplacements, chapels or anything else that denotes the location and adds drama and a sense of place. Those should have been in the shot. Photoshop can't dress it up.

And without the faces, the eye is not distracted and caused to dwell on the faces. That is a big plus for this composition. Why does every photograph have to look like ducks in a row?

 

[GregY]

I would not crop it. As original it's a little weak tonally. I agree with Pieter, Patrick R James has the idea. I might burn in the very bottom grass a bit more. I would not change the horizon. Any place with hills or mountains does not have a straight line horizon.

 

[Don_ih]

There's something reflective about it, not dramatic.

I agree, after the full description of the location. And I don't think it's a dud (or whatever Alan said). Not every photo of people in a situation requires their gawping faces. This photo is perfectly fine.

 

[Alex Benjamin]

I don't think it's a dud

I don't either.

And, other than the two men with their back turned, there is another subtle element of mystery and drama: the steps on the left. Aren't they strange? I find them fascinating. Did they use to lead into a structure? They have to have had that use, as there is no need for steps to go to where the two men are sitting. But if so, why is it that there seems to be nothing left of it, apart from these few steps? Apart from the short black stakes, they are the only man-made element in the whole photo. They seem old, and therefore must have a history—but that history, as they are without context, is untranslatable into story. It is reduced to its essential element: time, time passing.

 

[Alex Benjamin]

I would not change the horizon. Any place with hills or mountains does not have a straight line horizon.

In another circumstance I would agree with you. Except here, it's not the natural inclination of the horizon, but the OP's camera that was slightly tilted when he took the picture. If you look at the edge of the promontory on which they are sitting, as well as the edge of the top of the stairs, they all have the same inclination. To me, it give an unnatural imbalance to the whole, a slight tilt enough to make it seem like the right part of the photo is heavier than the left. It's enough to give the picture a tension it doesn't have, or shouldn't have. Putting it all straight makes it more peaceful.

 

[MattKing]

I think that the way that the OP posted it originally resulted in the posts appearing vertical, so I didn't consider straightening it.

 

[GregY]

In another circumstance I would agree with you. Except here, it's not the natural inclination of the horizon, but the OP's camera that was slightly tilted when he took the picture. If you look at the edge of the promontory on which they are sitting, as well as the edge of the top of the stairs, they all have the same inclination. To me, it give an unnatural imbalance to the whole, a slight tilt enough to make it seem like the right part of the photo is heavier than the left. It's enough to give the picture a tension it doesn't have, or shouldn't have. Putting it all straight makes it more peaceful.

As Matt just said.... the posts are vertical in the original image. I'd work on the printing tonalities....but not change the framing..... Than again it's not my image. We each have different ways to look at things.

 

[Hilo]

Half a grade harder and perhaps fresh developer. Just burn the sky a little bit. No cropping, no leveling the horizon. I would not do that artificial border, it kind off kills the open space.

The main thing for me would be to pay a lot of attention to how much darker it dries up. So, I would do two or three versions: each one with a slightly longer exposure.

The lightness of the original is very touching and it does feel like the photographer's own print.

 

[snusmumriken]

Many thanks, especially to @Alex Benjamin, for understanding why I took the photo in the first place. If the photo works one shouldn’t need to try to articulate ‘the point’, but in broad terms (and at the risk of sounding pretentious) I think it must be evident that these two guys have removed themselves and turned their backs on others (implied by the presence of at least a photographer) to sit before a desolate view and talk. The other visible details may or may not embroider the scene, and the back-story is unnecessary information.

I hope to get a day in the darkroom this week and will see what I can achieve. I expect my waste bin to be full!

 

[Don_ih]

I think that the way that the OP posted it originally resulted in the posts appearing vertical,

As Matt just said.... the posts are vertical in the original image. I

The posts are off vertical the same degree the steps are off horizontal. Here they are rotated:

But levelling that makes the ground to the go downhill.

The consensus has been mostly to darken the image - what if you just reduced contrast:

and burned in those guys at higher contrast? (And dodge the rocks they're sitting on)

 

[Alan Edward Klein]

That’s fine, Alan, I’m quite happy to see this one as a failure. Heaven knows, I am used to that.

But I didn’t ask for judgement of the image, I just asked how you would print it (ie darkroom print) to bring out the sense of distance among what seem to me to be very similar tones. It’s all a fun learning exercise for me, always has been.

On reflection, perhaps I should have said ‘darkroom print’ in the title. Maybe a moderator could fix that for me?

You said in a follow-up post the following of what you were trying to accomplish. I don't see how printing or editing it will create that feeling. Maybe I misunderstood what you wanted to do.


"The fact that several of you suggested cropping illustrates the problem: that unless I can emphasise it by printing you will miss the point. This was taken at the highest point in Brittany (France), a site used by the occupying German army in WW2 as a radio station. It’s a wide, desolate landscape, much cut about by man - not at all the kind of thing I had expected to see in Brittany. These two guys could have been war historians or pilgrims or lepidopterists for all I know, but they had chosen to turn their backs on the little chapel, the disconcerting gun emplacements and the other tourists, and instead to sit apart looking out over this barely-covered rockscape and overcast sky."

 

[GregY]

The posts are off vertical the same degree the steps are off horizontal. Here they are rotated:

View attachment 346662

But levelling that makes the ground to the go downhill.

The consensus has been mostly to darken the image - what if you just reduced contrast:

View attachment 346663

and burned in those guys at higher contrast? (And dodge the rocks they're sitting on)

Looks rather dull to me that way.... i just never see the world that way. if it were my photo and i were printing i'd always have the feeling it was under-developed. If i saw the scene like this i doubt whether i would have lifted my camera.

 

[Don_ih]

Looks rather dull to me that way.

Fair enough. But it's a way to emphasize the two people without cropping or "spotlighting" them (like in this) and does show the place as dreary, barren, etc.
I already said what I would do with the photo if I'd taken it and wanted to print it.

 

[Sirius Glass]

I think that the way that the OP posted it originally resulted in the posts appearing vertical, so I didn't consider straightening it.

Absolutely correct. The horizon is not always horizontal. There is something called land formations.

 

[Sirius Glass]

I don't either.

And, other than the two men with their back turned, there is another subtle element of mystery and drama: the steps on the left. Aren't they strange? I find them fascinating. Did they use to lead into a structure? They have to have had that use, as there is no need for steps to go to where the two men are sitting. But if so, why is it that there seems to be nothing left of it, apart from these few steps? Apart from the short black stakes, they are the only man-made element in the whole photo. They seem old, and therefore must have a history—but that history, as they are without context, is untranslatable into story. It is reduced to its essential element: time, time passing.

I would not crop it either. The original composition is perfect.

 

[Alex Benjamin]

If i saw the scene like this i doubt whether i would have lifted my camera.

And I would have shot a whole bunch of frames, hoping the capture the feeling. Really interesting how people look differently, how they react differently to what they see, how differently what they see affects them—emotionally, spiritually, artistically, etc.

I think I'm going to start a thread "What makes you lift your camera"...