The Artistry Formerly Known as Prints
Yesterday at 4PM, I followed a hashtag on Twitter, #printchat. It was basically a bunch of tweets discussing the printing industry amongst people who you could call industry insiders. The main subject of conversation was drupa, a recently completed conference and trade show dedicated to advances in the printing industry. It’s held every four years in Düsseldorf, Germany, and it’s goddamn massive. I didn’t even hear about it until this year, but as Wikipedia says, “390,044 visitors attended drupa in 2008, and 1,953 exhibitors from 54 countries covered a total of 17.9 hectares of space.” That’s insane. More noteworthy, it’s astounding that such a big event is dedicated to an industry that I would bet the average person would suspect is on the decline.
A lot of people like to talk about how more pictures have been taken lately. And we’re not talking about a simple percentage increase, either. More pictures get taken every two minutes than were taken in the entirety of the 19th century. (This is, of course, on average. Actually, do yourself a favor and read Jonathan Good’s original article here.)
One of the things Mr. Good’s article touches on is the increasing rarity of the printed image. This is definitely true as a percentage—that is, of all photographs taken, the percentage that are being printed is in sharp decline. But that could be true even if the rate of image printing is increasing. But what I imagine (with no evidence apart from my own to back it up) is that fewer and fewer photographs are being printed to paper. When I was a kid and you got film back from the lab, you got a copy of every frame as a glossy 4×6 print. And most of the time they stayed that way: slightly curled prints from a machine in a photo lab branded envelope in a shoebox in the closet.
Now that I consider myself a photographer (an amateur still, but working towards being a semi-pro… let’s talk if you want to buy my work), I’m visualizing prints a whole new way. You shouldn’t print everything, and if you do, those prints should be a bit bigger. Personally, my ideal size is an 8″ by 10″ print, which strikes the perfect balance between decorative artwork and a requirement for intimate examination. I know a few photographers who prefer shooting large format and contact printing their 4×5 negatives to force viewers to get in close to examine the photographs. I want to try this soon. Because on a computer or iPad, you zoom in. With a print on a wall, you bring your face in to really look at a print.
Anyway, even though you should only print a small percentage of what you shoot, the average person prints relatively nothing. How many prints of your photographs do you have, and how many digital files (from a camera or from a film scan) occupy your hard drive?
Ansel Adams’ well-known book The Negative (one of the best instructional photography books ever) was the second in a trilogy of The Camera, The Negative, and The Print. Unlike the first two, I’ve never seen the latter on the shelves of a bookstore. It’s all about making a traditional print – using silver gelatin photographic paper with a negative in an enlarger to make a positive image. (The paper is a negative-producing material, so projection of a negative film image will result in a positive print.) I’ve made a series of YouTube videos (crappy ones, I must say) that give an overview of darkroom printing.
However – and this is the point that I originally wanted to make when I thought of writing this blog post – is that darkroom printing isn’t a simple “there, I did it” process. Or at least, it doesn’t have to be (you can choose to make “straight prints” if you choose to.) There’s an artistic opportunity there that you can choose to work in. From the choice of your paper and developer to the dodging and burning you apply to specific areas of the print, there are tons of ways to affect the final print. Elements like composition and focus are present in the negative, but things like tonality and contrast are only affected by how you print the image (even if you never choose to print it).
Ansel Adams’ most famous photograph, Moonrise, Hernandez, New Mexico, exists in a variety of different forms (see below). This is because Adams went back to the darkroom with the original negative and reinterpreted the final print a number of different ways throughout his life. So even though he was working from the same original negative, each print was, in its own way, unique.
Example #1
Example #2
I was recently watching a documentary about the great Japanese street photographer Daido Moriyama, and I learned that a great deal of what you see is not just due to the camera, but how he chose to print the photographs in the darkroom. For example, one of the interviewees was recalling how they were trying to recreate a particular print of Moriyama’s, and the lab had to give up because it was too difficult to recreate. Indeed, even Moriyama couldn’t recreate his original print. What was the epitome of a reproducible medium had become a one-of-a-kind.
An example of a Daido Moriyama print
I hope this helps you to begin to appreciate the value of a printed photograph, as well as the opportunities that exist in making a print. That photographic printing is such an important art is such a personal revelation to me over the past year or so that I’m now planning on a photo book that will feature scans of finished darkroom prints instead of scanned negatives. With that change, I’m not just showing you where and when I held a camera. You’re seeing the exact image I wanted you to see.
If you have a darkroom, go in there and make some prints! If not, at least send your scans off to be printed. I’ll even forgive you for dodging and burning in Photoshop. Just as long as you have something you can hold in your hand and hold up to your face, because whether you know it or not, your brain is getting tired of looking at pixels. And hey, there’s a reason that drupa is such a big deal – printed material matters.
Pinholing, Episode 2: Construction
In this post, I’m going to go over how I built my 8×10 wooden box pinhole camera. It’s really simple, but there were a bunch of small hurdles to jump over once I actually got going. It’s a really simple design, just enough to get the job done while not giving me any nightmares that my camera will disintegrate in the environment (I’m looking at you, foam core…)
First off, I had to make the box. I had six pieces of 12″x12″x1/4″ craft plywood to work with, and I knew that I wanted my “focal length” to be 8 inches (I trust my international listeners to be able to do some conversions, but for reference, I had 254 mm square wood panels and a desired focal length of 203 mm. Those are your freebies.) Again, I’m putting “focal length” in quotes since it’s the distance from the aperture (i.e., pinhole) to the film plane; there’s not really a focus method. I wanted to get the distance as close as possible to 8 inches, so I cut all the sides of my box to be a hair under 8 inches – there is a tiny bit more distance to cover thanks to the structure of the film holder.
It’s important to make a few notes here… When working with wood, you have to take the thickness of the wood into account. For example, my camera is 8.5 inches thick, but the internal distance (pinhole to film plane) is pretty close to 8 inches. Also, I started off with having an 8×10 film holder that I could use as a guide. The front and back of the camera were cut to fit the film holder exactly; I didn’t even make measurements with a ruler.
Anyway, with all the pieces cut to size I started gluing them together to make a wooden box. I used one of the most awesome adhesives around, Gorilla Glue. It’s an expanding polyurethane glue, and it’s strong as hell. Of course, it’s got some special instructions to make it work the way you want to, so make sure you read them carefully. I used some scrap wood to thin out the glue that I had squeezed out, and I used some 90-degree clamps to hold things in place while the glue cured.
Before you knew it, I had a complete box with one side left free where the film holder would go. In the front, I drilled a relatively wide hole so that the pinhole had access to a very wide-angle cone of view. That is, if the wood is too thick or the hole is too small, the pinhole would suffer from “tunnel vision.” I’m guessing that my hole offers 90 degrees or more for the pinhole, which is plenty for my fairly long (for pinhole, anyway) 8 inch focal length. Finally, I spray-painted the entire interior of the camera a non-glossy black. You really want to kill the light as much as you can.
The fine folks at Lenox Laser shipped the pinhole in a very neat, well-sealed plastic square holder. Rather than try to tape the fragile pinhole to the inside of the camera, I just drilled a hole in one half of this plastic holder and used it as a mount. I was therefore able to tape the whole thing to the inside of the camera with gaffers tape without even touching the pinhole (not counting removing it so I could drill that hole). I also (after my first test with the camera) put some gaffer’s tape around all the seams to cut down on light leaks from the edge of the box.
With the interior all prepared, the trickiest thing was to actually get the film holders to stay in place. For my first test, I was way too giddy and anxious, so I held the holder and back (a simple piece of wood) on with painter’s tape. Definitely not a long-term solution, even if the tape wasn’t the primary cause of my light leaks. I wanted some sort of “spring” back, so I got the ingenious idea of getting some black waistband elastic and making some loops that I could just strap around the camera to hold everything together. Of course, what I failed to remember was that I’d be setting the camera up on its side, and gravity would make the back sag, to the point of letting light in.
Fortunately, there was some scrap wood laying around (wood that had even been used to test a router, so it was rounded on one edge), so I cut three stop blocks. Thus, the back couldn’t slide around in any of the three directions I didn’t want it to. It can still move towards the “top” of the camera (the side where you pull darkslides out) and it can also fall out, but the elastic prevents that from happening. The downside is that now I can’t set the camera easily on the ground or a table, but I imagine that wouldn’t make for very good photographs.
The last thing to include was a pair of tripod mounts (one for landscape orientation, one for portrait), which simply involved putting 1/4″ x 20 nuts in a pre-drilled hole and securing the edge with Gorilla Glue.
After a simple staining and polyurethaning (yes, it’s apparently a word), I considered the camera complete. But how would it fare out in the field?
(That’s my poor attempt at a cliffhanger ending, btw)
Pinholing, Episode 1: Design
I’ve wanted to build a pinhole camera for a while now. And I know what you’re thinking. Oatmeal boxes, Altiods tins, and blurry images. But I have fallen in love with pinhole cameras like those produced by Zero Image, Lensless, and Leonardo. These are quality wooden boxes capable of producing really sharp images. And they can also be really expensive if you want to do large format. $300+ for a Leonardo 8×10, $200+ for a Lensless 8×10 camera, and $120-$270 for Zero Image 4×5′s, and all at fairly wide angles. Then, there’s the new Harman Titan camera, a 72mm 4×5 pinhole camera that should retail for around $200 soon. The images I’ve seen from it (thanks to Filmwasters’ Leon Taylor) are truly remarkable.
I’ve been thinking, what’s the big deal? All I want is a sturdy wooden box that will take an 8×10 film holder on one side and hold a pinhole at the other side. So, I decided that maybe building my own quality pinhole camera could be an option. But then, there’s that word: “quality.” Everything that I like about these cameras I’ve listed is their wonderful sharp (relatively speaking) quality. You can get a fantastic image from the cameras I’ve mentioned, while all the DIY cameras I’ve seen have left a lot to be desired. It frequently turns into a competition of who can build a pinhole camera out of the wackiest materials, rather than taking a look at how to perfect a design. So, this is my goal:
Design and fabricate a wooden pinhole camera that will make as perfect an image as possible on 8×10 film in an appropriate film holder.
Now, you need to understand a tiny bit of optics to get pinhole design. By restricting the aperture of a hole down so far, you’re only using light rays that are bouncing straight off the subject and onto the film plane in a direct path. (see Wikipedia for example) However, if the hole is too small, you start getting too much diffraction due to the way light bends. I feel unqualified to explain further, but suffice to say that we need an optimum pinhole diameter. Lord Rayleigh, acoustics genius, came up with an awesomely simple formula,
pinhole diameter = 1.9 * square root(focal length * light wavelength)
which will give an optimum pinhole diameter. Also, there are a number of simple online calculators such as this one which will just spit out a number, using both inches and mm. So, it’s decision time. How far away is the pinhole going to be? I decided to start by looking at view angle
As far as view angle is concerned, I love my Nikon 24mm lens. A 24mm lens on a 35mm camera gives you a diagonal angle of view of 84 degrees. 28mm, another great focal length, gives you 75 degrees. So, by my thinking, if I can keep the angle of view around this size, I should have a nice image without too much distortion of perspective. I made a spreadsheet and found that, for 8×10 film, a “focal length” of 8 inches (I use quotes, because no focusing is going on in pinhole photography) gives a diagonal angle of view of 77.35 degrees. Equivalent to 26mm on a 35mm camera. Perfect – gives me a wide angle without going into “weirdness” territory.
Having settled on a third dimension for the camera, I got two calculations of the optimal pinhole size. Rayleigh’s formula says I should have a pinhole of 635 microns (or 10^-6 meters) at 8 inches away, while the “Mr. Pinhole” calculator at the earlier link suggests 601 microns. I erred on the slightly smaller side and ordered a 600-micron pinhole from Lenox Laser in Maryland. Apparently the tolerances are smaller than 5%, so I should be getting something worlds better than if I tried punching my own hole through a thin bit of brass. As an added bonus, I know that my camera will be permanently set to f/339.
So, having ordered a pinhole, I’ve started cutting up six pieces of wood I bought at the local craft store. I’ve decided to just glue some tabs on the back piece (the film holder side) as well as the two side pieces, then use elastic on these tabs to hold the back in place. It’s a poor man’s spring back, essentially. I’ll also try things like putting two 1/4×20 nuts in two sides, so that I’ll have a tripod mount for both a horizontal and landscape orientation. If preliminary tests go well, I’ll try my hand at installing a rotating shutter, much like you can find on the Lensless cameras.
But I’m getting ahead of myself. Once I get home, I’ll take some snapshots to show you the woodwork before I start using Gorilla Glue (honestly some of the best adhesive around) to put the box together. Unfortunately, the glue requires a lot of clamping force and a long time to dry, so I’ll probably be gluing one edge at a time for a few days. I might even get my pinhole in the mail before I’m ready to install it.
Anyway, I’m hoping that this whole project will generate plenty of content for a blog that I feel has been neglected for far too long.
Changes in what I’m up to
Just a quick update on what I’m doing right now, in bullet list form:
- I’m giving the photo lab review series a bit of a break. I still have a load of labs on my list, and I want to keep at it, but the money just isn’t there for me to keep sending off film around the country and ordering scans and prints so that I can judge their quality for both C-41 and cross-processed E-6.
- I’m instead testing some lower-ASA black and white films. This was brought on by the idea of finding a B&W film that is as sharp as Kodachrome was. Tonight I’ll be developing my first rolls of Efke KB 25 and Kodak Plus-X (ASA 125). After that, I’ll be shooting some Ilford FP4+ (125) and Pan F (50). It’s funny since most photographers consider 100 ASA to be “medium” speed. I started learning on a digital camera, where 100 was the lowest possible ISO setting you could have…
In the interest of being consistent, I’m going to develop everything in Rodinal, maybe even at the same dilution, and I’m shooting every roll in my Konica S2. This has the added advantage of further improving my technique of focusing with the viewfinder. Unfortunately, I started the endeavor by shooting hand-held, so in the interest of fairness, I think I should keep at it. And I have 36 shots per roll, so it should be reasonable to compare the sharpest frames from each roll.
- My Hasselblad needs fixing. The frame spacing is very off, leading to a razor-thin strip where I can cut my negatives. This means I’ll have to hold off on buying more supplies and possibly narrow my 100 strangers project down to something a bit more reasonable, like 50. My 50 dogs project, which I really would like to make into a book, may have to take longer. For both of these, I’ve resolved to only shoot the Hasselblad, which is easily the best camera I own.
Now that I think about it, since my TLR’s viewfinder hood is busted, the only medium format camera that’s working as it should is my Holga. YIKES, you guys!
- I think I’m not getting enlargements that are as sharp as they could be. I’m investigating the potential causes and am going to be getting a Nikkor lens to replace my Beslar. Hopefully that will fix the problem. Then I can work on my crooked borders, perhaps by getting a better easel.
- Crap, I’m sure I’ll have to get more paper soon. Maybe I should go Glossy next time instead of Semi Matte.
- I’m interested in trying cyanotypes, but since I shoot 35mm and 120, I’d need to enlarge to ortho/litho film first… twice!
What are you guys up to? (Or: who even reads my blog?)
What’s Up For 2011
Some of you reading this (if there’s anyone at all) might know that I did a “Photo 365” project in 2010. I started off that project doing nothing but digital photography, and I discovered film photography pretty early on in the year. It wasn’t long before I converted to film exclusively, thanks in no small part to the addicting Film Photography Podcast. As a result of processing times and the frustration of trying to keep detailed notes on each day’s work, the project devolved into more of a sum total of 365 images rather than one taken from each day in the year. Cheating? Yes – but I make the rules, so I can break them, too. Here I thought I’d list some projects I want to undertake in 2011. Hopefully they’ll be more film-friendly than the last project.
Finish Photo 365 – This primarily involves choosing the last images that come back from processing, as well as publishing the last four (of eight) books through Blurb. Pretty mindless work by now, but it needs to get done.
100 Strangers – Another classic photography project from Flickr. The setup is pretty simple – you ask 100 people on the street (or wherever) if they’ll let you take their portrait. Get to know them a little bit and get their names. The benefits of this project are seemingly endless. I’m a fan of street photography and photojournalism, and I really want to get into portrait work. I’ve already started this one, and so far, every shot has been on the Hasselblad. Perhaps I could publish it as a single volume at the end of the year, or earlier if I get it completed in a timely fashion.
Nice Dog – Inspired by the above photo I took, this is essentially the same as the last project, only with dogs instead of people, and probably a more reasonable number, like 50. This could easily be turned into a single photo book. Depending on the apparent dog population once I start, I might allow myself to use photos that I’ve already taken in 2010.
Places – I am likely going to be traveling to Seattle in the spring, there’s a chance I’m going to Boston, and I’m almost certainly going to New York City for one or two conventions in October. New places demand new photographs.
Smaller, More Themed Books Civil War cemeteries, smoking clubs of Pennsylvania, Traffic signs you can find downtown, one night in the life of a crappy local cover band. These are all ideas for photo books. They’re ones I just made up on the spot right now and are therefore unlikely to be executed, but they illustrate the kind of projects I’d like to do. Think Winograd’s “The Animals,” “Public Relations,” or “Stock Photography.”
Portraiture – I’d like to start taking photographs of people who want my services – you know, the more traditional means of taking payment to return quality photographs. I refuse to subject myself to the tortures of wedding photography, but portraits I feel I can do. Working with models for editorial/fashion/glamour work is also an idea I’d like to explore. The problem is, I can’t find portrait clients or models who would like to work with me.
The Blog – Yes, call it a New Year’s resolution, but I’d like to make this blog a bit more active as I continue my adventures in photography.
