Tag: large format

Amateur Quest.ions

Posted on Posted in babl, da net, overnight notes, the LabTagged ,

The outpost of the bachelor herd. Those old timers who didn’t do the stuff they will be asked about; they’ve become the experts.

  • they ask shopping questions. They use the forum as if it were a sales counter on Saturday, the day the weekend warriors get to pretend they do THIS for real.
  • the same group rejects, out of ignorance and arrogance, the question of a newcomer. New in the process, not in imagination– at least imagination prompted by broader reference imagery than the Snobby Hobby.

Stages of the meaning of amateur: what do they provide us? How can the task of understanding be accelerated? Follow a thread, re-constructed for revelation of the question-response cycle of early participants in an online community of practice.

One person. the OP, is a professional lab printer with many years of experience. As he ventures further away from the longtime standard darkroom print, he seeks out answers from the unknown members of a forum. [this took place in 2016 (over 2 days) ] The general topic filters doesn’t seem to be retained; it becomes a topic in which expertise dissolves — it doesn’t stay with the group, no matter how many times it is repeated — the group mind has no memory. They don’t learn.

Oddly, the professional lacks the knowledge, therefore, must ask a group of unknowns. He, likely, assumes they have more experience than they do– he is, even more likely, hoping they have more experience than he does.

Why would he assume that they know how to make studio photographs with filters that will be solarized? None of them exhibits solarized work. Few of them show anything other than landscapes; typical outdoor scenics of the great west.

Effect of filter. Effect of solarization.

Effect of lacking foundation skills to be a professional: will rely upon those of lesser skills. Probably meaning you haven’t become an independent, valuable provider to those with ability to pay well. Your chances of survival go down if the skill in your market rises. As widespread darkroom skill declines, you get to survive. Luckily, that is the course of the century. The lights are being turned off.

// success is timed. Multiply your costs factor. A well defined question provides pathway to correct, useable answer. They are right about one thing: a book is better than them.

Wratten 12 (Y)
Wratten 11
Wratten 44 (cyan)
Wratten 25 (red)
contrast with BW film is relative to other colors.

Light source matters, as does color sensitivity of the BW film.

along similar lines, at least in the same quadrant of that (above) 2 year old note: we get another request for information from the same professional.

an adage pops up: you can lead a horse to water…

The person who can’t find information on their own, isn’t the person who will use the information well. Locating a vendor is an elementary part of running a business. Asking the hobby world makes you a hobbyist — and a foolish one, in this case.

Reliance upon a small group makes you either on the advance or the decline. The hobby forums are not the leading edge of chemical photography.

The conversation is complete. My observation: the newcomer should leave, so should the old timers.

Advise, constant, recurring: don’t ask the forums. In old ‘cology it was said: “don’t give away your eyes.”

You will learn more about your work by doing it. Don’t ask them, they really never did succeed. The Fromm’s and Friends are only noticed because they hang out in a space someone else provided. The tour bus drops you off where they can park, not where you need be.

Santamaura vs. Wiley

Posted on Posted in grammar of gimme, the foraTagged 1 Comment

UPDated: Jan 2025,see bottom

nb: ask yourself: who would be the worst person to be stuck with in an elevator… [P2, i give most people 5 minutes ..]

Original was a shopping question from ic-racer (IC likely meaning internal combustion. he races models)

…. see this for deeper sidebar on DW

Q: >> fujinon CM/W 450mm f8 Looking to use it on 8x10 for 20x24" enlargements in B&W. I have the W 300mm and W 150, and in spite of the size and weight of the 300, it is my favorite 8x10 lens, The 450 is not that much heavier.
R: >> I have the 450mm f/8 CM Fujinon W, 450mm f/12.5 Fujinon C and 420mm Fujinon L. The 450 C is, in my experience, greatly overrated for 8x10 use [Sal Santamaura ]
an hour later: Oh my gosh, Ice Racer, [ sic] [then the boasting begins, accompanied with denigration of Santamaura] 
----
the thread decays.

Santamaura answered based upon his equipment experience and skills; even attempting to show an image example. Wiley answered with claims of prints he has never shown.

Much of the board revolves around lenses, and shopping for them. The site philosophy isn’t intended to be a buy-sell forum, yet that is the major support structure. Buyer confidence. Examples of what to buy. What the picture will look like.

However, these things usually devolve into self sustaining justification for prior choices. After all, if they chose wrong, what else did they do in error. The tensions over time build into factual as well as conceptual errors — blindness.

  • frank beryman v wiley
  • koraks v wiley
  • randy moe v wiley
  • jnantz v wiley
  • pere casals v wiley
  • pieter[12] v wiley
  • & at least another dozen on photrio

he talks in caps. often, seemingly to himself. Without specifics. His world is often the last word, rarely the useful one.

what wiley brings == his braggadocio and conflict

they take pictures
of the same thing

only distinguishing thing is how they take them.. why equip is so important:
to distinguish value or importance. dominance by craft marking

Santamaura is fond of emoticons. Easy vocabulary. Afraid of the word, and the world of the word.

Jan 2025, upd: Drew Wiley. Wiley Photo

An anchor, so there is a single place to point you to; a focus target.

He was born in 1949 or 1950 according to his mothballed website. His birth year changed over time. Don’t know why. His main presence in photography is on the internet forums. Large Format and Photrio (nee Apug) He is an expert in opinion. He also knows many people, even drops their names even though they don’t know him. He is married to a nurse specialist in sleep apnea.

Thank you for your interest in Drew H. Wiley Photography. Your visit has been appreciated. 
For questions, comments, and to acquire Drew’s outstanding work, please call or send an e-mail to: drewwileyphoto  960 ventura st Richmond, CA 94805 Phone: +1.5102361472

He worked as an order clerk (1977- 2016) at Truitt and White, a window and door store in Berkeley. His website was up 2004-2014, renewed thru 2023&

Dye Transfer

Oct, 2004 Wiley makes his claim before the dye transfer group.

later, Sept, 2020, Mr. Wiley lets it be known that the hot-water heater he uses is: some distance from the house where the gas water heater is. For a number of reasons, I don’t want to run the hot water line over 110F.  Is that hot enough?

Authority of the craft.. make a claim that you do something difficult, at least complicated

Craft claim as the center pole of your circus act.

Bunk and debunk.

Mr. W makes many claims, drops many nameless names. This is one verification effort.

He tells the forumatti to check his website, which is no longer hosted, to learn about his show with Ansel Adams. He doesn’t supply specifics; no date, no location, no curator. Most people don’t continue the deception for decades and across several conversations.

It was sponsored by a major museum curator to coincide as soon as possible after the death of AA, … It was the largest single set of his big mural prints ever assembled up to that point, … It never traveled past this urban area because the collection was deemed too valuable for the risk per insurance mandate. I was essentially 50% of that, …ì<dw

&

A decade later my big Cibachrome prints were chosen for display beside the largest collection of his classic black-and-white murals assembled up to that time. The cumulative effect achieved by alternating our respective pictures was quite interesting. î by< dw>

I presented the above quotes to several curators: Do you have any idea where this show was? circa March 1985, SF Bay.

Have you any record of Drew Wiley? was my question.

no one knew of DW, or the show: typical responses:

“Drew Wiley is not a name I’m familiar with, and I’m sorry to say I have no information to share about the AA murals.

I was living in the Bay Area in 1985 and worked for the SF Arts Commission for ten years, but I never heard about this exhibition, nor a civic collection of AA murals.”

AND “I searched the Ansel Adams and Ansel Adams Publishing Rights Trust collections. There are a few posthumous exhibitions in 1985 but nothing I found included Drew Wiley.”

Places checked (but not found)

  • San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA),
  • the de Young Museum,
  • the Palace of the Legion of Honor,
  • the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco
  • San Jose Museum of Art,
  • the University of California’s Berkeley Art Museum, Bancroft library
  • Stanford University’s Cantor Art Center.
  • the Oakland Museum of California,
  • SF Chronicle & SF Examiner archives

Also claimed are close association with printmakers, yachting billionaires. Magnolia Editions (Farnsworth).

The method:

A glimmer of truth; such a glimmer as can be gleaned reading press releases, or local east-bay papers.

The lie is revealed in the same general number level: $40K dollars seems to be a large, inspiring number to use.

Although there are some glimmers of the truth in these paragraphs none of the facts or numbers are correct and no one working at Magnolia can recall the jigsaw portrait that is mentioned.