lundi 6 décembre 2004

Double Take Not in a camera... not on a PC... but in the darkroom I've always been both fascinated and an admirer of multiple-image prints from artists such as Jerry Uelsmann and Hag. I wouldn't be able to keep to the disciplines involved making repetitive prints from multiple negatives... it's difficult enough to make just one image from two different negatives without having to worry about multiple negatives to work from... multiple dodging and burning manipulations... and multiple enlarger set-ups. However, I did manage it once and it was easy enough to repeat whenever I needed to. Out of the hundreds or thousands of negatives we have filed away there are probably only one or two percent (really?) which have something, or anything, special about them. Nearly every time we press the shutter button there are good intentions in our minds... we usually think that this one will be just perfect little realising that it will inevitably be the same as many others we've already taken. Duping the past thirty plus years I've exposed over ten thousand films but regularly print from less than one hundred negatives. Although the other third of a million, by the law of averages, had to be taken to get the good ones that success rate is way below par.... like a 3,333 to one! Just occasionally to redress the balance I choose some ordinary subjects and after combining them to make a picture that, whilst not impossible to see or imagine, has certainly eluded my camera since I've been a photographer. Some may call this cheating whilst others say it's creative... but whatever the reaction it's a technique that can be a lot of fun. Multiple printing is different from "montage" where individual picture elements are printed, cut-out and reassembled... and from "sandwich" printing where two negatives are printed together in the enlarger. Multiple printing uses two or more negatives, each being given a separate exposure on the paper... and often using more than one enlarger and fixed paper easel for accurate registration. The original negatives have to be chosen with care... subjects with complex outlines require equally complex masking devices during enlarging to avoid unsightly double-exposure overlaps in the final print. A landscape with trees can be just as complicated to work with as a city skyline... whereas a landscape with interesting foreground shapes and details below a natural horizon can be a lot easier to manipulate. When looking for images to blend together I make sure that the ambient lighting doesn't cast shadows in different directions in the different negatives. In my slightly bizarre example here the sun was directly behind me - and a little to the left of the aircraft... but the difference is not immediately noticeable. As for the technique... the two images were first printed normally so as to establish the correct printing time and paper grade for the upper and lower halves. Then a tracing was made to determine the sizes of the two main subjects. This was positioned on the masking frame and tape marks made on the baseboard to show where one negative had to be masked, the second negative printed, and vice versa. I made four prints from the foreground negative before changing to the Hercules negative and repeating the exercise... as I only use one enlarger nowadays. Making four prints ensured that if I made a couple of slight mistakes, or poor blends, then at least I should have one good print. Making several half-prints before switching negatives also eliminated focus-checking and potential mistakes through inaccurate positioning. I used the edge of my hand for shading and allowed for a slight overlap of the two halves on the print. Although this is a simple multiple-print the effect is quite realistic. The secret with the technique is to make sure that the joins cannot be seen... and so leave the viewer with a certain amount of doubt in their minds as to whether they are seeing things... or not? Just out of interest... the "viewpoint" marked the favourite view in all Wales of Wynford Vaughan-Thomas, author, broadcaster and traveller and included our small farmhouse, one of only about a dozen visible for many miles, within the panorama with Cader Idris as a backdrop and Snowdon almost fifty miles away perhaps visible a few times a year... photographed with a Pentax LX and 15mm SMC Pentax extreme wide-angle lens. The C-130 Hercules was photographed only a mile or so away from this view but during a different year and with a different camera, a Canon EOS 1000 with a cheap zoom which nevertheless captured every join of the sheet metal on the lumbering cargo transporter with remarkable clarity. However, discounting the rivet-counting, it all blended together in my darkroom. 8:31:37 PM    comment []