Night B&W and painting with light
- At September 27, 2011
- By michael
- In Projects
9
As someone who cut my teeth on black & white film in the darkroom, digital black & white has never felt natural to me. It’s interesting because with software, in a lot of ways you have much more control over the tones in your black and white image than you do with film. Digital files are much more flexible, and you can adjust how various colors of light you’ve recorded will show up in the final image (to do digital black & white work, you actually capture a color image and convert it to B&W later).
Despite this, digital black & white photos have never looked quite right to me. Part of it, I think, is a lack of grain, and I think contrast appears differently, but there’s something else at work, something I can’t quite put my finger on. There’s a certain depth to silver on paper that digital photos just lack.
At any rate, for many years, I didn’t have access to a darkroom, so I didn’t do any darkroom work.
Picking it back up again, I realize how little I actually knew, previously. Even so, there’s always been something magical about watching an image form on a sheet of paper after you’ve exposed it with an enlarger and put it in a tray with some chemicals.
For my current project, “Light as Subject,” I took my camera and tripod out into the rainy night to see what kind of results I could get. I am absolutely floored by some of the results. Some of my day shots turned out well, but these night shots look fantastic, while the advantages of film are readily apparent in this application.
After taking these, I headed to a small access point on Lake Monroe. I wanted to try “painting with light.” This means using a long exposure and moving a light source in the frame to create streaks of light. Here are a few images from these experiments.
I looked out across the water and saw several sailboats docked in the distance, little white toothpicks sticking up against the deep black sky, reflected in the inky black water. Beautiful!
Technical data: Ilford FP4+, ISO125, most exposures were 30 seconds at f/8. Printed on Ilford Multicontrast Fiber-Based paper.
Note: These are crude scans of the prints. The prints look so much better than the digital files. Technically, it’s best to scan the negatives, but my scanner is horrible with negatives.
Ear to the Breeze » Blog Archive » More darkroom work
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David Crowell
Digital photography may have taken away much of what true artistic photographers enjoy, but it brought so much convenience to everyone else.
Don’t get me wrong, these are great shots. I’m just glad you did them, so I didn’t have to buy film and set up a darkroom.
michael
Good point, David, and I’m certainly not knocking digital photography. But, these exercises make me think: what are we losing, for the sake of convenience?
Fortunately, I’m lucky: I get to have it both ways.
Fonk
I look at it another way… I don’t think the increased convenience (of digital) should necessarily be discounted. For all those people who start snapping a lot more pics out of simple convenience, a few artists are going to arise; perhaps artists who might not have arisen if they had had to invest in the expense and time of developing film. I love B&W, and my medium is digital. I think I’m starting to produce some halfway decent pics now, too. However, if I had been limited to film, I don’t know that I would have necessarily developed my passion as readily, as with work, family, and a crowded house, a darkroom wasn’t likely to occur. With digital I just sit down to my computer…
All that said, I appreciate what you’re saying (and I know you weren’t condemning digital). In fact, I’m signing up for the photography program at our local community college, and I can’t wait to take the film photography classes and learn to develop my own pictures the “old school” way.
Fonk
BTW, I forgot to mention in my last comment – that first photo is sweet. Nice work.
Jon Grinder
I have always been more of documentarian, with a camera, simply taking snapshots to record a moment…preserve a memory or, actually, a reminder of a certain time. As such, digital has been a boon.
I do my “art” on paper, with pencil and pen and watercolor.
But, I have always admired your photography, and I dig the arty stuff you are doing now. I would ove to have the equipment to try it out, myself.
Still, if I had access to a darkroom, I would probably be building pinhole cameras to take pictures of my cigar box guitars.
Always the tinkerer…
michael
Fonk: You make some excellent points. I, too, have benefited from the convenience and cost-effectiveness of digital photography, and I’ll continue to do so.
At the same time, I’m loving getting back to my roots and experiencing photography as more of a physical process than a bunch of clicking on a screen.
Jon: I can’t draw, or paint, or sculpt, or any of that stuff. So it was a revelation when I discovered photography, an art form I can actually do. I also have some musical abilities, so I’m not completely devoid of artistic ability, just not the traditional painting/drawing/etc.
I have thought about building a pinhole camera. We’ll see if I have time. My projects are keeping me busy.
Tim
Boat “toothpicks” shot is killer.
Chandra
Brilliant, Michael! I especially love the boats.
Peace