Magnum Darkroom notes, any could explain?

[Don_ih]

seems to be printing from 4x5 dupe negatives.

And onto Ilford MG paper - just look at the shelves.

 

[Alan Edward Klein]

Alan,
It would make sense to start a separate thread devoted to these questions. Basically a beginner's guide to darkroom manipulations like burning and dodging.
The digital burning and tools got their names from, and were designed to emulate the darkroom tools that were there before.

Done.

Digital dodging and burning

This is a forum discussing digital dodging and burning. What editing software do you use? How do you implement it? Procedures you follow. Differences between dodging and burning between digital and scanned film files.

www.photrio.com

 

[Pieter12]

It helps to see the final print the OP posted about.

Moderator's addition - copied from the first post in the thread:

 

[MTGseattle]

There we go. It really ties the room together.

 

[MattKing]

Hope no one minds my borrowing the original printing diagram from @Fatih Ayoglu 's opening post and putting it adjacent to the final result posted by @Pieter12 .

 

[AnselMortensen]

There we go. It really ties the room together.

 

[xtol121]

I will say that these shorthand diagrams would help so much to see broken out into individual steps. It's overwhelming to a beginner and and potentially off-putting for someone with minimal darkroom experience. Maybe something like this would help break it down into something digestible? And I'm sure I messed up and misunderstood some of the steps. This is much closer to how I write out my own dodge and burn maps. I prefer a turn-by-turn direction as opposed to someone showing me the entire route all at once.

 

[koraks]

broken out into individual steps

I really like your example!
I do think that the "everything in one picture" better meets Magnum's desire to sell these images as posters. I don't think they're really intended to inform - they seem mostly intended to entertain or adorn.

 

[xtol121]

@koraks Absolutely agree! Whether that's unfortunate for people trying to learn from these notes or not the original example would definitely look better in a book or on a wall than my broken down step by step interpretation.

 

[logan2z]

It's overwhelming to a beginner and and potentially off-putting for someone with minimal darkroom experience.

If nothing else, it really makes me wonder if I'm doing enough when making my prints. I'm pretty happy with my results, but I do far less burning/dodging than these print maps imply

 

[snusmumriken]

To my eyes, the result of all that manipulation is to make the scene look artificial, as though the soldiers are posed in front of a theatre back drop. Ah well, tastes differ of course.

 

[Don_ih]

To my eyes, the result of all that manipulation is to make the scene look artificial, as though the soldiers are posed in front of a theatre back drop. Ah well, tastes differ of course.

That seems to be the result, but I think the negative had that look about it to begin with. Look at the marked-up work print compared to the final print.

It's overwhelming to a beginner and and potentially off-putting for someone with minimal darkroom experience.

That would be the case for these Magnum exposure maps, except the only person who needed to understand them was their darkroom printer. Magnum publishes these to further the mystique of photography - they don't expect the person who purchases one to understand anything beyond "wave the magic wand this way and that this many times".
Your diagram is much clearer.

But the print was probably plainly made to a proper average exposure, then he drew the dividing lines for the areas of more or less exposure and could probably see how much was needed, so wrote an estimate. Some of those were scribbled out and changed. It probably was all he needed to reproduce the final print.

 

[Lachlan Young]

I will say that these shorthand diagrams would help so much to see broken out into individual steps

It's really just 3 exposures, listening to the beep/ metronome on the MG500 timer. In other words, you're on the move from one dodge/ burn (within a given grade) to the next without turning the timer off & on. When represented graphically like this, it looks much more complicated than it is, hence why everyone here is apparently ultra-entranced by day-to-day professional practice. You pretty quickly know what an extra 1/2 stop or 2/3 stop burn works out to.

 

[cliveh]

It's a great photograph and great photographs don't require lots of print manipulation.

 

[MattKing]

It's a great photograph and great photographs don't require lots of print manipulation.

"Great photographs", and "great prints" are two, inter-related but distinct things.
Some "great prints" would be mediocre prints if the creative controls available to the skilled and knowledgeable printer were not applied appropriately.

 

[awty]

Amazing work.
I spend hours and hours trying to get to get to that standard and just fill the bin.

 

[Don_ih]

It's a great photograph and great photographs don't require lots of print manipulation.

Amazing work.
I spend hours and hours trying to get to get to that standard and just fill the bin.

I like the stuff both of you produce and find it interesting that you have divergent opinions. But it's what works, so that's all that matters.

 

[snusmumriken]

That seems to be the result, but I think the negative had that look about it to begin with. Look at the marked-up work print compared to the final print.

I took the marked-up version to be a near-final one, but without seeing a straight print or the negative we’ll never know.

Mulling it over further, my criticism of this heavily-worked final print is that while the scene as a whole has depth, the background doesn’t. It looks un-natural. I can’t believe that would be the case in the negative.

 

[Don_ih]

Side by side, you can see there is no detail in the sky of the work print, the buildings in the background are much paler, but the plants are identical and the hat is different. The work print is most likely not manipulated.

I don't consider this print heavily worked at all. It doesn't look like anything more complex than burning with some paper cutouts on a big piece of multigrade filter was required. I think the impact does flatten the background, though, since it darkens the natural fade that is present in the scene. I don't think that's as big a problem as a whole lotta nothing behind properly exposed people.

This following print was not made by Pablo Inirio.

It's closer to the Inirio's final print than to the work print, but not as subtle as Inirio's final print. As in, I didn't notice sprocket holes in the Magnum print - or the dark smears extending down from them. The sky looks like crap. I would've been too pissed off to even print that, probably...

Recent times have ruined this photo. Almost every photo of a number of people now has too many of them looking down. I know it's a book in the guy's hand - but all I think of is "phone".....

 

[snusmumriken]

Recent times have ruined this photo. Almost every photo of a number of people now has too many of them looking down. I know it's a book in the guy's hand - but all I think of is "phone".....

Like this, for instance?

 

[Don_ih]

Like this, for instance?

No, that's good - because it's "Hear evil, See evil, Speak evil". Obviously.

 

[cliveh]

This is just my opinion, but the photograph of the three army guys is a great picture, because it has symmetry with the two guys at the edge looking in the same direction and the anchor in the image of the middle guy looking down. This symmetry is echoed in the bridge formation in the background and the dark foreground and aerial perspective of the background give the whole picture a sense of depth.

 

[snusmumriken]

No, that's good - because it's "Hear evil, See evil, Speak evil". Obviously.

 

[snusmumriken]

View attachment 376191 View attachment 376193

Side by side, you can see there is no detail in the sky of the work print, the buildings in the background are much paler, but the plants are identical and the hat is different. The work print is most likely not manipulated.

I don't consider this print heavily worked at all. It doesn't look like anything more complex than burning with some paper cutouts on a big piece of multigrade filter was required. I think the impact does flatten the background, though, since it darkens the natural fade that is present in the scene. I don't think that's as big a problem as a whole lotta nothing behind properly exposed people.

This following print was not made by Pablo Inirio.

View attachment 376194

It's closer to the Inirio's final print than to the work print, but not as subtle as Inirio's final print. As in, I didn't notice sprocket holes in the Magnum print - or the dark smears extending down from them. The sky looks like crap. I would've been too pissed off to even print that, probably...

Recent times have ruined this photo. Almost every photo of a number of people now has too many of them looking down. I know it's a book in the guy's hand - but all I think of is "phone".....

Followed up the link. So that was Freed’s own print? I take back my criticism of Inirio’s print. I hadn’t realised how bad a negative he had to work with.

Yet another version here. All these variations show that what made the photo stand out in the first place didn’t depend on subtle tonalities or biting sharpness and endures even in the worst prints. Freed took some wonderful photos of passing moments.

 

[Don_ih]

Freed took some wonderful photos of passing moments.

I have the first edition of Freed's Police Work. The print quality is terrible. It's around cheap-magazine quality - maybe a bit lower - not as good as Life Magazine. But the photos are excellent. (I don't think the book was ever republished - might be wrong - but it's a very well-known book.)

You have a photo. You have a print. You can have any number of prints of a photo, all with subtle or emphatic differences. All part of the magic....