Tag: photoblog

What’s so hard about Dye Transfer

Posted on Posted in art school, dye transfer, PrintsTagged , ,

Back in the day of dye transfer, photography was a trade taught in the US Miitary as well as private trade schools, many of which gladly accepted GI Bill tuition payments.

Large labs, processing hundreds of prints a week, divided the work into skill layers. As someone improved they were assigned to other tasks. Prove yourself often enough and you will have made it to a secure will paid career.

jobs. skills. steps

  • load film, clean, mop
  • soup film
  • mix chemcials for lab
  • make masks/seps
  • make mats
  • manage dyes and do rollup

The last task is key to the final result: rollup. This is primarily autographic; skill of hand, eye, timing with feedback. All the previous steps come together well, or the print fails.

Most of those who fail at dye transfer do so because they lack courage. They make the task harder than it is. Not even rollup is difficult, just needing attention.

Anyone who can teach dye, can teach anyone who can learn, in about 45 hours. This assumes you can get film in and out of a camera, and in and out of chemicals.

The hardest part about dye transfer was those who sold their weekend teaching skills to timid camera counter conversationalists.

Kodak’s Frank McLaughlin used to take people through the steps over the telephone. That’s how hard it was.

Jan Groover

Posted on Posted in meaning, on photographers, The Other, visual mindTagged , , ,

How much craft does it take to make a picture; a career?

“Even though it sounds stupid and it sounds cold ‘Formalism is everything’

is not a bad thing to say.”

– Jan Groover –

Much discussion occurs among photographers about process and such. To my ear, this is akin to deciding which side of the toilet paper is better. In the end, it doesn’t matter. The object is a carrier.

technical prowess, I need to know as much as I need and no more

Jan
Jan Groover on technical

Jan Groover (April 24, 1943 – January 1, 2012) was an American photographer who spent the last years (1991->) of her life in Montpon-Menesterol, France, with her husband, painter Bruce Boice.

Jan Groover, profile

Groover was also the subject of a short film by photographer Tina Barney entitled (Jan Groover: Tilting at Space, 1994).

Short Bibliography:

  • Danese, Renato, ed. American Images. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1979, pp. 140-49. 
  • Danoff,Michael I. Jan Groover: Color Photographs. Milwaukee, Wisconsin: Milwaukee Art Museum, 1980. 
  • Euclaire, Sally. The New Color Photography. New York: Abbeville, 1981, pp. 35—41, 58-67, 257-58.Danese, Renato, ed. American Images. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1979, pp. 140-49. 
  • Green, Jonathan. American Photography. New York: Abrams, 1984, pp. 154—55, 222-23.Danese, Renato, ed. American Images. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1979, pp. 140-49. 
  • Groover, Jan. The Attributes of Positions: Semantics of the Highway. New York: s and m, 1973.
  • Jan Groover: Photographs. Purchase, New York: Neuberger Museum, State University of New York at Purchase, 198
  • Groover, Jan. The Attributes of Positions: Semantics of the Highway. New York: s and m, 1973.
  • Sobieszek, Robert. Masterpieces of Photography from the George Eastman House Collections. New York: Abbeville, 1985, pp. 408-09, 440.

She is represented by Janet Borden Inc.