vendredi 15 octobre 2004

Tortoiseshell Josie 3-coloured cat... now 3-coloured print It's refreshing to know when I mention a new subject in my evening photo-blog (or any subject in this first week or so of writing and with a small initial following) that by the next day I'll have a number of similar e-mails asking about, or requesting, something quite different to what I wrote about the evening before. This feedback does help me to write the next blog... so after I'm fully awake and dressed (around 5am) I'm usually receptive to at least one of whatever ideas are suggested... So it was this morning when I read my e-mails... I can only remember one, although there may have been two, images of our cat Josie from the thousands of photographs which were published over the years in my "Darkroom User" and "Camera & Darkroom" magazines. The photograph folks remembered was of Josie sitting on a window-ledge backlit by the sun. Without looking I'm guessing it was taken with a Leica IIIf and "red-scale" Elmar. I know the exposure would have been guessed because that's how I've basically taken all personal photographs throughout the past decade... by reading light and using experience. The photograph above was taken around the same time using a Hasselblad X-Pan panoramic camera loaded with Ilford's HP5 Plus developed in PMK Pyro. I'll write about the Hasselblad X-Pan another time as it's such an amazing camera to use, and I'll probably write about Pyro another time as it's also wonderful... a developer which actually predates the photographic process having been used by Josiah Wedgwood in his pottery works. Pyro does need careful handling though... whilst lethal it is found in small amounts in coffee which I and many others consume in quantity through the day. Although the film developing power of coffee was written about in my darkroom magazine I should remind darkroom users to never take a coffee into your darkroom nor Pyro into your kitchen... both will develop a film but only one is drinkable! Pyro-processed negatives are a joy to print because the tanning and masking effects produced by the developer prevent excessive contrast build-up. However when I was scanning this print of Josie, which had been propped up on the fireplace mantelpiece for a couple of years, I noticed considerable "bronzing" along the bottom edge of the image, but not on the white borders. Is this due to burnt wood gasses escaping from the open fire and will domestic pollution be a continuing problem with "plastic" resin coated prints and perhaps digital prints in future? American photography guru Ctein did extensive research on print bronzing about ten years ago and wrote several articles for my own and other publications... his new book "Digital Restoration - Start to Finish" is the complete manual on these problems and how to apply corrective measures too. There was enough fill-in light reflected from my white shirt to help balance the contrast of the strong backlight against the negligible lighting of the sitting-room which was quite dark - Welsh farmhouses have thick walls and small windows to keep effects of the elements at bay. Wearing a white shirt is a trick I've used numerous times with close-ups... it saves having to find a third hand to hold a reflective card for the same purpose. Josie is a good model. She was an abandoned farm cat... thrown out by someone when only a few months old. In the wild she used to catch baby rabbits and sometimes squirrels... and after making a temporary home in one of our barns she eventually adopted us, as cats do, rather than us adopting her. Bringing her to France was a worry because we didn't want to put her through any more hardship - and we wouldn't have left her behind. Our fears were unfounded... after an hour of our real adventure she had unravelled the door-ties of her travel cage, taken a stroll around our VW Combi... decided that the passenger seat was the warmest and most comfortable place available, dug her claws in and stayed put for most of the journey except for a cursory growl at the Customs Officers who checked her feline passport and vaccination papers before we whooshed through the Chunnel. She loves the weather here in France... long days of sunshine rather than the wet and windy climate she came from. She likes French mice too... perhaps they taste of garlic. What she can't get used to is locals calling her Minette or Mi-Mi... which is the friendly French address for cats. C'est la vie, Josephine! 9:41:35 PM    comment []