# 5868-72 / landscape (civilized) • view camera • people ~ the more things change, the more they stay the same

December 10, 2021

***Pittsburgh, PA*** ~ (embiggenable) iPhone, c. 2019

***Rochester, NY*** ~ (embiggenable) 8x10 view camera, c. 1981

JUMPING INTO THE WAY-BACK MACHINE, c.2010, I received an invite to the opening reception of the exhibition, Pioneers of Color ~ Stephen Shore, Joel Meyerowitz, William Eggleston, at the Edwynn Houk Gallery in NYC. Knowing that Shore and Meyerowitz were to be in attendance, I drove to NYC through a nasty snowfall cuz I was not going to miss opening night.

Meyerowitz was my inspiration for diving into large format color picture making. Hence, I adopted his picture making MO - 8x10 view camera with tungsten balanced (3200K) Type L (long exposure) color negative film. The exhibition was fantastic and my perseverance in getting there was rewarded with a nice conversation with Meyerowitz wherein we both shared our surprise and amazement with the expanded color range and highlight / shadow detail we were getting by scanning our color negatives and printing the files with high-end inkjet printers.

FYI, the resulting prints were so different from the results from the same negatives using the C-print process, that we both felt as if we were viewing a brand new picture. The difference was simply amazing.

*2 of the Pioneers* / *me sniffing a Meyerowitz print ~* (embiggenable) • µ4/3

# 5863-67 / landscape (civilized ku • ku) • around the house ~ working different

December 8, 2021

I SORTA GOT SIDETRACKED BY THE IS-SQUARE-GOOD-FOR-LANDSCAPES thing along with a dose of BW infatuation. Using the work of Robert Adams as markers / aim points for both ideas, as well as rummaging around in my picture library for pictures which were suitable for RA-like (signs of man in the landscape) conversion to BW, I am well satisfied that, for my picturing, square and BW digital BW conversion processing is good. I might even state that it is very good.

Re: digital conversion / processing for color > BW. From time to time I come across, most recently on T.O.P., the idea that digital is not BW picturing friendly. That the only way to achieve the best BW pictures is via the analog, aka: film, picture making process. I disagree….

…That written, I am not here to debate one process against the other. Rather, the position I take is that digital BW images can be created which compare-that is, if comparing is your thing-very favorably with film created BW images. Me, I’m not into “comparing”. Nor am I a life-long devotee of BW picture making.

Sure, sure. Back in the analog days, I had my very own soup-to-nuts “formula” for making BW pictures - preferred film, developer, developing times / agitation, (my own “personal” zone system) + my preferred printing system - condenser enlarger, specific developer, specific graded paper. My formula produced BW prints that I liked very much. Not to mention, I truly enjoyed my private time in the darkrooms (1 for film processing, 1 for printing).

At the same time there were those who took the I idea of creating a personal BW picturing, processing, printing formula to an extreme. Example: I have overheard many a photo club conversation hotly debating the type of bulb to be used in an enlarger head. They loved to tinker with the process to the point where, in some cases, it was the reason they were involved with photography.

In any event, I’ll leave you with a hint-I have mentioned this previously-for making really good BW digital image files. The process is simplicity itself - open an RGB color image file. Convert to LAB Color Space, Discard the a and b channels, leaving only the Lightness channel. Convert to Grayscale. At this point you now have an image file that contains only the lightness values-independent of any color values-extracted from your original color file-THIS NOT THE SAME THING AS DE-SATURATING THE COLORS IN A COLOR FILE-not even close.

Once I have the Grayscale file, I will usually make small tonal adjustments in Photoshop to bring the tonal values in line with the feel of the original color file, therefore in line with the actual scene.

**RGB original** / **LAB conversion Grayscale** ~ (embiggenable) • iPhone

# 5858-62 / signs ~ stop or go?

December 2, 2021

OVER THE PAST MONTH OR SO I have been staring at a Robert Adams book, THE NEW WEST, which was sitting on a side table in my bedroom. A few days ago, driven by a desire to views the square format pictures in the book, I picked it up in the interest of verifying the idea that the square format was appropriate for landscape picture making.

Why? you might ask. Well, my recent exploration of full-frame iPhone picture making was causing to me to have a few doubts, re: square format + landscapes. After viewing The New West, that doubt was dispelled without a doubt. Which caused me to reference my picture library in search of some of my landscape pictures just so I could verify that my own landscape work, square frame wise, was up to the task. iMo, it was.

Along the way, I came across a heretofore unpublished-on this blog or on my Work Page-body of work, SIGNS (although I did make a POD photo book). As I worked my way through the SIGNS folder-all pictures are in color-the thought floated to the top of the quagmire that is my brain and after viewing the beautifully printed BW pictures in the THE NEW WEST book, maybe, just maybe I ought to consider re-processing them as BW pictures.

So I pulled out a few pictures and re-processed them to BW. Based upon the result, maybe, just maybe I ought consider re-processing the rest of the pictures.

Opinions / comments?