Category: the fora

all that stuff people say online

Following Old Trails

Posted on Posted in olden ways, on photographers, the arc, The Biz, the fora, the Lab, The Why, Theory1 Comment

following another’s footsteps makes you a tourist not a guide

Arriving Late

You may miss the plot, the arc of what came before, and think the ending is the story.

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You begin in the footsteps of others; you walk behind them before you make your own path. you follow their path, retaking their footsteps, you learn how to do it: you follow the technical. the technical, if it’s amidol and azo, lead you into a narrowing market space; an expensive place in which you have to solve technical and  the economic, before you can set yourself free enough to solve your own problems; the problems that you define. This dalliance keeps the romance without requiring esthetic commitment. To keep yourself from realizing this, you rationalize the affair, calling it Printmaking.

The Printmaker Excuse

thinking that the problem to solve is just a printmaker one, your task becomes making yourself into a printmaker. this is codeword for saying you don’t have to have an image concept, an origin aesthetic; rely upon an aesthetic concept that’s been done. You can follow the prepared guidebook. Picture types come prepared with payment. you already know what you’re going to point the camera at. Maybe a rock, or sunset, a girl..

How bout a girl on a rock at sunset

massArtistsLF.001Unless you are a Carnie. Most long time participants in online photo forums limit their discussion to method and technique. They never understand this limits their growth. Carnie is one longtime dedicated participant. He serves as archtypical printmaker. As he notes: Now I just have to think of a subject.

 

Simple Complex

The simplified process of Weston becomes a complicated process without a manufacture. Mistaking the wand for the magic. No one bemoans the end of Weston’s light bulb, neither do they ask the type of contact frame used. Charis on a dune, with perfect drop shadow is more important than bulb, camera, developer, or paper. Translation is never better by reading a more accurate dictionary.

Take What You Need

Rather than taking from Weston the specifics, take the general, the bigger constant — work simply, but work a lot. Use what is at hand until it runs out. Then find another.

What Weston did was point his camera well. He, also, was first on the calendar; it was his footprint you saw on the dune. If you’re going to follow, follow the awareness, not the technical.  — that is the artist’s move, not the salesman’s gambit.

References & Notes

early printing was platinum requiring contact prints, which he abandoned when it became scares and expensive. He switched to Azo and Amidol in California. [Newhall 1984, p. 110.]

  • weston bad portrait studio .. retail portraits need retouching . big neg makes easier
  • contact prints on slow paper
  • paper no longer produced
  • weston switches paper, but keeps camera
  • improves exposure quickly adopting Weston meter. more single negative exposures. cheaper, easier field work.. more images
  • At Pt Lobos he worked on the edge of the coast.. a long distant horizontal — down was detail, up was the line — the distance marker.

webionaire links AMIDOL CHLORIDE PAPER

[3 of 3: Nov 10, 17]

Zoners

Posted on Posted in alt photo, M&Ms, stranger land, the fora

What do you call the earnest workers – those weekend, and retirement photographers – practicing diligently for years, but seemingly unable to provide an original motive. They are the faithful. Buying books; going to special exhibits; taking workshops, happy to hear tales of Ansel.

Zoners; Double- A? They think of themselves as keepers of a secret – the Books.

Amateur; dilettante; enthusiast; devotee- every sector has them, and these terms, in dictionary purity, don’t mark them as darkly as I do.  How about Three Leggers – they always fret over the perfect tripod. Or Camera Baggers — that too is a matter of infinite concern. There is no end to seeking perfection, or requesting group support in these matters of taste and style.

Why Classify

Because I need a way to think of them as a group- a single entity with common characteristics. Classification provides distinctions. They classify themselves — they call themselves a name, even joking that they look different, dress differently — or, sometimes that they should wear a distinctive flower to announce themselves to others – this in the case of public lectures. The public lectures probably only being attended by that particular sub-culture, even though the topic of photography, or art is interesting to broad range of people, the Doubles shun topics outside their special interest of photographic use.

Subject First

They cling to a subject version of photography. Grudgingly they have split into separate herds – with inbreeding discouraged, but permitted – There is the Digital, Luminous group and the Analog, Large Film group. They are the Photographic Gap – full of hyphenated processes, aka, workflow.

 

These Notices

The caution are notices to travelers — stear heads at a water hole. Notice that if you drink enough, or often, you will perish. Treat it before consuming.

Azo Zombie?

Posted on Posted in da net, Prints, the fora, the Lab, The Pre

azo.jpg

Kodak Azo was discontinued in 2005. It was in production longer than Kodak Dye Transfer products. Monochrome outlived color. Just a tiny part of the tale.

Texture Sheen Tint Contrast

Azo came in most surfaces and weights; it was used widely because it was cheap and constant across so many types of surface. Deckle edged postcards, cheap studio proofs, or retouching prints for advertising agency work — all could be done on Azo.

Amidol was also easy to buy during that day. Drugstores sold it in glass tubes, ready for processing film or paper. Only Kodak’s Vitava Opal came in more configurations.

When a favorite paper drops dead what are members of the Silver Circle to do? Make it themself or sponsor someone else to make some.

Smith & Chamlee, of the workshop world, chose the latter. Other workers gladly coat small runs learned while workshopping their craft sense at places like George Eastman, and Photographers Formulary. Chloride papers are easy enough to coat, but clearly this is small scale demand, which isn’t a problem for people who hold to their belief that the longer something takes to do the better it is. Self coaters are the slow dry painters of photography.

Lodima Dreams

A new company and identity was introduced in response to the Kodak discontinuation of Azo. Photographers Michal Smith (MAS) and Paula Chamlee bought much of the Azo stock, going so far as being the last Kodak dealer for its sale. As demand dropped for all photo papers, Kodak, in trouble, dropped its black and white darkroom papers. Smith and Chamlee sought a producer of a replacement paper suited to contact printing – their preferred mode of print production.

Constructing the details of these progressions hasn’t been straightforward. I’ve collected posts from multiple web sources – some of which had to be retrieved from archived crawls. The posts on Photrio (nee Apug) and Large Format (LFPF) remain available (10/17).

elementsOfPrintingLodima.002
lodima timeline

 

Azo paper goes well in amidol developer; so much so that several onliners preach that you can only achieve nirvana when both are present. I’m a heathen. Amidol is nice, but not exclusively so, but then, azo (chloride) paper isn’t perfection in silver. They are just what they are: one way across the field.

Kodak, in their azo publication, indicated developing in Dektol 1:2 for 1 minute; that would have been the conventional processing for azo the last 20 years of its production and use. Graded paper can be “contrast” adjusted using divided, 2 tray, developing. Amidol is so active that a water bath suffices as the ‘other’ developer. I prefer using dektol 1:1 and an accelerator as the second tray.

current chloride papersI use amidol and have used lodima paper although my current contact paper is Adox Lupex – has been since April, 2016. Lodima, the paper and the company, don’t provide me any advantage over Lupex. In my procedures Lupex even liths. It also handles wet life better than lodima. Lodima comes in more grades, but Smith Chamlee cannot keep it stocked in grade and size offered on their price list which seems to be updated irregularly. In short, as business, Lodima paper is the sideline of Smith Chamlee workshopping business.

Michael Smith draws much fire from online fora – LFPF as example. That would usually earn him points on my card, however, what I see his success, his contribution to my community of photographers to be is: publishing. I’ve met him twice in 30 years, and only corresponded with him twice – once when I ordered paper he didn’t have; the other time was a request for confirmation about work he may have made. The business conversation went better.

Smith Chamlee have survived the years since Asilomar ’75 by selling simple solutions to the easily influenced junior photographers. He is a businessman who has succeeded by turning his life into a tax deduction. His contribution to artists is as a book publisher, and paper vendor to a few of the lesser imagists of the past 20 years.

 

webionaire links AMIDOL CHLORIDE PAPER

[2 of 3: Nov 7, 17]