Photography Club

Installation of the laboratory

2006-09-14T19:10:00.000-07:00

In order to mount a developing laboratory the best thing is an empty room, darkened permanentlly, with work tables and shelves constructed for that purpose. In such room all the equipment can be left, even when it's not being used. However, some people will have to use a transitory installation, as the kitchen or the bathroom; for after each session it will be necessary to remove the objects, it will be a considerable advantage an easily removable equipment.
In order to be used as a laboratory, the chosen room must fulfill three basic requirements:

Easy to grow perfectly dark: even the light that enters thru the frame of the door is able to spoil the material.
Electricity, a security light and, if it's a permenent laboratory, the enameler and some other things.
Good ventilation: if you want to be able to use the laboratory during several hours, since the blockade of the light can prevent the free air circulation.

Recommendable, but not essential, is running water to wash the films and papers, and to prepare compounds in the same laboratory. If you don't hace running water, put the material in a bucket and wash it outside. Even if the laboratory is permanent or provisional, it must be separated in two different areas:

THE DRY PART: for all the activities that do not need water nor compounds, as the election of negatives and the enlargment; the table installed in this area must be firm, so that the enlarger does not move. Is necessary to place near it: a margin frame, a clock, a negative file, photographic paper, scissors and a blade.

It would be good to have a magnifying glass (to examine the image projected by the enlarger). If you have a paper dryer it must be placed outside the dry area, because wet copies, and humidity will be handled close to it; in addition, contact between the solutions and the equipment must be avoided.

HUMID PART: this area is where the film is developed and the solutions are prepared. The black-and-white film developing includes three processes (development of the latent image, interruption of the development and fixing of the image), the three necessary buckets or tanks must be placed so that the last one (with the fixer) is next to the laundry. The security light is put upon the developing tank (also you must have table lights).

Photographic developing

2006-09-02T11:54:00.000-07:00

If photography "is the art and science to obtain visible images of an object and to fix them on a light sensible material layer "... Which are the properties of that fixing process?
Much can be discussed on the potential differences between the developing process of film photography and digital printing. It is a very important subject at the time of analyzing both types of photography, since these are two forms of developing an image, two archival mediums. Is one better than the other? Is one more lasting tha the other?...
We'll look for answers first with film photography then with digital.

Black & White film Developing Procedure

A roll of exposed film contains the latent images of the exposures that you made, these latent images must be amplified and stabilized in order to make a negative that can then be printed and viewed by reflected light. Before we cover the development of a color negative film, it might be best to step back and process a black-and-white negative. If you used black-and-white film in your camera, the same latent-image formation process would have occurred, except the silver-halide grains would have been sensitized to all wavelengths of visible light rather than to just red, green or blue light. In black-and-white film, the silver-halide grains are coated in just one or two layers, so the development process is easier to understand. Here is what happens:

In the first step of processing, the film is placed in developing agent that is actually a reducing agent. Given the chance, the reducing agent will convert all the silver ions into silver metal. Those grains that have latent-image sites will develop more rapidly. With the proper control of temperature, time and agitation, grains with latent images will become pure silver. The unexposed grains will remain as silver-halide crystals.
The next step is to complete the developing process by rinsing the film with water, or by using a "stop" bath that arrests the development process.
The unexposed silver-halide crystals are removed in what is called the fixing bath. The fixer dissolves only silver-halide crystals, leaving the silver metal behind.
In the final step, the film is washed with water to remove all the processing chemicals. The film strip is dried, and the individual exposures are cut into negatives.

When you are finished, you have a negative image of the original scene. It is a negative in the sense that it is darkest (has the highest density of opaque silver atoms) in the area that received the most light exposure. In places that received no light, the negative has no silver atoms and is clear. In order to make it a positive image that looks normal to the human eye, it must be printed onto another light-sensitive material (usually photographic paper).

In this development process, the magic binder gelatin played an important part. It swelled to allow the processing chemicals to get to the silver-halide grains, but kept the grains in place. This swelling process is vital for the movement of chemicals and reaction products through the layers of a photographic film. So far, no one has found a suitable substitute for gelatin in photographic products.

Masters of Photography I

2006-09-01T20:07:00.000-07:00

I'm very excited to start a review of the greatest names of photography of all times. It's difficult to choose whom to begin with, there's a great number of them and all around the world, I also thought about beginning by alphabetical order, but it didn't seem right, maybe you can help me. I believe that the best way to start is to decide quickly and without thinking... mmm how about, Robert Doisneau. Yes, the one of the last name I've never been able to pronounce right, even after taking French classes, but whose photographs I've never forgot.

Robert Doisneau (April 14, 1912 - 1st of April, 1994) is one of the most well known French photographers. Noted for his frank and often humorous depictions of Parisian street life, he focused on people photography, making images of common people as he wandered through the streets of Paris and its suburbs. His work stands out because of it's spontaneous, real or pretended, images that often present defocused areas.

Among his most recognizable work is Le baiser de l'hôtel de ville ("Kiss by the Hotel de Ville"). In April 2005 a signed copy was sold for over $ 200.000 in an auction and acquired by a Swiss collector. The original print of this iconic image was sold by Françoise Bornet, the woman in the photograph. Bornet and her then boyfriend Jacques Carteaud posed for the seemingly spontaneous photo in 1950. Doisneau apparently saw them kissing and asked them to recreate the action for his camera in front of the Hotel de Ville. The casual quality of this very posed image captured the romanticism of after-the-War Paris. Doisneau took the picture for a series on lovers in Paris for Life magazine through the French picture agency Rapho.

Robert Doisneau "Kiss by the Hotel de Ville" 1950

Francoise Bornet holds the copy
of the photograph in front of the
Hotel de Ville.

This is a selection that I did of some of Doisneaus works as representatives of his humorous style:

Robert Doisneau "Sidelong glance" 1948

Robert Doisneau "Picasso and the loaves" 1952

Robert Doisneau "Hell" 1952

Robert Doisneau "Barbarian prisoner and Callipygian Venus",
Versailles 1966

Profesional Photography & Digital Technology

2006-08-28T17:36:00.000-07:00

I continued my reserch in the subject from the last post: digital & film photography.
That's why I want to recommend an interview were you'll be able to read the opinion of a long trajectory photographer, Jim Brandenburg, a USA nature specialist.
I believe that it can be helpfull to know the opinion of a professional photographer concerning the inclusion of the digital technology in the professional photography world. I'll give you an advance of what you're going to find in this interview with this photographer's opinion about: when did he start using digital photography and why did he make the switch from film, what are some of the advantages of digital over film, disadvantages to digital cameras, the cost of digital cameras, and what should the average photographer buy.

If you are familiarized with spanish, I have a second interview to recommend that's also very interesting to me. This can be usefull to us in order to confront opinions, since both photographers are professionals, but have different origin, style and background. In this second interview we find the opinion of Gerardo Suter, a Mexican professional photographer.
I hope my recommendations are usefull and I'll wait for your comments!

Comparing digital and film-based cameras

2006-08-22T19:12:00.000-07:00

In terms of gathering and focusing light, analogue and digital cameras are nearly identical. Both must let in the proper amount of light for the proper time, then focus it, an operation that requires a carefully coordinated combination of the following features:

Shutter

Analogue
The shutter on a camera keeps light from entering the camera except at the desired time (sometimes just thousandths of a second). If a camera lets in light for too long, the image is over-exposed (resulting in photos that are too bright or too white). If it's open for too short a time, the photo will be underexposed (too dark).

Digital
Some digital cameras don't use shutters, but combining digital technology with a mechanical shutter tends to yields higher-quality images.

Aperture

Analogue
The aperture of a camera functions by widening and narrowing according to the overall level of light. A narrow aperture lets in less light so that the film is not over-exposed.

Digital
Digital cameras have mechanical openings to adjust the iris size.

Lens

Analogue
The lens takes the light that enters the camera and focuses it onto the camera's film through a process called refraction. Adjusting the focus of the camera actually moves the lenses.

Digital
Some digital cameras can override the fixed focus for special shots such as close-ups.

Film Speed

Analogue
A film's speed is a way of describing its sensitivity to light. The more sensitive (or faster) the film, the faster it reacts when it comes into contact with light.

Digital
Instead of film, digital cameras have an image sensor built with a single overall sensitivity to light, equivalent to ASA 100-speed film in most cameras. The camera's built-in computer can enhance images by removing the blur and thus effectively raising (or lowering) the light recorded in the image sensor.

Some or all of these functions may be fully automatic in some digital cameras, much like film cameras. However, professional digital cameras are designed to allow for manual adjustments to shutter speed, aperture and focus.

Recording Light

Analogue
Black-and-white film is coated with what is called an emulsion layer, which when exposed (i.e., the shutter opens and lets light hit the film) changes the halide crystals chemically. The developing and printing processes translates this into an image. Colour film has three emulsion layers, each one reacting to a primary colour of red, green or blue light. Coupler dyes mix to approximate the actual colour of the light that first hit the film.

Digital
The image sensor in the digital camera is made up of thousands of photosites which turn light energy into digital information. By combining information about hue and intensity, the camera assigns a specific colour to each pixel (short for picture element). A pixel is the smallest unit that makes up an image.

Creating an Image

Analogue
In the development process, film is bathed in chemicals to form pure silver. The parts with the least exposure are the most transparent, and the parts that were most exposed to light are black or opaque. This same process is true for colour film, except that the dye couplers are also included in the process. The film is "fixed" to prevent further chemical reactions, creating a negative. To print, a very bright light is shined through the film onto the photographic paper, which is covered with an emulsion layer very similar to that of film. The negative image now becomes a positive creating the photograph.

Digital
A digital camera records light electrically. This "information" then becomes an image. A microchip inside the camera converts the digital reading from each individual sensor and combines it with information from the surrounding photosites. A colour is assigned to a particular pixel. Thousands or millions of pixels are combined into a single computer file which can then be downloaded.

Strengths & Weaknesses

2006-08-19T16:50:00.000-07:00

There's a lot to read about the advantages and disadvantages of both types of photography (digital-film) and most of the times this polarities are presented as "digital versus traditional" photography. I personally don't think the problem has to be presented like this, that's why I titled this post "strengths & weaknesses", that is what I think both types of photography have, and one does not have to exclude the other.

Anyway, there are stong defenders of both. Some of them proclaim that film photography is dying, that is going to be replaced by digital, this is fed by news about the big companys, like Canon, informing that they are going to stop selling film photography products. Others, proclaim that digital photography can't be considered as a fine art, so it will never be a substitute of film photography.

To continue with the last post, now I'll introduce this text, that I hope you'll find usefull to understand a little bit more about how both types of photography work, so you'll be able to take your own conclusions about this subject, considering that we are still in a comprehensive and learning state.

The disadvantages of digital photography are directly related to limits in technology. To have a high quality image, you have to have an extremely large amount of 1's and 0's. The limiting factor is the plate that translates the light into digits. In first generation digital technology, the plates were not very good at digitizing the light, and so digital photographs taken with these plates look fuzzy and "squarey." In the past few years, however, technology has advanced so that the plates are much more effective at digitizing light, and pictures can be taken at much higher qualities.

The resolution of an image taken by traditional means is limited by the film it is taken on and the lens that focuses the light. Some film is better than others, and some lenses are better than others. While mild enlarging and cropping of a film photograph can be done in the darkroom without much loss of resolution, the sharpness and clarity of the image decreases as the image is enlarged and less of the surface area of the film is being used to create the photographic print. This does not refer to the effects of "zooming in" with a tele-photo lens, which vary greatly depending on the lens and can be just as sharp as any other kind of photo. Because the whole surface of the film is still being used when one uses a tele-photo lens the quality of the image will be equal to an image captured on the same film with any other lens of equal quality.

The resolution of a digital image is limited to the quality of the plate and to the quality of the lens in the same way that a film photograph is limited by the film and the lens. A higher quality plate records more information (measured in pixels or Megapixels), in the same way that a lower ISO film is able to record a higher resolution image.

In the same way that a film photograph loses sharpness and clarity when it is enlarged, digital images that are later cropped either to alter the composition or "zoom in" decrease in quality as the resolution decreases and noise becomes more apparent. Lower-quality digital images are notorious, however, for losing quality much more rapidly than a film photograph.

The digital era...

2006-08-19T16:48:00.000-07:00

To start this subject I think is important to admit that we are immersed in a digital era. That's why I don't want to leave the subject without discussion it, as I think that giving information about it helps to explain a lot of aspects. Let's start with a clear definition of what digital photography is.

Digital photography, as opposed to film photography, uses electronic devices to record the image as binary data. This facilitates storage and editing of the images on personal computers, and also the ability to show and delete unsuccessful images immediately on the camera itself. Both forms of photography, however, use optical lenses to focus light onto the respective medium.

While film photography uses photographic media that reacts when exposed to light (creating a picture), digital photography uses a photosensitive plate that translates the wavelength of the light that strikes it into 1's or 0's, hence the name digital. The sequence of 1's and 0's that make up the photograph is called a file. The file, and effectively the photograph, can be reproduced perfectly and also transferred over the internet or other forms of digital communication without loss of quality.

Digital cameras include features not found in film cameras such as the ability to shoot video and record audio. Some other devices, such as mobile phones now include digital photography features.

The most valuable

2006-08-16T11:54:00.000-07:00

This is the list of the most valuable photographs of the world:

Edward Steichen Pond-Moonlight (1904), U$S 2,928,000, 2006, auctioned.
Richard Prince Untitled (Cowboy) (1989), U$S 1,248,000, 2005, auctioned.
Joseph-Philibert Girault De Prangey Athènes (1842), U$S 922,488, 2003, auctioned.
Gustave Le Gray The Great Wave, Sete, (1857), U$S 838,000, 1999.
Andreas Gursky Untitled 5 (1997), U$S 559,724, 2002.
Gustave Le Gray Tree (1855), U$S 513,150, 1999.
Diane Arbus Identical Twins (Cathleen and Colleen), Roselle, N.J. (1967), U$S 478,400, 2004.
Charles Sheeler Ford Works (1927), U$S 447,350, 1999.
Alfred Stieglitz Georgia O’Keefe: Hands with Thimble, U$S 398,500, 1998.
Gustave Le Gray Marine (1855), U$S 368,420, 2000.
August Sander Handlanger, porteur de briques (1927), U$S 328,940, 1999.

The photopraphic art market has changed a lot this last decades, a proof of this is the values that some specific photographs, most of them from the begining of the XX'st century, obtained in the auction sales.
"The Pond-Moonlight" of Edward Steichen became the most expensive photograph in the word, for it's been recently sold for more than U$S 2,900,000 during a auction sale at Sotheby’s wich started February 14, in New York, this year. This valuable photography was taken in Long Island in 1904. There are three existing copies of this photograph, its value is the originality as it is an early example of a color autochrom picture. The other two copies of this photograph you can find them in this two NY city museums: the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Modern Museum of Art

Pond-Moonlight of Edward Steichen

Untitled (Cowboy) of Richard Price

Athènes of Joseph-Philibert Girault De Prangey

Photography as a form of art

2006-08-15T19:37:00.000-07:00

Today photography is widely recognized as a fine art. Photographs are displayed in art museums, prized by collectors, discussed by critics, and studied in art history courses.
Because of the special nature of photography, however, this was not always the case. In the early days of photography some people considered the medium something of a poor relation to the older, established visual arts, such as drawing and painting.
The arguments stemmed from the fact that a camera is a mechanical instrument. Because the mechanical procedure of taking a picture is automatic, detractors claimed that photography required no coordination of hand and eye and none of the manual skills essential to drawing and painting. They also argued that photography required no creativity or imagination because the photographic subject was "ready-made" and did not require manipulation or control by the photographer.
A camera, no matter how many automatic features it may have, is a lifeless piece of equipment until a person uses it. It then becomes a uniquely responsive tool, an extension of the photographer's eye and mind. A photographer creates a picture by a process of selection. Photographers looking through the camera's viewfinder must decide what to include and what to exclude from the scene. They select the distance from which to take the picture and the precise angle that best suits their purpose. They select the instant in which to trip the shutter. This decision may require hours of patient waiting until the light is exactly right or it may be a split-second decision, but the photographer's sense of timing is always crucial. Photographers can expand or flatten perspective by the use of certain lenses. They can freeze motion or record it as a blur, depending on their choice of shutter speed. They can create an infinite number of lighting effects with flashes or floodlights. They can alter the tonal values or colors in a picture by their choice of film and filters. These are only a few of the controls available to a photographer when taking a picture. Later, in the darkroom, many additional choices are available.

One of the best ways to view artistic photographs is to visit museums. Today most art museums include photography exhibitions, and many have a photography department and a permanent collection of photographic prints. This is a relatively recent development, as it is to share and look pictures thru the internet.
If you are interested, check-out the links I choose on my blog, these are my favorites!

What is photography?

2006-08-14T13:06:00.000-07:00

It's important to start with a short review about the meaning of photography...

Photography is the process of making pictures by means of the action of light. Light patterns reflected or emitted from objects are recorded onto a sensitive medium or storage chip through a timed exposure. The process is done through mechanical, chemical, or digital devices known as cameras.

The word comes from the Greek words φως phos ("light"), and γραφις graphis ("stylus", "paintbrush") or γραφη graphê, together meaning "drawing with light" or "representation by means of lines" or "drawing."

Traditionally the product of photography has been called a photograph. The term photo is an abbreviation; many people also call them pictures. In digital photography, the term image has begun to replace photograph.

Welcome!

2006-08-14T12:21:00.000-07:00

I welcome you to this blog dedicated to photography lovers... like myself!
We are going to go thru everythig there is to know about photographic technology and technique, photography as an art form, and the masters of photography as representatives of the different photographic styles.
I hope you'll enjoy it, and that you'll join me in this fascinating trip, being part of it and participating with your opinions, comments and personal interests.
And... welcome to the club!