Can you bracket exposures without breaking a code? Does anyone ever bracket; is it the mark of incompetence, of lack of knowledge, low commitment to the Code?

There is no golden ring; not even in the City by the Bay. There are habits, not Hobbits.

Bernice and the lost habit of Bay Area Labdoms.

Once upon a time… in the land of the Bay of imaginary perfection, exposures were certain, labs near perfect, and people graceful, helpful, filled by the glow of mutual success.

Except: the Bay Area was never a bigtown of big time commercial studios, so, no reason for a big name big time lab. Like all provincials, they thought they were the dog, not the flea. Of course there were ad agencies; branches that handled the local fruit. Commercial work, money work that didn’t involve the retail person, that work is: product, place, people oriented. The product world was New York. Full stop. Place and people shots were in many places, mostly places like Chicago, Hollywood, even Atlanta. Not San Francisco.

We tell our stories to amplify our better mythologies.

So, Bernice defends her story in a classic way: show me yours. Recall: her favorite defense witness is someone who makes more than 2,000 posts a year, never with pictures. Her own pictures are, putting it politely, are polite homilies. The person she wants to put-up, does show link in his sig-line to his website. It demonstrates his skills in picture along with verifiable credentials.

“Bracketing exposures on film remains an extension of not fully understanding the limitations_abilities of ALL the photographic materials and process involved with print making and the image maker’s print goals. This included having and knowing how what tools are required and using them to the best of their abilities and capabilities.”BL…

“Back in them days of color transparency film centric images for color printing and other means of printed materials, Fotographers that bracketed their film exposures lots were considered incompetent and “lesser” in many ways as long experienced working “pro” photographers considered exposure bracketing a serious wast of film and much more.. This discipline of making each and every frame or sheet of film exposed count seems lost today.. due to the non-cost of digital image making.. but appears to have been some what re-discovered by folks new to film image making.” and”Please do share your published color transparency images over exposed and under exposed by ~ONE~ f-stop .. Curious as to what these look like in print.”

As part of her “Teaching Truth,” BL pointed to a link with this info: “After film containing bracket information has been processed, examine the individual frames on a standard light table with a 5500 K light source (daylight balanced) to determine which frame has the correct exposure. A typical bracket series using Fujichrome 64T transparency film is illustrated in Figure 7. This series was conducted by exposing two f-stops above and below the suggested value with an Olympus PM-30 photomicrography control system” —

She may not have read that, which clearly shows how to bracket, more, how to interpret the results of the process.

And, she began her online time filled with thoughts such as: “.. have been doing view camera (Large Format ) photography since the early 1980’s. It is more hobby and art interest than profession. Over the years and thousands upon thousands of images produced, I had to decide what to do with some of the images that have been created. 

It appears the time has come for me to share more of them with the world at large since the vast majority have never been shared or seen by others than a few friend.”

Guess that she had more of a goal than sharing. Seems she wanted acclamation.

She wants to fight. She fights. She has to defend. So it goes. And so the forums continue their decay. Day by day, boast by post.