Fishtales, Campfires, Photography

Hosting campfire tales among the analog boosters.
The Greeks believed that fishing was the harbinger of prosperity; easy fishing a rich season . Small fish bring large fish.

A TALE: it is as though I’ve come across a campfire. There are young and old gathered around it; fishing poles, fishing tackle, some people in fishing vests wearing hats with lures stuck in them. A cover for some brochure, except the people aren’t suitable.

There is some fish, although not much; they’ve either finished, or they didn’t have a good day fishing. Telling stories keeps them from thinking of failure –how many bad days. — neither worms nor ties worked.

I stay aside and listen for a moment, a couple of tails and then I’ll be on my way. The old seem to be trying to outdo one another, each elevating the story, having more knowledge, having greater insight ,having more experience, having caught more fish. The old telling the young how much better fisherman the old were when they were young; the old were better fisherman when they were young, and better fisherman than these young; also, fishing was better back then. More types, tastier too.

Their stories make fishing better back then: the reason for this, for their reasoning, their motive isn’t stated– likely unknown, nonetheless, I’m going to tell my tale, my explanation of what and why they’re doing this: they’re doing this to gain position at the campfire, to have their story retold by the Young, to make their story the Young’s story even though their story, it’s just a fish tale

These ancient fishermen, they lived off store-bought fish, more likely, beef at the drive-through on their way back from Camp.

I am offended, I do do not mean to offend, but I am offended since I lived off fishing. These gossip groups are thieves stealing a past and a future.

They tell their tale to drown out the tales of the young; these elders tell their tales so often the young believe them. They’ve told their story so many times they start to believe it, So many tales have been intertwined there isn’t any thread of origin, of truth– the film is fogged beyond use.

  They told the tail so many times they forgotten the truth of it they no longer know the true parts the small part became so big that the fish turned into a whale

It’s not that they’re bad storytellers, instead they’re good liars… dissemblers of information. They met someone who knew someone, becomes: they were the dear friend of that one.

Their story doesn’t matter to my tale ,not a flicker.– It doesn’t stop me from fishing, and it doesn’t stop me from enjoying the fish I catch.

Of course, like all fish stories, this has nothing to do with fishing.


Matte paper. Reflection density. Callier Effect. Woodburytype

Farnsworth [wikipedia]

To know a story, read their story.

Gossip is always wrong. And prone to false memory; featuring yourself as the center of the circle, the fountainhead.

Magnolia

Although there are some glimmers of the truth in these {DW post) none of the facts or numbers are correct and no one working at Magnolia can recall the jigsaw portrait that is mentioned… [Jan,2021 private communication]

HIS claim: The most interesting project I was consulted on involved a giant jigsaw puzzle color self-portrait using 22 species of exotic hardwood. After the scan, this was laser-mapped, but could not be either laser cut or CNC done. I won’t gone into details, but their labor charge was 40K, and they lost money at that! But they did it for the challenge, and just shrugged their shoulders and said they’d make up the difference on the next Chuck Close project. Most of these pieces sell for over a million apiece to museums or civic installations. NYC has quite a few

Two additionals: Dmax is less valuable, as well as being prone to measurement error for papers than is L* —

AND : Happy Andre Breton Day …

Those D70s

Chemistry fundamentals don’t change, not in 70 years. Few mature subjects re-define their doundations, certainly not the theories. The practices change. Photographic chemistry as an industrial process has changed greatly since 1950. Even those changes are not as great as an enthusiastic, excitable weekender may think. The laten image must be “amplified” in a developer. Developer specifics change even though the theory doesn’t.

Ingredients change because of commercial or social reasons– lumped together as business. Sold as progress. Chemical photography has realized greater changes in the emulsion making, that being at the industrial control level — that level being as that of the end of the 20th Century. It got so far, but not further.

D-72 is Dektol.

Paper developers are very active developers. Paper is less sensitive to light than film. The latent image needs a stronger developer to make it visible. (halides to silver)

[read the cards]

Developing AgentD-72 (paper developer)D-76 (film developer)
Elon (metol) developing agent3.0 grams2.0 grams
Hydroquinone 12.0 grams5.0 grams
Berenice AbbottNew Guide to Better Photography (1953)

Not knowing what the brand name means, means not knowing.


the time of expanding meanings. longer times. industrial chemistry. big mechanical things. roads. trips. group darkrooms.

transition decade. continued the 60s. expanded it. extended it up to the edges of the 80s. the last time to be, to become liberal.

Weekend Update: 8.’24

Yesterday, I made remarks about masking ; the early years of making masks, noting the aid that was given me

Dye transfer was easy, much easier than anyone talking about it now would make it seem. Why they make it a bigger deal than it was is probably in an effort to compound  the value of their results;  keeping you in their shadow. Of course, it wasn’t trivial, but it was something that a teenager could do in a small basement room after mere weeks of trial and error. Not more than 2 boxes of Matrix film before I was making prints.

To test my procedure I made, what today are called “targets,” — I made swatches of dye transfer dyes, photographing them, then printing. They matched! This was before color targets were a product. Kodak did have color guides, along with grey cards, which I probably used; now, I don’t any of those notes.

Anyone with access to a commercial photography store in the United States could buy Dye Transfer materials. That is no longer possible. That is the main reason “You Can’t Learn Dye Transfer.” Some people have had materials made — orthochromatic matrix emulsion is a small industrial chemistry effort for an emulsion company. It is, to some, a throw away technology. Even badly managed ‘pots’ will make good emulsion.

As new problems came to me from commercial clients, I gained new skills, but most of these skills repeated year after year. Variation of prior solutions.

They make it harder than it was, to make themselves better than they were. They proclaim a pride of process. Making it seem harder, made it less used. Kodak couldn’t be bothered by supporting it, neither did they want to sell the process, even under license.

Elsewhere I have written about how difficult it is for anyone to learn  dye transfer printing … The key difference between my learning of photography and what I see as the proponents of the dark room arts, dark room world, is the amount of encouragement provided by everyone that ever I ran into. The first 15 years that I was printing was nothing but supportive. That is no longer the case. It may never have been the case amongst the hobbyists. They maybe have always been more competitive than the businessman. The commercial printers competed for clients, and when the clients were limited we actually just shuffled them amongst each other.  Different clients gravitated towards different styles of business interaction, not necessarily the difference of the lab results.

Many labs made great work using the simplest of means. That is how I began. Energy, personal willingness to make mistakes without surrendering the drive to finish a print.

I held myself back more times than anyone else did. Initially, embarrassed that I wasn’t making dyes from slides, I declined work. There were enough referrals on color negatives. One time I went so far as having internegatives made from slides so that I could print them. At that point, it was time to make seps from transparencies. This was still my first year of printing.

There were times when I worked at three different labs in the same week. It would’ve been impossible for those labs to have had a secret from one another; I was the person carrying those secrets.

Reasons for the expansion of the skill claims needed for making a print seem to be based or are being made by people who are hobbyist or who had limited market success. They worked but they didn’t thrive. They were solo practitioners; they never had employees; they never had sufficient business success to hire employees. No matter what the reason for this limited success was, it was because of their personality. They just couldn’t do business. They didn’t want business, they didn’t like contacting people, they didn’t like interacting with people, or was it because people didn’t like the work that they produced?

Some two person labs did fine, making it into this century, lasting until their Kodak supplies were depleted.

Some people can write but they cannot teach and the very best written material that I’ve encountered was produced by people who have interacted with students; who have interacted with someone attempting to use the the written material.

Sometime I will write about OIC group.

Notes: The ColorChecker was introduced in a 1976 paper by McCamy, Marcus, and Davidson in the Journal of Applied Photographic Engineering. [

]