Category: film

A Long Way for Takeout

Posted on Posted in coursenotes, creativity, film, the fora3 Comments

Thomas Kuhn, if knowledge does not allow us to solve the goals, they are outdated or unscientific

Travels with Corran of the Forum. Getting to a point where you are a known unknown. Recognized without any recognition. You began with an introduction and a question, 2011. His first picture comment: “Velvia 50, 90mm Schneider f/8”

living large on the forum

The first guidance, aesthetic appreciation was: “Lovely colours in the trees and sky Corran.“ his first advisor. Followed by: “Very nice job for your first try. The gradations in the weathered siding are lovely.”

The years, posts, stuff pass. His image making proceeds along the same path he started. Eleven years later he is ready for something bigger.

“I want to do this now. I’ve been talking with my wife about this rough outline for years. And at 36 I’m still young enough to do it without a…”

“Last year when I was in Idaho for 2 weeks I went to Craters of the Moon NP and the weather was bright, cloudless, and blah. Oh well, I only had one day there and that was that. There’s always next time. No way I can get a banger photo at every location! If I get a handful of good images that’s a great start (my trip to Idaho, I think I got 2-3).”

Many cameras, but no clouds means there aren’t any photographs. How little he’s learned. He is as stalled after eleven years as those he has been learning from. Although he can process film, he can’t process the world before him; unless the world contains an established image, he doesn’t have the chops to grok.

Seven thousand miles for a snack of turnout eye candy. All that way, that film, that hope; arriving home with postcards to call your own.

Why go that way for an early bucket list — never seeing the 20% posters of the forum. It is as simple as property; something to sell in the woodside gallery. Of course everyone has made those pictures, but you can’t sell theirs, now, you have prints to sell. Someone will buy them. Right?

The members of forums hold onto the belief of their value; their purpose is to guide, take the reigns for the young — film, analog film is managed by a cadre of those holding conservative aesthetic values. A viewpoint from their youth; times before the 70s photo explosion. Few of them can think of a photography without thinking: chemistry, light, landscape. The offer travel advice almost as often as they suggest a film developer.

He started behind them; with their instruction he has managed to remain on their path, a good safe distance behind.

Why are they there, why do they remain? … because they have to tell someone something: being important, at least, at least here.

How did we get here; where did we get? A suggestion, save yourself a decade, the answer is: use 4×5 HP5+, Pyro, Ilford Warmtone, Formulary 130. That’s what they do, almost every year, almost. The righteous path; a pathway to forum success.

also see:

Notes: Kodak Research Lab

Posted on Posted in dye transfer, film, morning wood, The Biz, the Lab

change over in 85/86 caused disruption within KRL

John Capstaff at the Kodak Research Laboratory in Rochester from 1914 to 1918.

director of research Kenneth Mees

  • C. E. Kenneth Mees, From Dry Plates to Ektachrome Film; a Story of Photographic Research. (New York: Ziff-Davis Pub. Co., 1961).
  • Mees, From Dry Plates to Ektachrome Film, 293-301.
  • Journey: 75 Years of Kodak Research (Rochester, N.Y.: Eastman Kodak, 1989).
  • Robert L. Shanebrook, Making KODAK Film. The Illustrated Story of State-of-the-Art Photographic Film Manufacturing (Rochester, NY: Robert Shanebrook Photography, 2010).
  •  Carl W. Ackerman, George Eastman (Boston; New York: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1930); Elizabeth Brayer,
  • George Eastman: A Biography (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996).
  • Douglas Collins, The Story of Kodak (New York: H.N. Abrams, 1990).
  • Reese Jenkins, Images and Enterprise: Technology and the American Photographic Industry, 1839 to 1925 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1975).
  • Gary Jacobson, “KODAK: Research is in the Driver’s Seat,” Management Review 77, no. 10 (1988): 32- 32; J. D. Ratcliff, “Eastman Kodak’s Research Odyssey: Profitable Sidelines Add to Company’s Earnings from Photographic Products,” Barron’s, June 23, 1941, 3; Martin Sherwood, “Photographic Research in Focus,” New Scientist (February 8, 1973): 301-303.
  • E. Roy Davies, “Reports of Meetings. Scientific and Technical Group’s Second After-Dinner Lecture – 15 February 1962”, The Journal of Photographic Science 10, no. 4 (1962): 252-257.
  • G. B. Harrison, “The Laboratories of Ilford Limited,” Proceedings of the Royal Society of London. Series A, Mathematical and Physical Sciences 220, no. 1143 (December 22, 1953): 9-20.
  • Fritz Wentzel, Memoirs of a Photochemist (Philadelphia: American Museum of Photography, 1960).

Key Mees Books

  • Mees, C. E. Kenneth and John A. Leermakers. The Organization of Industrial Scientific Research. 2nd ed. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1950.
  • Mees, C. E. Kenneth and John Randal Baker. The Path of Science. New York: J. Wiley & sons, Inc., 1946.
  • Mees, C. E. Kenneth and Samuel Sheppard. Investigations on the Theory of the Photographic Process. London, New York, Bombay, Calcutta: Longmans, Green and Co, 1907.

Mees Bibliography

  • Mees, C. E. Kenneth. “Amateur Cinematography and the Kodacolor Process.” Journal of the Franklin Institute 207, no. 1 (1929): 1-17.
  • ———. Dr. C.E. Kenneth Mees: An Address to the Senior Staff of the Kodak Research Laboratories, November 9, 1955. Rochester N.Y.: Kodak Research Laboratories, 1956.
  • ———. “Fifty Years of Photographic Research.” Image, the Bulletin of the George Eastman House of Photography 3, no. 8 (1954): 49-54.
  • ———. From Dry Plates to Ektachrome Film; a Story of Photographic Research. New York: Ziff-Davis Pub. Co., 1961.
  • ———. The Fundamentals of Photography. Rochester N.Y.: Eastman Kodak Company, 920.
  • ———. “The Kodak Research Laboratories.” Proceedings of the Royal Society of London.Series A, Mathematical and Physical Sciences 192, no. 1031 (1948): 465-479.
  • ———. “On the Resolving Power of Photographic Plates.” Proceedings of the Royal Society of London. Series A 83, no. 559 (1909): 10-18.
  • ———. “The Organization of Industrial Scientific Research.” Science 43, no. 1118 (1916): 763-773.
  • ———. The Organization of Industrial Scientific Research. New York: McGraw-Hill Book Company, Inc, 1920.
  • ———. “A Photographic Research Laboratory.” The Scientific Monthly 5, no. 6 (1917): 481-496.
  • ———. Photography. New York: The Macmillan Company, 1937.
  • ———. The Photography of Colored Objects. Rochester N.Y.: Eastman Kodak Company, 1919.
  • ———. The Photography of Coloured Objects. London: Wratten & Wainwright Ltd., 1909.
  • ———. “Planning a Research Laboratory for an Industry.” The Scientific Monthly 7, no. 1 (1918): 54-67.
  • ———. “The Production of Scientific Knowledge.” Science 46, no. 1196 (1917): 519- 528.
  • ———. “The Publication of Papers from Research Institutions.” Science 70, no. 1821 (1929): 502-502.
  • ———. “The Publication of Scientific Research.” Science 46, no. 1184 (1917): 237-238.
  • ———. “Recent Advances in our Knowledge of the Photographic Process.” The Scientific Monthly 55, no. 4 (1942): 293-300.
  • ———. “Research and Business with some Observations on Color Photography.” Vital Speeches of the Day 2, no. 4 (1935): 117-117.
  • ———. “The Science of Photography.” Sigma XI Quarterly 19, no. 1 (1931): 1-19.
  • ———. “Secrecy and Industrial Research.” Nature 170, no. 4336 (1952): 972.
  • ———. “The Supply of Organic Reagents.” Science 48, no. 1230 (1918): 91-92.
  • ———. The Theory of the Photographic Process. New York: The MacMillan Company, 1942.
grain, dev, chemists
haist; cube grain, d-23, etc
henn: tab grain, xtol, etc