nicholas_f._jones

I've just acquired the book mentioned in previous posts, Eliot Porter's Southwest (1985), and it is indeed an impressive collection--right up there, I would agree, with Adams' work on the same or similar subjects.

I now find that I inadvertently answered Ed's question about the merit of Eliot Porter's color work some time ago when I distributed my personal library books at various points around the house. Technique books here with the drymount press, mat-cutter, negative and print files and boxes; the art photography and painting books in my personal photography gallery; and the Sierra Club nature volumes, including the Eliot Porter 1962 "In Wildness Is the Preservation of the World", in another place with trail guides, back-packing manuals, etc. Not even the quotations from Thoreau could elevate this book to the status of art, in my opinion at that time, and I still feel the same way now. I see Porter as a recorder, pure and simple. As I look at these beautiful images, I'm asking myself why I don't go out today and enjoy the northeast woods myself--in their own right, without a camera. No insights, no new point of view or perspective, no fresh appreciation, and most of all no joy that had escaped me previously. But that's just one observer's personal point of view--for one thing, I've spent a lot of time in the woods already and maybe I'm not as easily moved by this sort of work as a confirmed urbanite might be.

 

More objectively, it certainly hasn't helped Porter's reputation as photographer that his color landscape style has since been overtaken (and, I think, improved upon) by calendar and coffee table book shooters, the greeting card industry alluded to in the VC article, and undoubtedly a great many talented amateurs. I see him as a historical figure--as well as a highly skilled technician with a good eye.

 

Actually, I don't find the b&w's in the article itself (except for the bird, presumably included for its relevance to Porter's early development) all that bad, although I don't think many people would put them ahead of the corrresponding well known studies by Ansel Adams and others. Personally, I find the O'Keefe portrait on the cover deadly frigid--the subject sitter is as lifeless as the portrait bust itself. Alfred Stieglitz's portraits of his wife were shot with an 8x10 (someone correct me, if I'm wrong on this) from as early as 1917, with immobile subject, but what a difference! And what about the Adams' handheld 35mm snapshot "Georgia O'Keefe and Orville Cox, Canyon de Chelly National Monument, Arizona, 1937"? "Most obviously not posed, a true 'candid,'" wrote Adams in the Autobiography. Porter was perhaps wise in selecting non-human subjects to work with.

North of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania--the Smoky City, the Steel City, the city of bridges and churches, not to mention colleges/universities, museums, and lots of good LF subjects.

No problem with announcements concerning non-free workshops. A fee has to be collected just to break even, and in any event I don't think anyone is making serious money on non-studio "art" LF photography. Besides, the frequent seemingly innocuous references on this board to the "big four" lens manufacturers, to the leading film producers, and to the same very few internet or mailorder suppliers certainly result in increased income or profits for the parties concerned.

Bob,

 

According to a very recent email exchange with Robert White, an Ebony RW8x10 (as well as an RW5x7) is on the drawing board, but no specs or prices as yet. Some time ago, both were advertized as coming soon on the Badger website. Not sure what's up or how long it'll be, but I personally plan to wait to see the new Ebonys before contemplating moving up from my Tachihara 8x10 triple extension (which, at around 12 lbs, has its limitations but has got the job done for me).

Milton,

 

Last summer, by which time I was fully aware of the problem you've described, we found ourselves shooting on 8x10 a classic near-far looming foreground rear tilt vertical of a recumbent tree stump receding into the mid ground with distant ridge behind. The difficulty was posed by the very tall standing trees which also stood in the mid ground and from the camera's perspective were much taller than that distant ridge.

 

Experience had taught me that there was no way I was going to get everything in focus. The upturned base of the stump, which was just a few feet in front of and below the lens, filled the entire bottom half of the frame, and I had to keep the entire length of the trunk razor sharp all the way down. So I focussed on the ridge, tilted on a near (but not the very nearest) part of the stump, threw in some swing following the line of the trunk, and stopped down to 45 2/3. I sacrificed the tall trees in the midground which no matter what I did were going to poke through the plane/wedge of focus described in the previous posts.

 

I want a 16x20 elargement from this 8x10 negative, so when I printed it yesterday I enlarged it to 20x24 and changed the orientation to horizontal. When I mount, I will cut off the top 8 inches of the print; fortunately, the composition is such that no viewer will note the absence of the tops of the trees, ridge, or sky.

Charles Sheeler might be relevant here, since he treated some of the same subjects, including cityscapes and factories, in both b&w photographs and color paintings. I don't know enough about Sheeler to suggest a relationship between the two in these cases, esp. whether the photographs were ever merely preliminary studies for paintings, but many of his b&w's obviously were meant to be free-standing works of art.

Tim,

 

Good question, and I have no straightforward, uncomplicated response. Previous posters mention NYC, but the cities I lived in until coming to Pittsburgh, namely Los Angeles, near San Francisco, and Athens (plus a summer in NYC itself), present not only a less upright but more sun-drenched, shining, even glaring face to which b&w is entirely appropriate.

 

I shoot only b&w in LF, and one of my self-imposed rules is never to shoot a subject that the average viewer of 2003 would expect to be in color. So, what was acceptable b&w subject-matter ca. 1900 (e.g time of Stieglitz or Strand) is for me no longer necessarily acceptable.

 

We're talking about photography here, but I personally do not separate photography from painting---together they present a seamless continuum. With your question in mind, I looked over some urban subects by O'Keefe and Hopper, and I find that they both added entirely too much color, if credibility is what we're looking for (and it may well be that it isn't). Maybe Georgia especially was already hankering to get out to the New Mexico desert. My personal recollections of LA concrete and asphalt translate so naturally into b&w. As for suburbia, two of my very best pictures are of residential plans, one taken from the street, the other from a balcony. Color would have worked too, but monochrome fits the modernist lines of these stucco units despite the inadequate rendering of mission tile roofs and manicured landscaping.

 

Mood is what it comes down to me for me. Walker Evans I think was cultivating the quaint, which I would avoid like the plague as well as anything that looks like it was shot in b&w (as I said) simply because color was not in use or not available. But it can be done. The collection Photography in California 1945-1980 by Louise Katzman (SF MoMA 1984) has IMO some successful b&w examples alongside the many in color, esp. those of Roger Minick, "Flying Wing Station" (1975), "Mother and Daughter at K-Mart" (1977), for example (pp. 130-131). OTOH, I'm undecided about the craftsman cottage in Arthur Ollman's untitled color study of 1980 (p. 128); I grew up in a house just like it in LA, and I can't decide whether to go with his lurid palatte or stick with the b&w's of my own family album ca. 1950. Luridness would certainly be at home in So. Calif. , but somehow the colors keep taking me back to O'Keefe and Hopper ... a kind of overcompensating antidote to counter the drabness of urban/suburban life.

When fixing b&w double weight fiber base papers I discovered as have

others that by using Kodak Rapid fixer and omitting the hardener

(solution B) I could reduce significantly the amount of curl in the

dried print. Later, however, when I started using an archival washer

I experimented with Kodak Fixer again just to see if thoroughness of

washing is a factor in determining curl, and sure enough the

archivally washed prints curl so little when dried that I decided to

skip the extra expense and inconvenience of working with Rapid Fixer.

 

This result may of course be an artifact of my own casual not-very-

scientific methods, but however that my be I'm now wondering if curl

is all there is involved in the use or non-use of the hardener.

 

Are other variables in play here? The paper's receptivity to

toning? Ability to withstand the heat of dry-mount pressing?

Longevity? Something else I haven't thought of? Thanks in advance

for any replies.

Tim,

 

You and I continue to speak at cross-purposes.

 

Nothing is wrong with my Half Dome example (in fact, it's pretty old hat). It's what people call "imaging", although the last thing I want to do is to get into a discussion of semantics.

 

That said, my take on the history is anything but narrow--from where you are, you can't see my personal photographic library, Tim. The question before us now is whether any of us are going to continue with film-and-darkroom technology, especially large format (4x5 and bigger), the subject of this forum.

 

If some of us at least don't continue, and/or if some beginning photographers don't take it up, we'll lose the critical mass of buyers needed to keep equipment and supplies in availability. It's bad enough that the commercial studios have (for their own very good, professional reasons) "gone" digital. And scanning film is just the beginning. Obviously, scanners will in large numbers immediately accept digital capture (and much smaller cameras, since today's large formats won't be needed anymore) once it becomes affordable. Here I have to keep reminding myself that the up-and-coming young sets arrive with none of the allegiances I and others on this board now have owing to our own personal circumstances.

 

Tim, I'm not sure just what it is you're advocating. For me, I'm advocating that it wouldn't be a bad idea if a few of us continue with the technology that's been "photography" almost from its inception. Should painters quit painting? The portrait painters who make a living doing something that would be oh so much less expensive with a digital camera a la Olan Mills? Or the mural painters here in Pittsburgh who'll do a wall or whole room that'll set you back tens of thousands when you could have settled for wall paper? Are the painters old fuddy-duddies who haven't kept up with changing times? Do they have a problem, that they're resistant to new technologies? In fact, they still haven't caught on to photography/imaging, now with us for over 150 years?

 

Tim, you're right about the Industrial Revolution. That's why there was a William Morris and an Arts & Crafts movement. Was that a bad thing? Was there something wrong or misguided about the values underlying that movement? Would we be better off without Stickley furniture and the Gambol house?

 

It's simply not true that what's going on now in imaging has been with photography from the beginning. We're in the midst of some colossal sea-change where what used to be image is becoming reality and, the scary thing, the line between the two no one seems to think is worth oberving anymore. Yes, you can find this from the Stone Age onwards, but differences of degree are important, in this case decisive since the very existence of an entire technology is at stake. This isn't playing poker with yourself (one of my photographer Dad's favorite darkroom stunts) anymore.

 

Tim, you don't see anything wrong or undesirable about creating images from your computer without ever viewing the subject (which was at the heart of my Half Dome example)? Or at least different, so that in the name of variation some of us might prefer to keep film-and-darkroom going for a while? Just now the words old/oldfashioned/traditional/conventional/accepted etc. were running through my mind, but none of them do credit to the photographer who's been blind-sided by a rapid technological shift driven as much by the market-place, businesses, institutional needs, the military and god knows what else as much as by anyone's artistic not to mention philosophical commitments.

Everybody knows that a photograph/image is not the same thing as the reality that it purports or appears to represent. To say that a photograph departs from its corresponding reality is a very weak sense of �representation.� A stronger, more meaningful sense of representation would have to do with the artist/photographer�s intentions, particularly in the light of the contemplated audience.

 

Look at ancient Greek and Roman art. There�s plenty of contemporary comment that the mark of successful art (i.e. painting or sculpture) was resemblance to reality, hence the anecdotes about people being fooled into thinking a painting, for example, was the real thing. More recently, when photography was first introduced, the public, not to mention some leading intellectuals, were impressed with how the new medium recorded �reality� so much more faithfully than painting, engraving, etc. This attitude carried over to the view camera photographers (as well as the painters) of the West, whose job it was to convey to folks back East the majesty of the new frontier.

 

A critic who is not a photographer might misrepresent e.g. burning and dodging as �manipulations� of reality, but all the darkroom photographers on this forum know that it has much more to do with the difference between film and paper, and that what the printer is often basically trying to do is to render on the print what is so clearly visible on the negative�which is turn bears a rather strong resemblance to �reality� vs. painting, engraving, etc.

 

Tim, what I�m contemplating for the future (or present unknown to me) is this. Want to make an image of Half Dome? Heck, why lug all that heavy equipment to Yosemite? In fact, why even bother to buy all that expensive stuff? Besides, they don�t have outdoor air conditioning in the Valley. Just download a file image at the computer in the comfort of your own home. Want to add a flying saucer from Mars? Go right ahead! And how about moving the Fire Falls over from Glacier Point? Got a file image from the 1960s? There�s no law against it. Believe me, I�m perfectly serious. �Adios, reality.�

 

Since I�m not speaking here of Photoshop operations designed to go darkroom one better within the parameters of darkroom ethics, I hope no one will be offended by the caricature in the preceding paragraph. But I have no doubt that in the very near future imaging thanks to the capacities of digital technology will part ways with �photography� in a very major way.

 

As for film and darkroom, I think that this is a tradition (actually a still very much living present) worth preserving and that once �imaging� has reached its full potential, film photography, like painting already, will be recognized as an historical but still legitimate artistic discipline well worth pursuing.

Film, darkroom, hand craftsmanship all the way. I say this even though my career as a scholar/writer was greatly accelerated by the computer and word-processing--no way, with all my multiple drafts, that I was going to make it with the Smith-Corona manual typewriter I started out with. That said, having established I hope my electronic bona fides, my reasons for staying with the old ways are only initially and partly personal. Pros have got to do what pros have got to do. But does it really make sense for the rest of us to join the stampede to digital? I like my little niche, and I plan to make it a selling point, artistic if not commericial.

 

Another, almost philosophical, point. Recent history is not my field, but we're probably all agreed that things are changing now at a faster rate than at any time before. Film, darkroom, maintaining the integrity of the image (sorry, can't think of a better way to put it), that's what we were all doing just a few years ago. I'm not apologizing for doing photography the way my own father practiced it within my own living memory, not to mention the entire history of the craft from 1839 (or whatever) onwards.

 

Besides, IMO once today's kids take over, and given the growing alienation from "reality" as we once knew it, imaging will soon bear no significant relation to its ostensible subject--or maybe this has already happened. Another reason to stick with "traditional" photography since if I'm right it will no longer be in competition with imaging as it may appear to be at the present moment.

Good thread. Antecedents of modernism in photography more complex than I had realized, but that's the way these things usually go.

 

As for whether modernism is still alive in photography, two obvious factors to be considered are (i) b&w versus color; (ii) LF versus some smaller esp. hand-held format. B&w LF, esp. 8x10 or bigger, continues to make the modernist aesthetic attractive in my personal opinion, among other options obviously since b&w periodically is viewed as cool--and who knows when the Big Camera might get funky?

 

James, I'm going to look for that book you mention on pictorialism into modernism.

 

By the way, does anyone know what has happened to the long-ago announced book Defining Modernism: Group f.64 by Susan Ehrens with Deborah Klochko?

Tuan,

 

Thanks for everything. I came to this forum 146 posts ago wanting to learn to shoot 8x10 but with only a 35mm background. The forum you founded and moderated helped me along every step of the way. Now I am close to opening my first show (even if it's in my own home!), and however things turn out I've gotten immense satisfaction from LF photography. I couldn't have done it without the forum. All the best, Nicholas.

Greetings,

 

Sorry it�s taken me so long to jump in on this one, but I�ve got a day job �

 

My grandmother embroidered dresser scarves and pillow cases using kits with the pattern printed in blue on the cloth and the colors of floss assigned by the instructions. My parents painted by the numbers and proudly hung their finished work around the house. They had a nice collection of store-bought spun glass figurines, � until my brother and I were playing catch in the house as weren't supposed to do, and I threw the ball high over my brother�s head �

 

�Honor thy father and thy mother.�

 

My best friend on my street in LA not only loved Elvis (I can still remember him showing me that vinyl album cover with the King in a gold suit �50 million fans can�t be wrong� etc.)�but he did his best to look like Elvis, pompadour and all, and he had musical talent, and eventually joined a band playing sax, marimba, keyboards, singing, you name it �

 

My parents played in family band, Hawaiian stuff that would be called luau music, Don Ho "Tiny Bubbles" style. My dad played electric bass, my mother uke, my uncle dreadnought acoustic guitar, and a family friend, the leader, lap steel. �The first thing I remember knowin� was a lonesome whistle blowin� �� (I grew up right next to the train tracks) � and a steel guitar. So I became a lifelong traditional and country & western music lover.

 

Photography? My dad was a pro�studio portrait photographer, using a 5x7 on a tripod until he discovered Mamiya MF. I remember so fondly that early trip to Yosemite. Ansel Adams, � man, he took good pictures! No one was asking whether it was �good� or �bad� art, or whether it was art at all.

 

My mother, god bless her, also appreciated classical music (she was a very good player of light classics on the piano) and French impressionistic painting. She somehow transmitted to us the distinction between �good� and �bad� music. This notion was totally out of sync with the culture we were all living in, but no matter. � I can still remember when the local rock band played an assembly at my high school (early 1960�s). When we all got back to the band room, the music director had a real problem on his hands, � we all loved the band, but this was not �good� music �

 

The turning point for me came when Andy Warhol hit. I must have found about Pop Art from Time magazine. Up in my attic bedroom I started my own museum of cast-off found-art collectibles. The Andy of the time boxes (can�t remember what they�re called, and I should since I work in Pittsburgh, Andy�s home and location of the Warhol museum) � and very much in the style of Walker Evans. So I'd made my choice.

 

The other night we went to a flute recital down at CMU. Second chair in the Pittsburgh SO played the Gaubert Fantasie better than I�ve ever heard the flute played in my entire life (it�s my instrument, too). Finally, I think I�ve reached a point where I�m not so worried any more whether it�s �good� or �bad��. Why do we all beat ourselves up on this obsolete, unnecessary, and often divisive distinction?

Another vote for the Logan #750 Simplex Plus cutter. Moderately priced and it gets the job done. Yes, blades must be changed regularly, but this and other niceties of technique may apply to higher end equipment as well.

 

Also keep in mind that the 701 straight cutting head used with the Simplex Plus will cut 3/16" foamboard, but not 1/4".

Bill, excuse me, that's Halsman's. With this correction, maybe there's still a chance for a Christmas card.

Matthew, I found the self-portrait of Mapplethorpe you mention on the web (along with a number of others, mostly very conventional!)--I take it that it's actually in color and as stunning as the work of his I see when browsing in the book stores.

 

Stewart, that particular self-portrait of Shelby Lee Adams I don't find on the net, but I will be looking for Appalachian Legacy since rural America (actually rural anything) is a continuing interest of mine.

 

And thanks, Paul, for the pithy quote from Oscar Wilde. Adrian, I'm not familiar with Rembrandt's self-portraits, although I am puzzling over a Cezanne self-portrait (allegedly taken from a photograph!) here in Pittsburgh at the Carnegie. Bill, if the Hausmans see this thread, maybe they'll put me on their mailing list for Christmas 2003.

 

Nicholas

No, Ellis, I don�t think my �viewer response� approach reduces appreciation to a simple set of cut-and-dried formulae (if that�s what you�re suggesting; sorry if I�ve misunderstood you).

 

The �technical� features are not to be dismissed, however. Just read the journals of the famous and see the large part that craft played in their activity (even if it all eventually became more or less automatic, allowing them to speak or write dismissively of focal lengths, exposures, chemistry, and so on). Just consider the untold thousands of exposures that never reached the public because of some �technical� defect perceived by the artist him/herself. Incidentally, I regard the disparaging remarks often made about technicalities as largely rhetorical; it�s an indirect way of promoting your own �artistic� self-profile. Besides, compared to some other creative endeavors (music among them coming immediately to mind), I don�t think photography is particularly technical.

 

�Greatness� (as people actually use the word and concept) could be unpacked and be found to embody such things as: Who discovered or first popularized a new technique or approach or subject-matter? Who were the teachers who sent others on their way, or wrote the textbooks or guides that the rest of us, who have no teachers, learn from? Who were the impresarios who introduced art, or new waves of art, to our young country, or to new audiences (i.e. cross-over), or to museums or colleges/universities? Which photographers brought an already widely accepted technique/approach to its culmination?

 

But once beyond these more or less objective criteria (where we at least can agree on the rules of the game even if we can�t agree on the answers), it�s my personal observation that the viewer�s feelings start taking over. And I think that�s a GOOD thing---at least that�s how I personally take my own pictures as well as view others� work. The problem for me arises when personal feelings unwittingly get morphed into judgments about �greatness� or, more to the point in my experience, the denial of greatness ascribed by others (whether curators, academics, or the general public). Many years ago as a philosophy student I was introduced to a theory based on verifiability that maintained that any proposition that could not be subjected to scientific testing is merely �emotive��that the subject is merely expressing approval or disapproval.: �I like this�/ �I don�t like this.�

 

There are all sorts of reasons why the viewer of photograph might like or not like a photograph or the photographer who took that photograph. To put it bluntly, if these essentially emotional responses were to be unpacked, I think in many cases they would be revealed as purely the product of the viewer�s personal life-history, influences, circumstances, body chemistry, age, gender, and so on.

 

Incidentally, I tend to be generous on the count of �greatness.� According to the criteria I mentioned earlier, there are lots of �great� photographers (although in most cases I�d prefer more specific terms like influential, seminal, pioneering, visionary, etc. etc.), including a few who have IMO never achieved the recognition that they deserve.

 

Bottom line, I think art photography is all about one�s personal feelings. We are awash in billions of images. Any person who can hold one hand to their eye is a photographer; in fact, isn�t imaging one of the true universals of our culture�aren�t we all photographers? But, barring bizarre content, the one sure path to originality is the photographer�s uniqueness as an individual�but that requires self-searching introspection and the emergence of a �vision.�

 

The thought I expressed in my initial post on �finding yourself in a photograph� is simply that that�s how I as a viewer appreciate the work of others, great or otherwise. And, again, I think that that�s a good thing.

Hi everybody,

 

Pleeeze, I've read enough about the "only four" great photographers

and the "greatest" portrait photographers. Where are the objective

criteria by which we could arrive at real answers to these

questions? Isn't it really all about ego, about you the viewer?

Don't we like the photographs in which, in some sense or other, we

find ourselves? And hence the makers of those photographs as well?

Or am I the only one?

Sooner or later, we all do a portrait of ourselves. Well known, or

even famous, photographers sometimes find novel and interesting ways

of taking their own picture--often without being too obvious about

it. Here is my list of favorites. Sorry I can't provide links or

downloads, but I do have a reference for each one. I'd very much

like to learn of your favorites, too.

 

(1) Imogen Cunningham, "Self-portrait with Grandchildren in the

Funhouse 2, 1955." Imogen Cunningham, Portraiture, by Richard

Lorenz, 1997, pl. 160.

 

(2) Alma Lavenson, "Self Portrait, 1932" [hands on camera and lens].

Alma Lavenson, "Photographs," by Susan Ehrens, 1990, cover and

opposite p. 86.

 

(3) Nicholas Nixon, "The Brown Sisters, 1984" (shadow cast on

subject). "The Brown Sisters" 1999 (also on cover).

Neil,

 

"What really rankles me about Steichen is the way he maneuvered himself into being the Director of Photography at MOMA. Up until that time Beaumont Newhall (along with his wife) was in charge, ..."

 

Neil,

 

No offense intended, but I think her name was Nancy Newhall, accomplished and celebrated editor and writer in collaboration with Paul Strand, Ansel Adams, and Edward Weston, as well as with her husband. FWIW, she also I believe did the interior decoration of the Ahwahnee Hotel in Yosemite Valley, the "greatest" of the national park lodges.

�Surveying the gathering evidence of the Depression and the rank edges of resistant American culture, he [Evans] found that he cared less about the present than about discerning what the present would someday look like as the past.� This revealing thought is ascribed to Evans ca. 1930 in Belinda Rathbone�s biography (1995, p. 61) mentioned in a previous post. Monroe Wheeler in the new edition of American Photographs: �Evans contemplates the present as it might be seen at some future date� (p. 247).

 

But at best this can be only part of his complex motivation. �Evans was more interested in recapturing his memories of childhood than in dealing with bills� (p. 293)�capture is right, not only did he want to photograph those fine old signs, he also wanted (and got) physical possession of them as well. But he always denied that his work had been motivated by nostalgia or sentiment.

 

Especially later in life he hoarded found objects, but not the merely old junk that fills low-end �antique� stores but stuff like soft-drink cans and cigarette wrappers for use in his assemblages (pp. 288-290). Andy Warhol would have approved, ditto Evans� fascination with the SX-70; in fact, Evans once quipped that he, Evans, had invented pop art (p. 255). It was the concealed small-format NYC subway pictures that eventually attracted the yet undiscovered Diane Arbus to the master (pp. 248-249).

 

�L�exactitude n�est pas la verite�, quoted from Matisse, stands on the title page of Many Are Called (p. 267). At a Harvard gathering late in life he reminded students that history is inevitably a subjective report of the facts (pp. 277-278).

 

Somehow the formula �documentary photographer� strikes me as falling far short of doing justice to this extraordinary and complex artist (and man). Same for �preservationist� or architectural photographer. If you become famous and are in a position to influence opinion, people are going to want to appropriate your work in the service of their cause, and Rathbone repeatedly acknowledges in particular Evans� efforts to dissociate himself from political forces promoting the cause of his rural Depression era subjects�probably for the most part innocently when, as was still true in Evans� day, photographs were viewed by most as mere �documents� of reality (and, after all, Evans had done this work while in the employ of the federal government).

 

Robert Penn Warren, a Kentuckian who knew first-hand Evans�s rural subject-matter, toasted his old friend at a 1971 gathering: � But staring at the pictures, I knew that my familiar world was a world I had never known. The veil of familiarity prevented my seeing it. Then, thirty years ago, Walker tore aside that veil; he woke me from the torpor of the accustomed� (p. 284).

I am in the process of hanging some of our b&w LF work on the walls

of a room in our house, and it is already clear that some additional

artificial lighting will have to be added. Looks like ceiling track

lighting to me, but my mind is far from made up. All suggestions

welcome--and thanks in advance.

 

The room is 12 by 24 feet in dimension, running due north and south

lengthwise and with windows/deck door at each end but no other

sunlight. Virtually no direct sunlight strikes the walls for most of

the year (there are big shade trees outside the south window) but

reflected light is considerable. One long side is wood-paneled and

is about gray card reflectance; the remaining walls, all off white,

are about a stop and half or two stops brighter at midday; the

textured ceiling is pure white. Fourteen 16x20s mounted on 22x28 and

over-matted with bright white 4-ply with metal frames and acrylic

will hang on all four walls of the room. Twelve of the prints will

be suspended from above (hooks driven into wood paneling just below

ceiling molding or through drywall to header) with translucent wire,

so height can be adjusted (at present I�m centering each print at

about eye-level for an adult standing ca. 5�7�. The two others will

be placed above the mantel just below the ceiling.

 

With ten of the prints already hung, I can see that I have a major

problem with glare and reflections all the way around the room. I�ve

toyed with the idea of desk or floor lamps but see no easy solution

(the room, incidentally, will continue to serve its original domestic

functions, with stuff removed for �shows�). But a tungsten lamp held

above the print at about 45 degrees or so does the job. Whatever I

settle on will have to work both during daylight hours and after

dark.

 

So, my questions are:

 

(1) Is track-lighting the way to go?

(2) At what angle to the prints should the lights be pointed?

(This factor is complicated by the fact that as a result of my method

of suspension each frame tilts inwards a few degrees at the top).

And at what distance from the walls should the tracks be mounted?

(3) Who does a job like this? The people who sell the lights?

Electricians? I know I�m not handy enough to do the work myself.

The first time I developed 8x10 negs in trays I scratched them and decided then and there shuffling was not the technique for me. Besides, I don't expose many of these big negs, and what's a few extra minutes after so great an investment of time and money. And sometimes you don't get another opportunity to go back and retake the shot you ruined in the darkroom.

 

Only later did I become aware of a more serious problem with tray development, but it took me longer to figure out the cause. I was getting uneven development, which was not readily visible on the negative itself but very visible on the prints. Finally I realized that my agitation technique was causing increased development along the edges as the developer rebounded off the sides of the tray.

 

My solution was to move up to larger trays. I now use a 12x16 tray to develop 8x10's one at a time or two 5x7's side by side. Equally importantly, instead of tipping or otherwise moving the tray, I move the negative through the developer holding it with my finger tips. No more uneven development.

 

Even if scatches and uneven development were not problems, I would prefer working with a single negative (or at most two negatives) at a time, as I try to keep straight the instructions from my field notes for N-plus or N-minus development.