Introductions

[markbarendt]

Hi All,

So a bit about me. I did a fair amount of hobby stuff starting in my teens and twenties, but I really came to be passionate about photography late in my forties.

Shot Kodachrome and Seattle Film Works films way back when. I was inspired by National Geographic and family trips to the USA's southwest, Baja California, and the Pacific coast.

I shot digital when I came back in my forties and got good at the tools and even tried to make a living with it for a while. My wife still shoots digital and is interested in impressionistic stuff.

I found this yesterday and showed her this shot that was done on a 4x5 http://www.flickr.com/photos/poor_old_soul/3446772257/ That's important because we just got a 4x5, that shot got her attention. (That buy was a total surprise that I had not imagined coming for years yet.)

My daughter is growing up and will be off to college this fall and this is changing life for my wife and I, we are trying to figure out what we want to be when we grow up. With our daughter leaving we get to start dating (getting to know) each other again.

An interest in the art of photography is something my wife and I share.

Now a bit about my interest in color.

Honestly I gained most of my understanding of color in the digital realm trying to figure out how not to work so bloody hard. My dad though was cleaning house a while back and I got the family slide collection. Going through the slides it became really clear to me how much different film really looked. The work flow also made sense.

By this time I had learned that color, for me, was not about being perfectly accurate but about being perfectly artistic.

The next epiphany was finding out what C-41 and an enlarger were really capable of.

Now I'm looking forward to setting up a real darkroom over the next year and really experimenting. I'm working on defining my style and building my technical skills. I like photographing people living and portraying the mood.

Here is a fun shot done a few weeks ago.

(there was a url link here which no longer exists)

 

[Robert Brummitt]

Thanks, Mark. I'm glad you shared your images. Like both of them. I love impressionist work too. Hope to hear more from you and I see our numbers are growing and want those new to the Color/Colour also share their history and interest in color photography.

 

[Chris Sweetman]

Firstly Robert thanks for starting this group! For me working in colour started 30 years ago when I bought my first quality camera - an Olympus OM1 with a Zuiko 75-150 zoom lens. The first film to be loaded in that baby was Kodachrome KR64. KR64 turn out to be my fav film but when I hit hard patches where money was in short supply I used slide films that were not processed paid and developed them my self! Not having any posh heated developing tanks I used Paterson tanks that I had to keep adding hot water to to keep the temp high enough!

Now I have turned full circle and using KR64 again! When this has ceased it will be Velvia 50 as my first choice!

Cheers Chris

 

[robertjonesphoto]

I am glad to see a color group here at APUG. Ever since I was a child, I instinctively preferred black and white over color for shooting. Perhaps for my Sears 126 Instamatic, it was for the better to have my camera loaded with Verichrome Pan, the most versatile b/w film of all time.

Then when I was 20, I saw screenings of the great Hitchcock movies Vertigo, The Trouble with Harry, The Man Who Knew Too Much, Rear Window, and Rope, in brilliant Technicolor, and some synapses started firing in my head. This was in 1984. The next year I made the connection to my photography when I watched David Lynch's surreal movie Blue Velvet. Ever since then I have been acutely aware of color in photography.

The first maxim I abide by is this: There must be a *reason* for a photograph to be in color. If a photograph is primarily about its composition, tonality, or geometries, then it really has no business being in anything other than black-and-white. Hue is a compositional element all unto itself, and it cannot be subordinated (though it can be related) to its geometry or tonal range. The primacy of hue is by definition what determines color photography.

By this standard, the alleged "first important" color photographers, Elliot Porter and William Eggleston, are irrelevant to the history of color photography *as color photographers.* Most of their compositions, amazing as they are, would not change meaning if you removed the color. The true reason that these two were so heavily promoted was because of the closed circle of tastemakers and kingmakers, in particular John Szarkowski of MoMA, whose photographic paradigms per se were defined either by the Stieglitz/Adams/Weston f64 crowd, or the Evans/Frank/Arbus camp. This is not a slam on any of these photographers -- Walker Evans has influenced me more deeply than any other photographer, and I have found no photographer nearly so profound with so little effort.

That said, I regard both Porter and Eggleston not as "color photographers," but rather as "photographers who just happened to shoot in color."

With the publication of Color magazine beginning earlier this year, I finally found a photographer who truly lives the dictum that color photography must be first and foremost about color. His name is Jeffrey Becom. And yet, he is a contemporary photographer. The missing link for me was finding the true pioneer of the color aesthetic.

I found that in the January 2010 issue of Color on their cover, and was shocked to learn that I had never heard Pete Turner's name before (even though, as a jazz enthusiast, I had many of his dust jacket photos ingrained in memory for years). I have posted a video on Turner by the George Eastman House. I firmly believe that Turner has been heretofore unjustly ignored or overlooked by the fine arts photography world, and invite photographers to check him out. He is truly amazing, and I believe him as important to the history of photography as any of the great masters who are constantly recycled by Aperture.

As for me, I have been an adherent of Velvia 50, Ektar 25 (and now 100), Polaroid 669, Vericolor III, Agfa Ultra 50, Agfachrome RSX-II 50 for years. My background in color was working in color correction for Time-Life in the late 1980s, and from this experience I gained an affinity and sensitivity to the brilliance of color.

But the greatest color photographer of all time is not even a photographer, but a painter: Photographers can learn more about the nature of their craft by spending hours in front of the paintings of Edward Hopper.

 

[pentaxpete]

Hallo all -- I'm glad you spell COLOUR the English way as an 'alternative' as I seem to be one of the only non-American members ( There is one from Norway I noticed) --- well, this Old Limey started colour in the 1950's with the Italian slide film 'Ferraniacolor' and processed many cassettes in made-up chemicals as the Formula was published -- I used to belong to Barking Photo-Soc. here in Essex ( until ex-wife No. 2 went off with the Vice-Chairman!) and the Club would cover the Barking Carnival with about 8 members shooting Ferraniacolor then rush back to our meeting place where I processed up the films, and many members would help to mount and add a commentary on tape, then rush to the Carnival ground where we put on a slide show for the Mayor, Carnival Queen and members of the Public !
When I was a Photographer at University College London in the Geology Dept. I introduced Ferraniacolor for use as Lecture Slides and Photomicrographs on the 'tungsten balanced' type-- I still have some of the slides after all these years and that was in the 1960's -- 1970's . It took an HOUR to process at 65oF!
I got into colour PRINTING at UCL by trying out the Paterson Pavelle process, with RGand B additive filtration method, then when the early Agfa came out switched to Y M and C Subtractive filtration -- it took 25 minutes to get a print at 68oF -- now the RA4 print porocess is much hotter and quicker and I can get a print out in 2 minutes !
now I have a 'NOVA' British 16x12" slot processor for RA4 prints after using Paterson drum method and it is much easier-- my colour enlargers are an LPL C7700 Pro bought and a Durst M305 given and I use Kodak Endura and Fuji RA4 papers as all the others have been discontinued, even Kodak papers in SHEET form have been discontinued .
I do most of my C41 colour negative except if I go on holiday and have many films --- I use a great deal of outdated films as I have been given a lot !
I will show you some results of my endeavours in this Group- thanks for viewing !!