Ed Buziak's Photos + Artwork
200,000 plus words... 200 plus articles... and 600 plus images...
on his photography, art, scenes from Wiltshire, Wales, France...
Last updated:
28/04/07; 8:17:24


October 2004
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Complete Article Index...
A picture named Mini.ArtworkHeader.1.jpg
Artwork... drawings, themes...
Five minute exercise... the nude

Leaves / negative space... pencil
Leaves / negative space... pastel
Razzle Dazzle... 1
Razzle Dazzle... 2
Still-life #1... Bottles
Verner Panton chair... mixed media
Wax crayon faces

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Self Portraits...
At 30

Competition Entry
Fisheye Silhouette...
Legs and Feet
My two Feet
Polyfoto
Sequences...
S/Portrait nude #1
S/Portrait nude #2
S/Portrait nude #3
S/Portrait nude #4
S/Portrait nude #5
Shadow of Man... 1
Shadow of Man... 2
Shadow of Man... 3
Shadow of Man... 4

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Cameras I've clicked with...
Bronica S2A

Hasselblad SWC "Super Wide"
Hasselblad to Holga
Hasselblad XPan
Leica M3... part 1
Lotus Rapid View
Mamiya C330
Mamiya 7
Nikon D200... Part 1
Pentax 67... Part 1
Pentax 67... Part 2
Pentax 67... Part 3a/Soft-Focus Lens
Pentax 67... Part 3b/Fisheye Lens
Pentax 67... Part 5/Extras

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Lenses I've looked through...
Dallmeyer 3B Soft-Focus

Leica 28-35-50mm Tri-Elmar lens
Leitz 400mm Telyt
Nikkor 8mm Fisheye
Nikkor 20mm Wide-angle
Nikkor 28-70mm Zoom
Nikkor 105mm Bellows
Nikkor 500mm Reflex
Nikkor El-Lenses

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Photo Themes...
Abstract Colour

Abstract Details
Aerial Faux
Apple tree blossom
Art Photo or Crap?
Backlit blossom
Balloons
Beauty Opinions
Buttercups
Candid Camera
Candid Photography
Car Number Plates
Colour Filters & Colour Film
Conker Championships
Contrejour
Costing Photography
Craftwork... Hot Glass
Cropping Photos
Dandelions
Darkroom User downfall!
Death of Film?
Depth-of-Field
Eyesight
Family Photos... Father
Hot Air Balloons
Hot Car
Inverted images
Kitchenalia
Kitchen Window... Ivy
Laid back perspective
Locomotive Valve Gear
Michaelmas Daisies
Mistletoe
Multiple Exposures
Multi-Prism Lenses
Night photo
Nostaligia... John Peel & T-Rex
Opportunity Missed?
Painswick Churchard
Paparazzi
Pastis 51 glasses
Photo Theme... Chimneys
Photo Theme... Numbers
Photo Theme... Pointing Signs
Photo Theme... Post Boxes
Photo Theme... Seats, Chairs
Photo Theme... Tractors
Photo Theme... Tri-colour
Photo Theme... Wheels
Portrait... Jilly Johnson
Plum tree blossom 1
Plum tree blossom 2
Quince tree blossom
Sequence... Minutes
Sequence... Hours of the Day
Sequence... Seasons
Sequence... Seconds
Sequence... Self-Portrait
Shadow Play
Signs... Don't
Snow Scenes
Soft Focus
Solar Eclipse
Solar Flair
Speed Camera... Le Mans 24
Steam Engine Fair
Still-life #1... Bottles
Still life - Kitchenalia
Stuck...
Swans
Trees
Tulips
Walnut tree blossom
Widecombe Fair
Window Gazing... 1
Window Gazing... 2
Water... Black & White
Water... Colours
Zone System... I
Zone System... II
Zone System... III
Zone System... IV
Zoom Effect
Zoom Lenses?

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From My Darkroom...
Bulk film loading

Darkroom Dodge
Film developer - Agfa Rodinal
Film developer - Ilford ID-11
Fortepan 400 film
Fuji Neopan films
Ilford Multigrade IV
Leitz Focomat enlargers
LPL 7452 enlarger
My Darkroom... in Wales
Processing Faults... E-6
Polaroid Image Transfer
Sepia toning
Split-Selenium toning
Stöcklers 2-bath
Tray processing

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Alt.Photo Ideas...
Cyanotype (1)

Cyanotype (2)
Sepia toning
Sun printing

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French Connections...
Abstract

Alphabet soup
Apple tree blossom
Bastille Eve
Cafe chairs
California Poppies
Chateau - Azay-le-Rideau
Cycling (1)
Cycling (2)
Cowslips & coucou
Dandelions... Pis-en-lit
Double take
Early Purple Orchid
Flower seller
French flowers
French toast
Gossamer webs
I-Spy
Lime tree leaves
Lime tree seed pod
Lucky black cat
Mistletoe
Pastis 51 glasses
Plum tree blossom 1
Plum tree blossom 2
Purple Gromwell
Quince tree blossom
Speed Camera... Le Mans 24
S/Portrait nude #3
S/Portrait nude #4
S/Portrait nude #5
Sunflowers
Tilleul tree
Tractor & Walnut tree
Walnut tree blossom

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More Scenes from Wiltshire...
Avebury Stone Circle

Bishop's Cannings
Bradford-on-Avon
Corn Stooks
Garden "Open Days"
Gt.Bedwyn Stone Museum
Great Ridgeway
Lyneham Banks
Malmesbury Abbey
Malmesbury, River Avon
Malmesbury River Walk
Maud Heath's Causeway
Ramsons
Ricardo's Tomb
Roundway Down
Salisbury Plain
Savernake Forest
Silbury Hill
Stonehenge
Strip Lynchest
Urchfont
Westbury White Horse
Wilton Mill


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lundi 18 octobre 2004

A picture named Ed'sBlog.12a.WoodlandGrass.jpg

The Mystery Wood
Darkroom dodge from a bodge...

There are pictures and there are images. The former most of us make most of the time... the latter are more elusive and require a little more thought.

This piece of woodland just a short walk from where I live has the potential to be a photographic haven seen through imaginative eyes. The trees are tall and the lower trunks largely free from branches so the clear light of the southern Touraine enters from most sides. The canopy is dense in summer and bare in winter so seasonal changes are very noticeable. The undergrowth is lush because river flood water inundates the area regularly after a storm upstream.

At this time of year before the leaves fall the heart of this wooded area is dark and mysterious. Because it is late in the year and the sun is lower in the sky acute shafts of light intermittently arrow through to the inner reaches of the rich vegetation... here one minute, gone the next, only to reappear somewhere else behind or to the side. To capture a lasting image you have to watch carefully and move fast.

It is not the place for a tripod mounted camera... the visuals you are seeking dance around too haphazardly... and the wet ground is too soft. Stand in any one spot for a few minutes and your boots make sucking sounds as you urge your feet to move from their temporary captivity. Using a tripod is generally inadvisable and often futile... your carefully lined-up and framed horizontal or vertical reference will slowly, and unnoticed until too late, appear as a tilted one when you look at your shots later. This small haven is neither the Florida Everglades nor the French Camargue but you do have to be aware of the elements and not get, quite literally, bogged down.

The above image I made a few days ago focused on the pointed dagger-leaved reeds caught in a shaft of light. I had loaded one of my Nikon F2 bodies with medium-speed fine-grain Ilford FP4 Plus film... and attached a 24mm Nikkor for a wide coverage of the subject even though I was going to focus quite close. I wanted to throw the background further back by using a wide-angle lens rather than seeing a compression of the scene created by a longer lens.

There was a constant breeze and the individual leaves fluttered as if dragonfly's wings. I wanted the biting sharpness of just a few of them to make a strong focal point to the image and so chose the fastest shutter speed possible with the lens' aperture wide open.

As you can see there was very narrow depth-of-field. But shouldn't the depth-of-field of a 24mm lens even wide-open be "deeper" than shown here? The answer is yes... but I have manipulated the image in a very unusual way.

I accept the visual effect of narrow-depth can probably be anipulated in Adobe Photoshop. I have used this program for 10 years but only for traditional publishing ends... I have no vocabulary of tricks using computer software... all my image manipulations (and there are few) are made in the camera whenever possible, or under the enlarger in my darkroom. And so it was, albeit accidentally, with this image.

The previous negative I'd been printing from was medium-format and 6x7cms in size... but I inserted the narrower 35mm negative strip into the carrier not realising that the glassless masks of my Durst Laborator 1200 Multigraph were the wrong size... too large. Into the void slipped the free end of the flexible strip... on went the enlarger light... and a crazily curved and distorted image confronted me on the enlarger baseboard. By chance a narrow part of the drooping negative strip which cut through the correct plane of focus above the enlarger's lens was the focal point of the entire scene... the dagger-like dragonfly-winged leaves. The manipulation of the image simply stemmed from that error.

However, it took much more to make the print as seen here. After careful reframing, several test exposures were made to calculate the increase (burning-in) and decrease (dodging) in exposure of the top-right and lower-left areas of the image. But when I finally got it right I knew it was right... I had a print in my hands which had the feeling I wanted to express.

There are "in-camera" techniques for making similar image manipulations. With indoor or near-to-home subjects I regularly use, hand-held even, my old Nikon PB-4 Tilt-and-Shift bellows unit with a Nikkor 105mm short-focus lens head. This is a rare combination... the versatile bellows unit has not been manufactured by Nikon for possibly 25 years and the lens for maybe 35 years. But with it you can tilt the lens panel relative to the film plane to "gain" depth-of-field. The same can be achieved with many large-format view cameras, or in the 35mm format with Canon's 24mm, 45mm and 90mm Tilt-Shift optics for the EOS system. Nikon's range is rather limiting in it's usage with just one T/S lens of 85mm focal length with no sign (yet) of a wide-angle to partner it.

Of course the "wiriness" of the out-of-focus foreground and background areas are not the result of poor lens "bokeh," they are simply very out of focus parts of the negative misplaced between the enlarger's light source and lens. And the blobs on the tree-trunks are not the result of careless on-screen over-corrections with Photoshop's cloning or spray tools... they are huge bunches of Mistletoe.

So there you have it... a mistake in the darkroom which will become one of my techniques for producing the type of image you see above. Try it for yourself... and be surprised!


8:12:57 PM    comment []



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Last update: 28/04/07; 8:17:25.
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