Film: Favourite trees.

[Maris Rusis]

Andrew Stannard in a previous thread has illuminated the rapport that trees can evoke. And the poignancy of loss when they conclude their long lives. I too have favourite trees and though they are about 1500km from my home I have visited them annually for many years.

Twin Snow Gums, Grace​

Gelatin-silver photograph on Arista Edu Ultra FB VC photographic paper, image area 19.7cm X 24.5cm, exposed in contact with a Fomapan 200 negative. Camera was a Tachihara triple extension 8x10 field view camera with a Schneider Super Angulon 121mm f8 lens. Signed, titled, and stamped verso.

The trees had grown in each others company for 300 years but now one has died, one still flourishes; grace in life and death.

 

[Asher Kelman]

Andrew Stannard in a previous thread has illuminated the rapport that trees can evoke. And the poignancy of loss when they conclude their long lives. I too have favourite trees and though they are about 1500km from my home I have visited them annually for many years.

Twin Snow Gums, Grace​

Gelatin-silver photograph on Arista Edu Ultra FB VC photographic paper, image area 19.7cm X 24.5cm, exposed in contact with a Fomapan 200 negative. Camera was a Tachihara triple extension 8x10 field view camera with a Schneider Super Angulon 121mm f8 lens. Signed, titled, and stamped verso.

The trees had grown in each others company for 300 years but now one has died, one still flourishes; grace in life and death.

Maris,

They look like lovers immortalized in the ruins of Pompei!

Superbly exploited subject in analog media with all the benefits of continuous shading, all with your own hands touch the film! BTW, do you have a scanner? I wonder how you react to scanning negative to make corrections for debris or errant objects and the like and then you can make a new negative.

For contact prints, what's your setup. I'm thinking of doing that for my LF film. I admit, I gave away my enlargers and am bereft of any light source now!

Asher

 

[Andrew Stannard]

Beautiful image Maris. Your dedication in visiting annually is impressive, although I hope you also have other reasons to make the 3000km round-trip! My tree is only 300yds from my front door

Regards,
Andrew.

 

[Maris Rusis]

Maris,

They look like lovers immortalized in the ruins of Pompei!

Superbly exploited subject in analog media with all the benefits of continuous shading, all with your own hands touch the film! BTW, do you have a scanner? I wonder how you react to scanning negative to make corrections for debris or errant objects and the like and then you can make a new negative.

Thanks Asher for your kind words.

I have an A4 flat bed scanner I got at the local ALDI supermarket for $49. Because I scan the photographs directly the scanner resolution is plenty for monitor display via the internet. I don't make colour pictures so the grey scale scanning I do is particularly forgiving. Calibrating the scan is done by holding the photograph next to the monitor screen in my workshop (70 lux illumination) and making them look about the same.

Scanning negatives to get rid of debris or errant objects doesn't work. The darn spots are still really there. Of course it is possible to recalculate an electronic file into a plausible looking fiction where certain things can be made to disappear. But that is specifically what I guarantee not to do when I make physical photographs out of sensitive materials. There are reasons for specifically choosing to look at a photograph of a scene over a painting, drawing, or digi-graph of that scene. And the non-virtual integrity of a photograph is part of it.

While it is possible to minimise debris and errant objects in a photograph by scrupulous dust control some do get through. Each medium has characteristic marks, brush strokes in paintings, dead pixels in digi-graphs, etc, that could be thought of as flaws but the marks also serve to authenticate the medium. There is a long history of artists deliberately leaving irregularities in pictures. The old masters called them pentimenti and the study of pentimenti can clarify the artist's creative journey. This principle taken too far can inflict upon us photographs that are "good" because they badly done; witness some of the schmutz emanating from toy cameras or ill poured wet-plates.

For contact prints, what's your setup. I'm thinking of doing that for my LF film. I admit, I gave away my enlargers and am bereft of any light source now!

Asher

My original contact exposure set-up was a white light-bulb in a coffee can lampshade fitted with a home-made cardboard holder for variable contrast filters. It hung from a ceiling hook over my work bench. An enlarger timer controlled exposure times. A sheet of 1/4'' glass served to press negative and photographic paper closely together. This worked fine for years. Now I use an old 4x5 enlarger as a light source. The aperture iris on the enlarging lens is helpful in trimming the light intensity to a convenient level. The sheet of glass has been replaced by a couple of divided back contact frames, a 10"x12" and an 11"x14". Both contact frames have the glass masked off leaving just an 8"x10" window for the negative to sit in. This has the pleasant result that the 8"x10" contact positive is surrounded by white rather than a big area of oppressive black. The white area is also a convenient place to write a title, append a signature, a studio stamp, etc.

 

[Maris Rusis]

Beautiful image Maris. Your dedication in visiting annually is impressive, although I hope you also have other reasons to make the 3000km round-trip! My tree is only 300yds from my front door

Regards,
Andrew.

Good reasons? Yes! I go to make photographs where these trees are. The surroundings are rare in Australia because the altitude forces snowfalls and the vegetation is battered and twisted into dramatic forms. I'm heading there in a couple weeks with 100 sheets of 8x10 film and a load of cameras and lenses. A couple of months of shooting there should easily consume all the imagination, vision, and energy I can muster.

 

[Bruce Sdunek]

Very attractive trees. I myself like to photograph trees, as they are so neat.

 

[Paul Abbott]

Hey Maris, lovely subject but it looks like all the highlights within the image are blown to a certain extent. As a result there is a loss of gradation in the image...

 

[Asher Kelman]

Hey Maris, lovely subject but it looks like all the highlights within the image are blown to a certain extent. As a result there is a loss of gradation in the image...

Paul,

Likely as not, the flatbed scanner from the supermarket is unlikely to be kind to the numbers 230 to 256! That's where we need something at least like the Epson v700 and several scans being combined using either Hamrick or Silverfast software. In truth a great photograph needs a drumscan or an upper tier professional level flatbed scanner, few of which are still in production. examples of availability are found here, in Genesis, for example. The resolution in a photograph is only 300 dpi or much less, unless it is a very special case like a direct positive or else a Polaroid. However, the dynamic range is the place where there's the most loss in a the supermarket scanners.

No disrespect, Maris, to your scanner.

Asher

 

[Paul Abbott]

Thanks for that info, Asher...

 

[Paul Abbott]

Have you made a physical print of this, Maris...?