I have been this way before

I had it all written — but didn’t put it onto paper.

This post was about gaining back an image [mode] even with a changed method. Since I had it so firmly formed I went on to other things… It is gone. At least in the well shaped way –

In the 60s I made pictures in several ways – many explorations of the same picture rendered in differing manners. At the time I processed my own film – color, B&W didn’t matter. I was trained to high proficiency in Dye Transfer. Able to retouch separation negatives as well as air-brushing finish prints.

Things get lost. Sometimes those are ideas; mostly they are objects. More often stuff changes – ideas and ways to objects.

Photoshop is NOT built for use in the manner of a proficient color printer. Neither is it built to duplicate the retoucher from the 70s. It is, instead, built by a hobbiest with masterful math skills. Photoshop carries within it the artifact of complying with needs of the commercial offset world. It isn’t from the darkroom, except in a superficial ‘dodge & burn’ way.

The origin of this is a method, a way of finding images within the pictures: working beyond the original camera product. Dye Transfer required you pull the picture apart, then re-assemble it. To some few of us this provided opportunity not merely delayed gratification.

The picture with this post is part of a series that hasn’t satisfied me. Over the past week I’ve been working and re-working the same picture. This version is closer, which means I am headed in the correct direction. I’m still walking backwards by using Photoshop.

I am using PS3, 5, 6 — sadly Adobe, via their installation failures,  has boxed my system, leaving me with digging out old portions of software — building my own scripts, etc to get to what I had 10 years ago. Even that wasn’t what I had 40 years ago. The above would have taken me 2 days using dye transfer process. So far I’ve put twice that effort into getting to this un-successful result.

Growing Pains are harder in those with enough of a path to know another way from the parking lot.

more to come…