Category: coursenotes

from lectures and presentations I’ve taught

Asking Directions in a Stalled Car

Posted on Posted in art school, coursenotes, da net, dye transfer, the fora

asking directions in a stalled car

stalling for time. taking 9 years to start your journey. You may not have serious intention. Certainly little motivation.

the questions asked. trying to make color prints in carbon. what was simple has become almost impossible.

why does it take someone so long to get to the first actual steps?

This person has asked similar questions in three different forums to same result.

is it just a point of conversation — like picking the best developer — always looking but not expecting a final answer —

How can someone spend years learning how to make a print? How many times, how many people do they have to ask before taking action? I don’t know. Most people rarely arrive at the peak — probably good, otherwise the path would be too worn to travel, the top too crowded to enjoy.

Asking other people questions — better if they had asked themselves more questions.

Taking themself step by step into the past.

So, how does someone get out of an endless cycle — Try something — anything. That is the natural order of studio arts. Make a mark. Examine it. Make another.

After collecting stacks of references, organize them. Make a try to build your own guidebook. That’s how I learned to print dye transfer. I read a couple of pamphlets and the inserts put into the product boxes. They were written by people making the process clear enough to be learned by an interested amateur. Professional labs learned from each other. Later, Kodak hired professional tech writers — the literature became less useful. Professionals milking the assignment a word at a time; an article extended to three months instead of one.

Make an outline. Discover the mystery with a reference about the end, the goal. Answering honestly, where are you starting. What will you need. That is the rub: how do you know if you don’t already know? Go back further in literature. Skip the boards and recent books. Write your outline based upon the past. Fill it in with material from the present.

Getting There:

  • it is an assembly process
  • it is assembled layer by layer — cyan, magenta, yellow
  • each of these layers is made separately — made by separation
  • it is a negative positive process — a negative makes a positive. (positive makes a negative)
  • it is a contact speed process — means the negative will be in contact with the final emulsion — they are same size
  • you may have to make an enlarged negative
  • in this century you will have to make your own “tissue” — you will worry about this far too much
  • in this century you can buy some large film — it is becoming more expensive and less common. Some emulsion runs are made every few years –large sheet film is a specialty item. [Ilford Orhto+ and Bergger Printfilm] 2022
  • Write a rosetta
  • Write a dictionary – terms with sources
  • don’t buy equipment unless you have tried with what you have —
  • know what you know before asking the forum

set yourself word and picture goals. refer back to them often. make measurement of your progress.. if you skip a measurement, demand more of yourself. if the process of learning takes longer than giving birth — give up, you are probably infertile.

amateurs can do early, or they will never do

Cutoff Filter

Posted on Posted in A Symbol Life, coursenotes, labnotes, the fora

cutting off light. cutting off learning. cutting off experience.

Photography is an experimental studio art — with experiment meaning experience. Art is philosophy — as photographers gain experience they make it and themselves meaningful. We walk around becoming more and more an artist. Maybe our photography, that physical stuff, never catches up to us. Most photographers stop themselves rather than being stopped. I find them, the stalled ones, gather together saying they want to help others. They offer advice which, on face, seems sound, it is often repeated. It is rarely based upon direct experience. It is often wrong — in application and theory.

In the color darkroom — the age of enlargers. When enlargers were called that. No need to give them a new coat calling them “optical” — they were enlargers, the key to the photo-lab, the darkroom was built to house them. They used hot-lights — light bulbs.

Enlarger Lamps

ESJ 3350K … PH140 3000K — two common lamps with their respective color temperature. These are both small bulbs used in small, but common darkroom enlargers. A chart of color temperature may help in understanding why we need IR cutoffs in a hot enlarger.

Chopping the IR off the enlarger light path means the emulsion will have less spurious response to the image being projected (enlarged). Infrared isn’t “heat” — there is a thermodynamic element to it, however, in main the photographic emulsion will respond differently with and without an IR filter in place and filtering the projection light.

For those of you making color separations or color internegatives this will be noticed, it is measurable, for blue and cyan. The horizon colors.

This came up because an on-liner had a problem with color balance — it seemed nothing could be done; that the balance was illogical, showing sporadic response. Many of the often outspoken experts said it must be the failure of the poster — their skills weren’t good for the task. Not the task of doing, not even the task of diagnostic. Several days. Several efforts. The likely answer was pointed out by someone who has little experience printing; this according to themself — having only begun printing in the past three years. They are correct in the diagnosis of the problem while the other, over 10 thousand posters haven’t yet agreed. Experiment can’t convince them. Display can’t convince them.

They can’t see what they didn’t expect.

They have so little experience that they don’t understand, can’t accept yours.

They may be well intentioned — attempting to maintain knowledge from a field of past knowledge, but they are keeping alight a flame they never lit. They never were on that road, the path they say they’re maintaining. The field of casual knowledge wasn’t enough to work in a professional lab then, it certainly isn’t enough to sustain the field now. Experience doesn’t come in teacups

Refs:

https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/80983/how-does-infrared-relate-to-heat#:~:text=There%20is%20no%20special%20link,radiate%20at%20a%20higher%20frequency.