chris_jordan3

for me it's definitely my Nikkor 450M which i use with my 8x10-- what a big, heavy, beautiful, fat, incredibly CLEAR piece of glass!!! it's like a huge round polished diamond, the eye of my soul.

 

~cj (Seattle)

 

and, by the way: new website launch!! see below, and happy holidays:

 

www.chrisjordanphoto.com

Go to a fabric store and buy a swatch of black fabric that's about three feet by four feet. They'll have all kind of different weights of fabric, and the whole thing will cost you about five bucks. Mine is a swatch of black cotton tee-shirt fabric that I never even hemmed or did anything else to. It's super lightweight, makes a great camera-protection wrap when i travel, and works perfectly, except for the holes that are starting to appear in it (I've had it for eleven years).

 

~chris jordan (Seattle)

 

www.chrisjordanphoto.com

I have a small practical contribution based on my own experience. I once lost a roll of exposed 35mm T-Max film for 2 years. It was under the seat of my car, in all kinds of temperature conditions for the 2 years. When i found it, i developed it normal, and the film looked as if i had shot it yesterday.

 

My experience with color transparency films is that the "disappearing latent image" thing is a bit over-rated. When travelling I've carried exposed Velvia and Provia around for 3 months, and developed normal, with perfect results. So yeah, there might be some degradation going on, but it doesn't get noticeable for a looooooong time. No need to rush to the lab right after shooting...

 

~cj (Seattle)

based on my own personal experience, i think it is generally a BAD idea to rummage through an artist's "other" 40,000 originals. if the world didn't see them when the artist was alive, there's a good reason. if you did that with my work, you'd find piles and piles of garbage--all my experiments, failed images, overexposed, underexposed, badly composed, tilted horizons, false starts on new projects, etc. i'd sure be bummed to know that someone was going to see all of that, and have shows of it. hmmmmmm, so i guess i'll be doing a fireplace ceremony in my 80's...

 

~cj (Seattle)

 

www.chrisjordanphoto.com

dude, i'm back!! is there some good news like i inherited millions of dollars or won a trip to las vegas or something?

 

~cj (Seattle)

Gary, i think you already have the answer-- it's because you are laying the focal plane down flat, and so vertical things in the distance that point up out of that plane, will no longer be in focus (and if you are using the rear rather than front camera movement, then distant tree may also show a perspective distortion).

 

i think the standard technique in such situations is to lay the focal plan down about halfway inbetween the water and the trees (for example, instead of focussing right on the water's surface, maybe focus on the tops of the boulders, or the opposite stream bank), and then stop the lens down so both the water and distant trees become sharp.

 

the focal plane itself (with the lens wide open) is a narrow plane, but when you stop the lens down it becomes a big wide fat plane. when all your camera movements are upright at 90-degrees, that means things near and far come into focus (i.e., the big fat focal plane is vertical). but if you think of the big wide fat plane lying down at a 45-degree angle, it turns into a wedge-shape, like shining a big wide flashlight beam-- it gets fatter the further away it shines. so, if you angle it halfway inbetween the two things you want to cover, it will cover them both. does that make sense?

 

~cj (Seattle)

 

 

p.s.: or you could follow cj's focussing principle:

 

Fine-tune the tilts, fine-tune them some more,

Awfuckit, just stop down to f/64!

hey Tim, i think the term "previsualization" is to be distinguished from "postvisualization," which is when, after trekking, shooting, developing and printing, you visualize how much better the final product would have been if you had gotten the original exposure right...

 

~cj

my two cents here is that dichotomies are being drawn where none really exist.

 

first, weston and adams were friends who frequently corresponded on both artistic and technical issues. both had highly developed senses of artistry (ansel adams was a world-class pianist, in addition to his photographic work), and both men were sophisticated technicians who compared darkroom experiences and traded notes over nerdy stuff like the sharpest aperture for this or that lens.

 

ansel never applied the "zone system" when considering an image or composing behind the camera; the zone system was merely a method for figuring out how long to expose his negatives, and how long to develop them. ansel composed his images with his artistic eye, and printed with both artistry and technical skill, just as edward did. the two men had different levels of talent, skill and judgment in every aspect of their work, but that's the way it is for any two individuals.

 

additionally, there are a great many wonderful, talented genius-level photographers who existed before those guys, and who have existed since, who have made photographs just as artistic and technically excellent. sometimes i get the impression that people think that there have been only two great photographers in the history of the medium so far...

I think of photography as being like bear hunting. To kill a bear, two things have to happen: first, you must have a bear gun, loaded and cocked, aimed, with your finger on the trigger; and second, exactly in the direction that your gun is pointed, there must be a bear!

 

~cj

i've been using a 3x3' swatch of black tee-shirt material as my dark cloth all these years, except when i forget it, in which case i use whatever jacket i happen to be wearing!

 

~cj

i photograph Strange Attractors in the electromagnetic spectrum.

 

~cj (Seattle)

 

www.chrisjordanphoto.com

Nathan, I own one of the new Epson 7600 printers and have made approximately 300 linear feet of prints with it so far. Here are my thoughts.

 

First, the 7600 is fantastically sharp-- noticeably sharper than any previous inkjet printer (including all the Epsons). For small prints it is really amazing-- it will print a line the width of a human hair. For larger prints I doubt the difference would be noticable between the 7600 and a previous Epson such as the 7000, because then the limitation is the sharpness of the file, not the sharpness of the printer.

 

The B&W printing that can be done on the 7600 is also pretty amazing. The process uses all the inks, so the print can be toned in whatever color you want, however subtle. And of course, split toning and other effects are easy to achieve. With a good profile (such as those that are just about to be made available for free on Epson's site), the gray balance is perfect through the entire tonal scale.

 

In terms of direct comparisons, i haven't done a side-by-side, but i have seen incredibly beautiful B&W prints from both processes. Like the quadtone system, the 7600 can produce prints that have NO visible dot pattern, even in the places you'd expect dots such as white clouds. The only problem i've seen with the 7600 is that when printing on glossy papers, there is a yellowish reflective sheen on the print that is quite unattractive when viewed in the wrong light. The 7600 lays down the yellow ink last, and so it sits on the surface of glossy prints. In oblique reflected light, you can see what looks like an oily yellow sheen on the print. This doesn't happen at all on watercolor papers-- prints made on those papers look just like quadtone prints.

 

~cj

hey chris, did you move from Boston to Rochester, or are you the THIRD chris jordan to appear on this site?

 

~chris jordan (Seattle)

Hey guys. i'm having a show here in Seattle in December, and i'm

trying to come up with an easy way to get a mailing list of photo

galleries, book publishers, museums and other photo art venues around

the country, to send invites as part of my PR effort. AIPAD has their

list but it is pretty limited, and hand-inputting the info from

directories would take ages. does anyone happen to have such a list

that they'd be willing to share??

 

~cj (Seattle)

well, i survived my first outing with the C-1 and 10'-high tripod!

loaded the whole shebang (stepladder included) onto a hand truck with

bungies and trundled about two miles around seattle a couple of nights

ago, exposing six sheets of film (yikes, that's $90...). finally the

drizzle got the best of me and i bailed for home. i was quite

surprised that everything worked smoothly-- it really is just like a

big 4x5, no technical glitches at all, except everything is a little

slower and heavier. the Nikkor 450M is an incredibly sharp and

beautiful lens-- i'm looking forward to many years of joy working with

that puppy. and i must say, that huge apparatus perched ten feet off

the ground looks pretty BITCHIN!!!

 

i even got a new "keeper" transparency. YIKES it looks cool on my

light table! sending it off for a scan this week.

 

cheers and thanks again to my supportive friends here-- i wouldn't

have gotten to this exciting new place without you guys,

 

~cj (Seattle)

i think the killer view camera would be modeled after the Toyo views (4x5 and 8x10), but made of plastic and nylon. the body could be moulded plastic (carbon fibre not necessary-- the body requres only minimal strength) and the bellows some kind of lightweight durable nylon material like cordura. seems like production would be much cheaper than wood or metal after the initial investment in moulds, and they could be offered quite cheaply so you could outstrip the competition. within a few years everyone would be using them.

 

features? those have all been figured out by the other manufacturers; just copy them. the main thing for me is rigidity, which could be achieved just fine with plastics. just make sure the tripod-mounting parts are double-strength bombproof!!!

 

~cj

Ken, i've been shooting in the rain for 10 years now, and i've tried every kind of clamping system made, plus a few i devised myself. they're all great if there is NO wind. but, the slightest breeze, and your tripod goes right over. if the umbrella is on a separate tripod, then it goes over and showers your film and lens in the process. my method (which is totally unworkable but it's the only one that works...), is to hold a large golf umbrella with one hand and do everything else with the other. when two-handed operations are needed (such as adjusting tilt & focussing), then i hold the umbrella with my chin. the singular goal at such times is to keep the lens and film dry; everything else gets soaked. the really awesome solution is to have an assistant-- the few times i've been fortunate enough, that's been wonderful. instructions to the assistant: keep the lens and film dry (forget the photographer). and the promise of a nice dinner and martini afterwards works wonders...

 

~cj (seattle)

Hi Robert-- i've been bustin my lower back for 10 years now lugging my 4x5 (and now an 8x10, with hand truck) all over downtown Seattle in all kinds of horrendous weather, making color studies of the urban landscape. oh my, the stories i could tell!

 

check it out, if you're interested:

 

www.chrisjordanphoto.com

 

cj (Seattle)

...and, after all that patient waiting for the light, the result is...

 

(drum roll)

 

(suspense builds),

 

another perfectly perfect pristinely pristine SUNRISE SHOT!!!!!!!

 

aggggggghhghghghghkkkkk (clunk).

Hey Tim, dang man, didn't you see on Fatali's website how long he "waited for the light" on each photo? Shoot, some of them were YEARS in the making!!! How can you NOT respect a guy who stands by his camera for YEARS waiting for the sun to rise?

 

~cj (Seattle)

thanks a bunch guys-- that's what i was hoping...

 

JEEZ the image looks beautiful on the gg of an 8x10 camera!!!!!!

 

~cj

i've noticed people mentioning sending lenses to Steve Grimes for

mounting on lensboards, and i've heard that he does something that

sounds like aligning the optics on lenses or something. is there

anything about mounting a lens on a lensboard that is optically

important, or can i just screw my new Nikkor 450M f/9 onto my

lensboard and fire away? the local camera store has the little

two-pronged tool for tightening that ring...

 

thanks for any thoughts,

 

~cj (Seattle)

hey guys, chris jordan from Seattle checking in with a comment that might help clear up a misconception about digital printing, which is the idea that digital printing requires "no darkroom time."

 

my process goes like this: once i get an image drum-scanned at 600MB, i take approximately 50 hours to do the imaging work in photoshop. by the time it's ready to print, it might have 100 or more contrast masks that accomplish local contrast control in a way that darkroom printers can only dream about. on one image i did more than 30,000 mouse clicks, all at the pixel level-- with that one i edited the image pixel by pixel to reorganize the grain structure (i don't do that with every image though!).

 

then i save the file, and after that all prints are identical (that's something that darkroom printers also crave-- i know because i was one for years--so i presume there's no philosophical problem with achieving repeatability...). then, when I make a print, there's some computer setup time, loading the paper and checking that computer and printer are in synch, and after that, depending on the print size the printer takes between 10 minutes and 45 minutes to make the print. after that, i trim the print manually and mount it on backing board, which takes another 20 minutes or so. then it's signed, dated, numbered and embossed with my chop. From beginning to end, not including the photoshop imaging time, each print ends up taking approximately an hour to create.

 

now i realize there are lots of people out there with desktop printers who can make 100 prints in 10 minutes while they're watching "friends" on TV. but, if you compare yourself to them, you're comparing apples to oranges. the fair thing to do is compare dedicated darkroom B&W artists with their counterparts in the digital world, and if you do that, you will find equal levels of sophistication, craftsmanship, artistry, and time investment. and, the final results, though different, can both be visually stunning.

 

oh, and one other comment: i've been interested to see Neil Folberg's promotional materials about his new work-- he doesn't mention ANYTHING about his images being digital composites. they obviously are-- there's no photographic process that could get stationary stars along with fully-lit moonlight landscapes. but the way he talks about them, it sounds like he's just out photographing at night, and those are the images he gets. i suspect the stars in his photos are not even taken by him-- they look like they're shot with a telescope. i wonder if B&W magazine was a little misled, and that's why they committed to use his work despite their policy?

 

carry on,

 

~cj

Niel, congratulations-- that's a pretty hefty machine that'll do you well for your photoshop work. One small tip: Depending on the sizes of the files you work on, you may have significnatly slower results if you have music going at the same time as Photoshop. All of my work is on 600MB images and even with a twin-gigahertz Mac with 1.5 GB of RAM, my machine works best with no other programs running other than Photoshop.

Steve, that covers the tripod, film holders, light meter, and me; now, what about the camera?