Shooting : Notes on Photography

I would like to acknowledge my appreciation to the following people for their contributions to this booklet: Ansel Adams, Ernst Bacon, Ben Shahn, Robert Henri, Jerry Uelsmann, Joe Miller, Meyer Scharlack and others. Of course I would like to thank my own mentors: namely, my father, Ansel, Oliver Gagliani, Jerry Uelsmann, Evon Streetman and Roger Minnick. For always keeping my art spirit alive I am grateful to Aitana de la Jara. A.B

Introduction

This little booklet is both serious and foolish. I think I tend toward seriousness when talking about the meaning of art and photography and I get a bit foolish when talking about technical matters. This latter sentiment might be do to the fact that I am bereft of any talent for technische kunst, and to the fact that it reflects a strong suspicion of technique which can become an end in itself. How many technically perfect rock and tree photographs there are nowadays which leave us emotionally cold! I believe, first of all, in the artist himself (herself). I believe that art is very special and that the people who make it are very special. I do not embrace a democracy of talent. I do not believe that everybody deserves his "fifteen minutes of fame" (Warhol). I do not believe that anybody can make art, "if only his inner gifts are recognized and nurtured." This is unmitigated bunk. To say that anybody can make art is as stupid as saying that anybody can play NBA basketball or run the hundred-meter dash in less than ten seconds. It is a gift to be able to run fast no less than a gift to play the piano or make significant paintings. It is an insult to unique and gifted individuals to suggest that their talent is accessible to all.

This is not to say that those without "the gift" should abjure the pursuit or be forbidden its pleasures but lets not confuse dilettantism with accomplishment. The problem, as I see it, is the use of the word artist. I don’t know when this word began to be bandied about, but I am tired of it. The "media" seems to get hold of certain words and pummel them to death like Hallmark does with lovely thoughts in greeting cards so that the beauty of Shakespeare, Whitman or Frost becomes dissipated as cliché.

Before the middle of the Twentieth Century "artists" were people like Michaengelo, Raphael, David, Ingres, Rodin and Picasso; giants of creative genius -- another over-wrought word if there ever was one! Nowadays, anybody who cuts a CD is a "recording artist," for example. Hollywood has even taken to the word in referring to its legions of mawkish pretty faces pretending to be actors. I knew a woman a few years ago who worked for Merrill Lynch, in which I had a diminutive sum of money invested. I did not see her for a few years and then ran into her in a store and asked how she was, blah blah blah and she told me that she had left Merrill Lynch and was now an "artist." She was making large gouaches and selling them to corporations! It took every bit of self-control not to puke right there in Safeway. Art is not about decoration and making money! Art is about long hours of lonely labor working at one’s craft in order to express one’s innermost being whether in paint, bronze or free verse. Art is never easy to make nor should it be easy to understand. "I think about sculpture all the time. I work at it for ten or twelve hours a day. I even dream about it. If, as a result, I were only to produce something that everyone understood immediately, I wouldn’t have been thinking very profoundly." Thank you Henry Moore for saying it like it is.

Needless to say, this booklet is about the aesthetics of straight black and white photography. Color does not concern us here. Color is to photography what Michael Jackson is to (serious) Music. I am also not very interested in commercial photography. This is not to say I do not have a great deal of respect for the men and women who make a living doing the work of photography but I am not a teacher of such things. Frankly, I do not think we can mix serious photography with commercial work. I know several people who try, who think they can, but I think their personal work suffers from the taint of commercialism. It is rare that the two can be achieved together. DaVinci did it, so did Bach, Lautrec and Bonnard sold a few posters, some of the great portrait photographers (Karsh and Newman for example) have made a living from their work…..but, by and large, I think the artist is better off waiting tables or driving trucks for a living than selling his talents to the vulgar tastes of Madison Avenue. As a matter of fact, I recommend suburban fire fighting as one of the ideal jobs for the serious artist.

As much as I love the history of photography, largely because it is inextricably aligned with one of the most exciting eras in history – 1850 to the present -- this diminutive treatise is not the place to examine such a subject. For those interested in the history of photography I suggest Beaumont Newhall’s old stand-by The History of Photography, Helmut Gersheim’s History of Photography, Aaron Scharf’s Art and Photography and John Szarkowski’s Looking at Photographs. Happily, the history of photography is brief compared to music, painting, architecture and sculpture.

Photography as we know it was only "discovered" in the 1820’s, sort of simultaneously by two or three people (Fox-Talbot in England and Niepce and Daguerre in France). The first known photograph was taken in 1822 by Niecephore Niepce. The process really only became public in 1839 when it was presented to the French Academy of Science by Louis Daguerre. To illustrate the meteoric popularity of photography…in 1840 there were between five and ten thousand portrait painters in Paris. By 1850 there were but a few hundred.

Speaking of painting, photography is the stepfather of all modern art (painting), in my opinion. That is to say, prior to 1839, the desire of every painter, from the caves of Lascaux 30, 000 years ago, to DaVinci to Ingres, was to try to paint more or less (photo) realistically, to try to convey a sense of what his eyes saw, to struggle with perspective, anatomy and form in realistic ways. Painting was largely a means of visual expression. After 1839, why bother? Photography was a thousand times better at recording faithfully than any painting. Photography therefore, gave us Impressionism, Expressionism, Cubism and the marvelous (alcoholic) splatters of Jackson Pollock. Jackson Pollock could never have existed without the invention of photography. Photography liberated the painter’s studio from the expression of physicality to the expression of our innermost angst, joy and passion. Well, more on that later.

For example, the greatest photographer of mid-nineteenth century France, Nadar, also happened to be the most renowned balloonist of his era. The French military wanted him to use his expertise to monitor Russian troops in the Crimea. As we all know, The Crimean War was England and France’s "Vietnam War" and Nadar refused to cooperate in such chauvinist foolhardiness (just as some of us would refuse to intervene in a civil war in Southeast Asia 100 years later). However, in 1870, when France was invaded by Prussia, he did ascend patriotically over the westward rushing Prussians to take pictures of Paris surrounded (Prussia crushed France in two weeks). Nadar also played an enormous role in the history of painting. He was close friends with Degas and Manet and many other painters whose names roll off our tongues with affectionate familiarity. When you look at a Degas painting you will see the influence of photography in the edges with figures cut off as in a photographic image. The first Impressionist Show in Paris was held in Nadar’s studio in 1874. This is just one example of the interconnectedness of photography.

Technically, photography is very easy. You look through a little window and push a button and voila, you have a picture. I call it the one hundred yard dash of the arts…virtually anybody can run, walk or crawl a hundred yards….(the thing is to try to do it in less than ten seconds!) It might only take a fraction of a second to make a photograph, but behind that one evanescent click of the shutter is a vast experience of looking and feeling about a subject. One has to shoot a lot of film in order to learn to look and see quickly and thoroughly. Well, the same with drawing and painting…when one is drawing the model or landscape is not the time to wonder how to make the line and shape a delicate shadow. One has to have practiced and practiced for that moment. Once you’re out on the mat is not the time to wonder how to do a certain takedown. All of which is to say, I recommend shooting a heluva lot of film. A friend of mine used to say, "The only film that is wasted is the film you don’t shoot." I agree. As a matter of fact, this is actually the only significant difference between a so-called professional photographer and an amateur….the amount of film shot; the "professional" shoots ten rolls to the amateur’s one.

I confess, I am not particularly interested in what kinds of cameras there are or how they work. It is really only important to know enough to be able to get the job done. There are plenty of textbooks which go into great detail about the different types of cameras and lenses and how they work. Every camera and lens has a particular place in the making of photographic images; none is "better" than any other. A 4 x 5 view camera will give you a bigger, sharper negative in the landscape but what good is it on the streets of Shanghai? A five-thousand dollar Leica is lovely to hold and look through but do you really want to keep it in your glove compartment for those once-in-awhile grab shots? Great photographs have been made with $10,000 titanium Hasselblads and with $20 plastic Holgas. A good work of art comes from the heart and soul of an artist, not a black box with a piece of glass on the front.

This is, in fact, a problem with photography. People love the gadgetry and the ease of "picture-making." If you go out and buy a fiddle it will be years before you will dare to call yourself a violinist. People buy a camera and the next day they are taking pictures and calling themselves photographers. Photography is indeed, the "hundred yard dash of the arts." Fast and simple. But therein lies the great challenge. Just as anybody can run a hundred meters, only a handful of people in the world can run those hundred meters in less than ten seconds.

The technique of photography is relatively simple. The difficult thing with something so simple is the seeing. Photography is about feeling and seeing. The painter has to spend years learning about pigments, rabbit-skin glues, gessoes, color theory, line and perspective while the photographer has to spend years learning to see, and see more deeply, to understand, to love and hate, to suffer and to know the truth of what is before him as he presses the little button which will express his inner self.

Rilke said it best: "One ought to wait and gather sense and sweetness a whole life long, and a long life if possible, and then, quite at the end, one might perhaps be able to write ten lines that were good. For verses are not, as people imagine, simply feelings (those one has early enough), -- they are experiences. For the sake of a single verse, one must see many cities, men and things, one must know the animals, one must feel how the birds fly and know the gesture with which the little flowers open in the morning. One must be able to think back to roads in unknown regions, to unexpected meetings and to partings one had long seen coming; to days of childhood that are still unexplained, to parents whom one had to hurt when they brought one some joy and one did not grasp it; to childhood illnesses that so strangely begin with such a number of profound and grave transformations, to days in rooms withdrawn and quiet and to mornings by the sea, to the sea itself, to seas, to nights of travel that rushed along on high and flew with all the stars – and it is not yet enough if one may think of all this. One must have memories of many nights of love, none of which was like the others, of the screams of women in labor, and of light, white, sleeping women in childbed, closing again. But one must have also been beside the dying, must have sat beside the dead in the room with the open window and fitful noises. And still it is not yet enough to have memories. One must be able to forget them when they are many and one must have great patience to wait until they come again. For it is not yet the memories themselves. Not until they have turned to blood within us, to glance and gesture, nameless and no longer to be distinguished from ourselves – not till then can it happen that in a most rare hour the first word of a verse arises in their midst and goes forth from them."

Some basic tips for photographing

Give some thought to just what it is that you are trying to photograph. Whatever it is, think about how you feel about it and then express yourself with your images.

Anticipate. "Chance favors the prepared mind." (Pasteur, as frequently quoted by Ansel Adams) Try to prepare yourself for what you might experience photographically. If you are going to photograph a poet, make sure you have read his poems.
Do not miss the pleasure of just "being there." You might spend an entire day hiking and never take a single photograph. Well, the main thing should have been to enjoy a day of hiking, communing with nature. Photographs are just icing on the cake. You might spend an hour talking with a wizened old cowboy and not take a single picture. Again, the main thing is the experience, the sharing, the listening and friendship, not the bloody picture.

On the other hand, if the situation is right, the karma is favorable, shoot the hell out of the moment; work it for all it is worth.

Do not let preconceptions get in the way of serendipity. Some planning is good, but when Caprice enters the picture do not disdain her.

Always, always check the ASA (ISO) setting on your meter and camera. Improper ASA settings are one of the commonest errors among all photographers. It is better to over-expose than under-expose.

Always, always have film in the camera. An unloaded gun is not much use when THEY are crashing through the front door.

Keep the camera ready. Get rid of the "never-ready" case.

Keep your equipment clean and ready-to-use. Use a skylight filter to protect the lens. Use a lens shade to cut down glare and protect the lens from banging into things.

On the street, pre-set the aperture and focus to something like 1/125 at f8 at ten feet. Shoot quickly and smoothly; do not make people wait while you diddle around with the focus.

Do not overload yourself with unnecessary equipment; don’t go out looking like some sort of Banana Republic photo-geek with stuff hanging all over you. Imogen did a lifetime of beautiful work with one camera and one lens. Cartier Bresson did a lifetime of exquisite work with one camera and three lenses (35, 50 and 90mm).

Take at least four times as much film as you think you will need. Relative to everything else, film is cheap.

Figure out a way to get the film through the airport security without exposing it to too much X-ray scrutiny.

Shoot at least four times as many pictures as you think necessary. About the only difference between "professional" and amateur photographers is the amount of film they shoot. The amateur goes on his two-week vacation with four rolls of film. The serious photographer goes for two weeks with 100 rolls of film.

Learn to see everything in your viewfinder. If you want your horizons straight, then shoot them straight. What you see is pretty much what you’ll get. If you don’t want that phone pole coming out of that guy’s head, then move.

Photograph the subject. Move in close (sometimes). Fill the frame (sometimes) with whatever it is that you are photographing. Always be asking yourself, "What is it I am really trying to photograph here?" Crop in the camera rather than later on in the darkroom.

If you want rock-steady, fine-grain, sharply focused images then use a tripod with fine-grain film and a big camera.

Stick with one film until you are absolutely familiar with it. Well, I mean, you need to use the kind of film appropriate for the situation. There are only three film speeds (slow, medium and fast) and each has its place. For example, a fast film is ideal for the street where there is a lot of movement and you have to shoot quickly. On the other hand, if you are out in the backcountry doing landscapes a slow film is probably better in as much as the wonderful detail of nature begs for sharpness.

Do not take several kinds of film on your next trip to Timbuktu because they will have different ASA’s and you will screw up for sure.

Remember that you are taking pictures. You are taking something away from whatever was there; be prudent and considerate.

On the other hand, if the light and the karma are right, the subject is altogether agreeable, then shoot lots of film; take advantage of the situation, work it for all it is worth as they say. "The only film that is wasted is the film you don’t shoot." Alan Ross

When the situation is right, try lots of things; different angles, weird compositions, crooked horizons, multiple exposures, unfocused shots, shots from the hip and so forth. Film is cheap.

Remember, your camera is just a tool, nothing more. Don’t abuse it of course, but don’t over-protect it. Try to keep it cool and don’t bang it around unnecessarily. If you love photography you will want some sort of camera with you always (thank God for point-and-shoots).

Learn to set everything on your camera with your eyes closed. In a sense, you are like the old gunfighters; you have to be ready every minute of the day.

Be discrete. Do not photograph people who do not want to be photographed. If you think you need a telephoto lens to take pictures of people then what you probably need is just to smile and get closer to them and find out how friendly they really are…or, how strenuously they object to being photographed.

Remember, the great virtue of 35-mm cameras is their wonderful spontaneity. Tripods, too many lenses, flashes and other unnecessary stuff just diminishes this singular quality. Simplify the chaos, eschew obfuscation. Don’t make your life any more difficult with more junk.

Respect the subject whether it is a tree, rock or a person. Remember, photography is like making love; you have to give as well as take.

Photograph only what you feel passionate about.

The Mystery of the "f-stop"

Photo-graphy means, literally, writing with light. Using photo (light) sensitive materials we use light to make images. The problem is, how to control that light. The very earliest photographers simply uncovered their lens for a few moments and then put the lens cap back on and voila, that was the exposure. Through trial and error, they learned to "guestimate" their exposures. Emulsions were very, very slow back then so they just stood there and counted to thirty or a hundred and came up with workable negatives (glass plates mostly).

As cameras and lenses became more sophisticated a system had to be worked out to control both the time and the size of the hole through which the light entered the camera. Time was easy: beginning with one second you just went one way doubling your time …One second, two seconds, four seconds, eight seconds, sixteen seconds etc. Or, going the other way, you just halved your time successively: one second, one half second, one quarter of a second, one eighth of a second etc. So, with the simplest possible lens which was just a piece of convex glass at the end of a tube, you could control the amount of light entering the camera. Obviously, we are talking some years into the development of photography; it was probably the 1850’s or 60’s before mechanical shutters were manufactured.

But then, western civilization being what it is, photographers were not satisfied with such simplicity and began to dabble with optics. They came to realize that controlling the size of the light hole (aperture) gave them more flexibility vis a vis shutter speed; that is they were not limited to just one shutter speed in any given light situation. It was nice to have two ways of controlling light. Furthermore, they discovered that, among other things, a lens with a tiny hole gave more depth of field which means, simply, that objects both near and far seem to be in sharp focus. So lenses began to be made with different size holes (apertures).

Circles are complex though. Squares are easy. The area of a square is a squared and voila, you have the area of that square. If lenses were square you could simply have a lens with an aperture area of one, an aperture with an area of two, an aperture of four, an aperture of eight, an aperture of sixteen and so on. When it came time to make an exposure you could choose a combination of say, four seconds at (square) area of two. This would let in the same amount of light as two seconds at (square) area of four wouldn’t it? The time either doubles or halves and the size of the aperture either doubles or halves. This way you and every other photographer could control light systematically….and we would not have to deal with some weird numbers like 1.4 and 5.6.

Because they are convex, concave or concavo convex, lenses ain’t square, they is round. How do you figure out the area of a circle? (pie r squared) And then how do you figure out how to make one circle half the size of another, and then again another circle half the size of that, and so on? "F" as in f-stop, might, in my case, stand for "fool." Actually, it stands for "fraction." The 4 in "f4" actually means 1/4, and f5.6 actually means 1/5.6 etc. That is to say, f-numbers actually represent fractions of the focal length of the lens. The diameter of the aperture at f4 would be 1/4 the focal length of the lens. What the hell is focal length? Focal length means the distance from the lens to the film plane…hence, a 50mm lens is 50mm from the film plane. A 50mm lens (a so-called normal lens for 35mm cameras) set at f4 would have an aperture diameter of 12.5mm (50mm X 1/4). A 1,000 mm lens set at f22 would have an aperture diameter of 45mm (1,000 X 1/22) So, with this information you could derive the formula: F-stop = Aperture times Focal Length (F-stop = A/FL). A is the diameter of the aperture, FL is the focal length of the lens and f-stop is expressed in it fractional form.

In order to understand what the numbers mean and why we use particular numbers we have to go back to the early stages of photo-optics when lenses were lenses and cameras were cameras. Early on, a 50mm lens was just that, a 50mm lens; it was actually 50mm long. Likewise, a 1,000mm lens was actually a 1,000mm long. These early lenses were basically nothing more than a convex piece of glass at the end of a tube. The above formulas would be applicable to these types of simple lenses. Over time, lens manufacturers learned to "cheat" and make an "optically perfect" 50mm lens which was actually shorter. This was achieved using multiple pieces of glass to give the effect of 50mm even though the physical size was less. You can imagine how important this was regarding longer focal lengths; an early 1,000mm lens was actually a meter long!

Equipment Hints


35mm Cameras

First of all, your camera is just a tool; learn to use it, hold it, adjust it, look through it with authority. Practice making adjustments blindfolded if necessary. Always be ready to take a picture as quickly and unobtrusively as possible.
Use a fast film. Use a LOT of it.

Make sure the film has been loaded properly (when you load the film, shoot off enough frames before closing the back to make sure…then, when the back is closed keep your eye on the take-up knob to make sure it turns when you shoot-off another couple frames. Don’t worry, you will still get your 36 exposures).

Throw away the never-ready case.

Use your camera quickly and fluidly; if it is a bright day, set the speed at a 1/250 and the aperture at f11 or f16 and be ready!

Be comfortable with yourself and why you are there taking that picture. Shoot quickly and smoothly. Shoot with the eye of an eagle and the touch of Horowitz. (Horowitz was asked once how he felt when the huge applause washed over him at the end of a piece. He replied that what he really loved were the silences!)

You can do a heluva lot with one camera and one lens. Do not covet a lot of unnecessary equipment.

Use flash as seldom as possible.


View Cameras

View cameras require a lot of space and equipment-management. Make your system, whatever it is – box or backpack – as efficient as possible so that the taking of a picture is not a huge production or ordeal. If you can’t have your camera on the tripod ready to shoot within two minutes something is wrong.

Do not re-set the shutter once the lens is cocked.

Do not leave lenses cocked at high shutter speeds (they work with springs obviously so if you leave the springs at tension they will lose their snap)

Exercise the lenses once in awhile…run them through all their shutter speeds a few times.

Clean and vacuum all the film holders once in awhile

Squeeze the camera and back together when pulling out the dark-slide.


Make your own dark-cloth with white on one side to reflect the sun. Make it big.


120 size cameras (Hasselblad and Bronica)

Do not store lenses cocked tight, and exercise them.

With tripod, flip up the mirror before clicking the shutter.

Be careful with Ilford films, they can leak in bright sunlight.

Do not wind or re-wind any films over zealously or you can end up with static electricity streaks.
Protect your exposed film, keep it cool.


Tripod

Take good care of your tripod. Tripods are important, expensive, but, for some reason, easy to take for granted.

For most situations, the lightest possible tripod is adequate.

Ball-heads are great.

Use only the bottom leg extended in sand and water.

Do not leave the tripod banging around in the trunk of your car with the legs extended. The inner legs are very fragile and one ding will make it difficult to extend or collapse.

Do not use your Mr. Universe grip to tighten the legs; a little firmness is sufficient.

Point the single leg toward the subject.


On Long trips

Carry extra batteries for cameras, meters and flash.

Dress appropriately; do not wear bikinis in Afganistan.

Take cleaning and repair equipment such as methanol, Q-tips, brush, lens tissue, mini screwdrivers.

Have a system for protecting exposed film.

Take proof-of-purchase documents for all hardware when leaving the United States.

Become absolutely familiar with the "sunny sixteen" rule. Stupid as it sounds it is indispensable for several reasons. If your light meter breaks when you are in Uzbekistan you’re gonna have to make do without. The rule is: in bright sunlight a decent exposure is the reciprocal of the ASA at f16. So, you are watching a camel race and the sun is shining and you have Tri-X film (ASA 400) in your camera. You will have perfectly useable negatives if you shoot that situation at about a 400th of a second at f16. Okay, so it is overcast then open up a bit and shoot at a 400th at f8. Once you are familiar with the sunny 16 rule you will listen to your camera more acutely. If you are photographing in bright sunlight and you press the shutter and you hear the shutter go "zzzzzzzz-click" you know something is wrong because in bright sunlight you know it should be a fast shutter speed and not a half-second exposure. One thing is for sure; over the years you will need to guestimate exposures in many different situations.

Some Important Things Worth Thinking About

Nonconformity is the basic pre-condition for all art. Ben Shahn

The greatest challenge to the photographer is to express the inner significance through the outward form. Beaumont Newhall

Above all, I know that life for a photographer cannot be a matter of indifference. Opinion often consists of a kind of criticism. But criticism can come out of love. It is important to see what is invisible to others – perhaps the look of hope or the look of sadness. Also, it is always the instantaneous reaction to oneself that produces a photograph. My photographs are not planned or composed in advance and I do not anticipate that the onlooker will share my viewpoint. However, I feel that if my photograph leaves an image on his mind, something has been accomplished. Robert Frank

The French painter Rousseau was once asked why he put a naked woman on a red sofa in the middle of one of his jungle pictures. He answered: "I needed a bit of red there." Translated: Do whatever the hell you feel like doing!

In our difficult and complicated world we should be wary of the easy message; the plain one will be hard enough to believe. Henry Holmes Smith

I think about sculpture all the time. I work at it for ten or twelve hours a day. I even dream about it. If, as a result, I were only to produce something that everyone understood immediately, I wouldn’t have been thinking very profoundly. Henry Moore

My favorite thing is to go where I have never been before. Diane Arbus

…to illuminate and rejuvenate, to inspire great visions of truth and reveal injustices, to boldly go where no other photographers have gone before, to stand your ground even when mad dogs are barking at your feet, to find open roads to drive down, to think of new and important projects, to always shoot from your heart and not your pocketbook, to shoot with reckless abandon whenever the need arises, to say nice things to small and old peoples, to wash the dishes at least once a week, to continue to photograph through the storms of indignation and arrive at a café that serves good coffee and hot bagels, to daily forge ahead with camera in hand with a new vitality and inner strength, to sometimes throw guilt to the winds and leave your family for a day of photographing, to have a positive outlook on your road of life and to listen to music that inspires while making pictures of the ones you love in the cool twilight. Dan Price

Taking photographs is not something that happens only in the moment I press the button. It is a full time occupation. For me there is no difference between leisure and work. To live, to experience the world, to communicate with a camera, all these are interrelated and cannot be separated from everyday life. Eduard Boubat

People are quite willing to use objects without looking for any symbolic intention in them, but when they look at paintings they can’t find any use for them. So they hunt around for a meaning to get themselves out of the quandary, and because they don’t understand what they are supposed to think when they confront the painting…they want something to lean on so they can be comfortable. They want something secure to hang onto so they can save themselves from falling into the void. People who look for symbolic meanings fail to grasp the inherent poetry and mystery of the image. No doubt they sense this mystery but they wish to get rid of it. They are afraid. By asking, "What does it mean?" they express a wish that everything be understandable. But if one does not reject mystery, one has quite a different response. One asks other things. Rene Magritte

When we look at a thing, we must examine its essence and treat its appearance merely as an usher at the threshold, we must, once we cross the threshold, grasp the essence of the thing. Mao Tse Tung

I wish that more people felt that photography was an adventure the same as life itself and felt that their individual feelings were worth expressing. To me, that makes photography more exciting. Henri Cartier Bresson

Good pictures can come only from a strong response to life – this response is the fabric of all that our lives have been …photography is a love affair with life. Burk Uzzle

Photograph only what you feel passionate about.

The photographer’s problem is to see clearly the limitations, and at the same time, the potential qualities of his medium, for it is precisely here that honesty, no less than intensity of vision, is the prerequisite of a living expression. This means a real respect for the thing in front of him. Paul Strand

I am an amateur and intend to remain one my whole life long. I attribute to photography the task of recording the real nature of things, their interior, their life. The photographer’s art is a continuous discovery, which requires patience and time. A photograph draws its beauty from the truth with which it is marked. For this very reason I refuse all the tricks of the trade and professional virtuosity which could make me betray my career. As soon as I find a subject which interests me, I leave it to the lens to record it faithfully. Andre Kertesz

Art divorced from life has no great significance. When art is separated from our daily living, when there is a gap between our instinctual life and our efforts on canvas, in marble or in words, then art becomes merely an expression of our superficial desire to escape from the reality of what is. To bridge this gap is very arduous, especially for those who are gifted and technically proficient; but it is only when this gap is bridged that our life becomes integrated and art an integral expression of ourselves. A true artist is beyond the vanity of the self and its ambitions. To have the power of brilliant expression, and yet be caught in worldly ways, makes for a life of contradiction and strife. Praise and adulation when taken to heart, inflate the ego and destroy receptivity, and the worship of success in any field is obviously detrimental to intelligence. Discovery is the beginning of creativeness: and without creativeness, do what we may, there can be no peace or happiness for man. We think that we shall be able to live happily, creatively, if we learn a method, a technique, a style: but creative happiness comes only when there is inward richness, it can never be obtained through any system. The freedom to create comes with self-knowledge; but self-knowledge is not a gift. One can be creative without having any particular talent…To be creative is not merely to produce poems or statues or children; it is to be in that state in which truth can come into being. Truth comes into being when there is complete cessation of thought; and thought ceases only when the self is absent, when the mind has ceased to create, that is when it is no longer caught in its own pursuits. When the mind is utterly still without being forced or trained into quiescence, when it is silent because the self is inactive, then there is creation. Jiddu Krishnamurti

Art is not meant to be a mirror held up to reality but a hammer with which to shape it. Bertold Brecht

Normal Film Processing

The following comments are made assuming you have endured one of my darkroom demonstrations. These remarks, therefore, are simply meant to be sort of reminders.

Clean work space, wipe off counter, wash hands.

Place scissors, can opener, film reels, developing tank and film within easy reach (remember you will be working in absolute darkness). Place film reels so that they are ready to load (spirals going the right direction) when you pick them up in the dark.

Turn off ALL lights (double check to make sure some errant safelight is not still on). Check for leaks under doors etc. The room must be absolutely Cimmerian, no safelights.

Open film cassette and push out film, cut off leader.

Wind film on to developing reel and cut off spool at end.

Repeat as necessary as per number of rolls you are processing.

Place reels in developing tank and put the lightproof top on. And do not forget, with some plastic tanks you must have the little spindle thing coming up through the reels otherwise you will have a light leak.

Turn on the light and put things back where they belong…the "clean as you go" system.

Prepare chemicals as per instructions for types of chemistry and type of film. The following instructions are assuming you are using Kodak HC110 film developer and Ilford HP5 Plus (400 ASA) film; but the overall process is the same regardless of what film and developer you are using. There are many excellent film developers such as Rodinal, D-76, Microdol-X and FG7 to name but a few. They all do pretty much the same thing and virtually any developer will work on virtually any film. You will discover that there are as many film-developer combinations as there are photographers. Everybody has his/her favorite.

Pour plain water at 68 degrees into the film tank and let it sit while you prepare the developing solution. I learned to pre-soak the film from Ansel. I think the idea is to saturate the film emulsion with water so that when it gets hit with developer the developing action is less violent. Also, I think it helps to eliminate the possibility of bubbles forming on the emulsion.
Prepare a quart of water at 68 degrees. HC110 developer is wonderfully convenient in that its ideal dilution is 1:31. So, measure one ounce of HC110 and pour it into a quart beaker and add the 68 degree water to make 32 ounces and voila, you have your developing agent with correct dilution and temperature. The other thing I like about HC110 is that one ounce of it will not affect the temperature of the water. Consistency is imperative in film development. If you screw up the development of your film you are SOL, you can’t go back to Timbuktu. So, it is a pretty good idea to always develop your film at 68 degrees at the same time so that you will know how to make adjustments, if necessary, later on. More on this later.

Pour out the pre-soak and pour in the developer and set the clock for five and a half minutes. Agitate the film for thirty seconds and set it down with a small bang on the counter or sink when done (to knock off any bubbles which might have lodged on the emulsion).

Keeping your eye on the clock, agitate the film for five seconds every thirty seconds thereafter. Meanwhile, prepare another liter of water at 68 degrees for the rinse and also check the temperature of the Fix to make sure it is not radically different from the developer. For best results, all chemistry should be at, or close to the same temperature. If your developer is 68 degrees and you pour in Fix which is 35 degrees you might "shock" the film and end up with reticulation. I used to do something like this when I was a little boy and had to wash the dishes every night. I discovered that if I put a crystal wine glass in very, very hot water and then put it immediately in very cold water, it would shatter. This sort of thing does not engender a good effect on photographic film. I will say, at this point, that recently I talked to one of the "techies" at Eastman Kodak in Rochester, New York and he told me that modern films are almost impossible to reticulate. They have worked on this at Kodak and made conventional films quite immune to even radical changes in temperature. The number for free tech advise from Kodak is: 1-800-242-2424.

When the developing time is complete, pour the developer down the drain and pour in the water rinse and agitate for thirty seconds and then pour that down the drain too. Black and white chemistry is relatively environmentally friendly. Color chemistry is bad. Color photography sucks anyway.

Now pour in the Rapid Fix and set the clock for five minutes and agitate for the first thirty seconds again and then once in awhile thereafter. When finished with the fix, while it is still in the developing tank, add two drops of Edwal Hypo-check solution to test the fixer. If a white precipitate forms, then the fix is bad. Don’t panic, just mix up some fresh fix and repeat the fix-stage.

At the end of five minutes agitate the film for another thirty seconds and then POUR IT BACK INTO THE BOTTLE.
If Hypo-clear is available use it for two minutes and pour it back into the bottle too) One word of caution when using public, gang darkrooms…you don’t really know who mixed the chemicals and how old or used they are do you. This is another good reason for using your own 16 ounce bottle of HC110.

When finished with the developer, rinse and fix and hypo-clear you need to wash the film for at least five minutes. The wash water should also be close to 68 degrees.

When the film has been washed the final step is a "wetting agent." Kodak Photo flo is the old standard but I prefer some stuff called LFN. Both simply allow the water to run off the film surface smoothly without leaving bubble/drying marks on the film. One cap-full of Photo-flo per liter is good or three drops of LFN. Agitate for thirty seconds and pour down the drain.

DO NOT RINSE THE FILM NOW, IT IS FINISHED AND READY TO HANG UP. So, hang it up.

When the film is hanging you have a choice. You can opt to squeegee the film or just to let it hang and drip dry. There are two fervent schools of thought about this. Ansel squeegeed his film. Oliver Gagliani abhorred the thought of running an object down the film emulsion. Ansel used an old windshield wiper blade as a squeegee; not a bad idea. Not recommended is the double-sponge gadget which might pick up grit and leave a scratch down the length of that precious film from Timbuktu. The choice is yours.

Put a clothespin at the bottom to weight it down so it dries straight.

When the film is dry, which might take an hour, cut it directly from where it hangs. Do not lay your precious film down on the counter where it will inexorably pick up static dust. Slide each cut section of five or six frames into the vinyl negative carrier.

Normal Print Processing

Clean work area, especially the enlarger. Craftsmanship and technique are key to good photography. Your prints will be a reflection of your level of craft (actually, they will be a reflection of everything about you).

Prepare chemicals using correct temperatures and dilutions. Sometimes you will have to just make-do (as in Nicaragua or Havana when the temperature of the "cold" water is 90 degrees. Normally, 68 degrees is the standard.)

The three main chemicals for print development are essentially the same as for negatives:
DEVELOPER (metol) STOP (acetic acid) FIX (Sodium Thiosulfate) sometimes called "Hypo" (Chemically, developers are alkaline and Fixers are acidic)

Set up three trays in the above order with an extra tray for water after the fix.

Dektol (manufactured by Kodak) is the most commonly used print developer. It can be used straight or diluted 1:1, 1:2, 1:3 or 1:7 if you want. The most common dilution is probably 1:3. The stronger the dilution the more energetically it works hence the more contrasty the prints. There are other excellent developers such as Neutol and Ethol. I like Ethol very much, diluted 1:4. Keep in mind that every rule, dilution, technique is subject to change and personal preference.

Dilute the Stop and Fix according to directions. Stop is not necessary for making a photograph. Its use is only as an inexpensive (it is only acetic acid) agent to "stop" the action of the developer and thereby help save and preserve the more expensive Fixer. Theoretically, you could go directly from the Developer to the Fix.

All of this chemistry should be at sixty-eight degrees. The temperatures, times and dilutions for printing are more flexible than for negatives. If you screw up making a print you can always go back and make another print, whereas you cannot re-make a negative. One thing to keep in mind however, is that the developing agents seem to work best at about 68 degrees, below which, hydroquinone, one of the main ingredients, ceases to work well. All print developing agents, as all chemistry, should look clear and clean. If you see some suspicious brown sludge in the tray, do not waste your time or paper. Furthermore, the developer should feel slimy to the touch and then when you put your finger in the stop you should feel immediately the elimination of the slimy feel. If not, the Stop is exhausted.

Set the chemicals up more or less as follows:

Anyway, once the chemicals are set up and you have chosen a negative, you are ready for the adventure of making a print.

NOTE: It is not a good idea to put one’s hands in photographic chemistry too much. As I said, black and white chemistry is not particularly toxic, but it is an alien substance and will, over the years have a deleterious effect on one’s derma. Further, make sure you do not go from the chemicals with wet hands to the enlarger. This, needless to say, will have a deleterious effect on the functioning of the enlarger. Fixer, when it dries, leaves a white, powdery residue and looks shitty when it covers an otherwise precision instrument like an enlarger.

The following suggestions are assuming you will be using a variable (poly) contrast paper which requires contrast filters. Most commonly these filters range in grades from one to five, one being least contrasty, five the most. 99 percent of the time you will want to be using the contrast filters in the enlarger when you make a print Therefore, always begin with a low-contrast filter in the enlarger. So, put a #2 filter in the enlarger or adjust the built-in filters to a grade 2 filtration.
Put the negative in the negative carrier, shiny side up and upside down, and slide that in the enlarger. Turn on the safelights if they are not already on and turn off the white lights.

Compose and focus the image on the easel using a blank piece of white paper. Focus the image with the lens wide open. This is a very important stage of making any photograph. The care and intensity you give to this stage will be very important in determining whether or not you make a good picture or an indifferent one. At this point you are re-composing the image which you first saw and then photographed and now are composing in its final version. Think about shapes, lines, figure-ground relationships. Think about what you were photographing and now try to include all that is salient and eliminate all that is superfluous.

NOTE: There is another school of thought which is good….that of the pure, un-cropped image. That is, you make a print of everything in the negative including the black borders of the negative (to do this you need, first of all, to file out your negative carrier making it larger) Cartier Bresson was the most influential advocate of the un-cropped image. Needless to say, the more you crop the more you lose in sharpness. There are wonderful arguments for which ever way you choose to go. It is a bit like playing Bach on a keyboard instrument…there is a good argument for keeping to the original instrument (clavichord); but there is a very convincing argument for playing Bach on a piano.

Note: Virtually every time you make a print you will have to make adjustments to the easel. If you are lucky you will have a good easel to work with, one with four adjustable blades. These blades are fragile. Such an easel costs at least $100. Do not adjust these fragile blades without picking up the top of the easel so they will not snag.

So, you have "composed" the negative in the easel, which I presume, is adjusted to the size you prefer, and you have double checked its focus with a grain focuser. Grain focusers are just that, they magnify the actual grains of silver halide in the emulsion. As you turn the enlarger focusing knob what you see is the grain itself going in and out of focus.

Sometimes it seems difficult to get the damn thing to work right, but it is worth the effort. Once the image is composed and focused, set the enlarger lens to 5.6. Set the timer to three seconds. You can just use a metronome also.
Turn off the enlarger.

Put a sheet of virgin paper in the easel, shiny side up. Be careful that you do not move the easel when you insert the paper. Some easels are old and the rubber footings are hard and the thing will slide around on the table. In making this test print I talk as though using a whole sheet of paper. In actual use we use a strip about a fifth of the whole sheet.
Hold a large card over the paper leaving about an inch of paper exposed, turn on the timer…tick, tick, tick (and the enlarger light goes off) Now, move the card over about another inch and repeat the process…tick, tick, tick do this about five or six times until you have run out of paper.

What you should have, at this point, is a piece of photo paper exposed in increments of three seconds each, thus; three, six, nine, twelve, fifteen and eighteen seconds and so forth.

Develop this "test strip" for the full time recommended by the manufacturer (one minute for resin-coated papers and three minutes for fiber paper) Absolutely don’t even think about pulling this test print out of the developer prematurely! It is a test so do it right.

Run the test print through the stop and fix. When it has been in the fix for about ten seconds, turn on,….NO, wait a minute! Before turning on the white light, look around the table and make sure you have put the top back on the $75 box of photo paper. Now turn on the white light.

A perfect test strip should have strips which are too light at one end and too dark at the other so you have a choice of the perfect exposure somewhere in between. Would that all of life’s decisions were so easy!!!

If the entire test print is too dark or too light, then go to the trouble of making another using a smaller aperture (if it is too dark) or a larger aperture (if it is too light). That is, if the image is too light it means it did not get enough exposure (light from the enlarger). If the image is too dark, it got too much exposure (light from the enlarger) You have to make some adjustment. In the darkroom you control exposure two ways: first, with the aperture (size of the hole in the lens) and second, with the amount of time the enlarger stays on. Remember also, that you are not beholden to "three seconds."

Some dense negatives might require five or ten seconds while other negatives might be thin enough to use two seconds. There are very few rules which should not be broken.

Determine the strip which is the best exposure. This is the main reason for making a "test print" …to ascertain the correct time and aperture for the right exposure of the final print.

NOTE: A test print however, if it is large enough….and sometimes I use a whole sheet of paper, is very useful for other things such as determining focus, graininess, composition, contrast, dust and areas which need dodging and burning. If the test print is full-size, for example, you can get an over-all idea of the image and at that point you might see a number of faults and decide not to proceed further… sort of like looking into an abdomen and seeing the cancer spread all over the place and saying to hell with it and just closing it up and wishing the guy luck. Parsimonious test strips give little information except exposure.

After determining the correct exposure, deciding for example, that twelve seconds is right; you might also be able to determine if the contrast is good or not. This will save you time later on. If it is very obvious at this point that the image is flat and needs more contrast, then remove the number 2 filter and put in a number three right now.

Set the timer for twelve seconds and go for it with a whole sheet of paper.

Put the paper in the easel. Check to be sure it is straight. Wait a moment to let all vibrations to stop (this is especially important if the enlarger head is cranked way up high). Also, caution everyone else to be still while your exposure is being made. If you are working at home it is not conducive to sharp prints to have somebody running up and down the stairs or the washing machine on spin-cycle while you are making an exposure in the darkroom.

Develop this print for the full time. Agitate the print gently and constantly the whole time in the developer. Be patient; things usually look too dark under the safelight. If you pull prints out of the developer early you will not be getting your money’s worth out of the silver and your blacks will not be as rich as they ought to be nor will your whites be as textured as they should be therefore.

Agitate this print in the stop for thirty seconds and in the fixer for another thirty seconds. Glance over to the table again to make sure your $75 dollar box of paper is closed and then turn on the white light.

This is an important print and has a lot to tell you and you have to learn to read these first prints well in order to make beautiful final prints as economically and painlessly as possible. Put it on the tray or glass and squeegee it off so it lies perfectly flat and excess fixer is off it. You have to be objective and self-critical as you look for nuances of excellence. How is the contrast? Are there areas which need burning and dodging? Look carefully all around the edges of the print for little things which might distract the viewer from the important things. Is it sharply focused? It might be the sort of image which begs for sharp focus and this one is not and therefore you can abandon it right now rather than wasting any more time on it. Maybe it is a portrait and only now you see that the person is yawning! If this is an image of George W. Bush then a yawn would be true to character. In most cases we would know, at this point not to waste any more time on it.

Prints which are keepers should stay in the fix for at least three minutes. Do not leave prints in the fix too long because it can cause excessive curling later when they dry and the fix can bleach prints if they are left in too long. Furthermore, especially when using fiber-based papers, the fix gets so thoroughly soaked into the (wood) fiber of the paper it is extremely difficult to wash (de-saturate) out.

Wash (fiber-base) prints for at least half an hour after running them through a hypo-clearing agent. Wash plastic prints for five minutes.

NOTE: Prints wash just as well in very cold water as warm water. In warm water they are prone to scratching and it is an unnecessary waste of energy.

Air-dry prints face down on fiberglass or plastic insect screen available at any decent hardware store. One can also hang them from a line with clothespins. Fiber papers may be dried in a drum drier. Putting plastic prints in a drum drier can have an extremely deleterious effect on one’s GPA….not to mention the effect of the poly-vinyl chloride gas on one’s lungs.

A useful and inexpensive item is a photographic blotting book, measuring about 9 x 15 in which you can put your damp prints to take home to dry at your leisure.

Photograms

Making photograms is fun and easy. Gather together a few objects and put them on the enlarging table. Turn out the white light. Put a sheet of photo paper in the easel, put the collected objects on the photo paper. Turn on the enlarger light (or the room white light) for a few seconds and turn it off. Take the stuff off the photo paper. Put the paper in the developer and watch the magic happen. Voila, you have an image of a leaf, ring, keys…whatever you placed on the photo paper. This enjoyably simple little exercise illustrates the wonderful possibilities of light-sensitive material. Man Ray was the most playful exponent of the photogram.

Contact Sheets

Most photographers make "contact prints" as a means of viewing their work and deciding what to print and also as a good way of filing one’s work. A contact sheet is also an excellent way of seeing how one sees and/or approaches a subject. Cartier Bresson always liked to look at student’s contact sheets. Some of us are too cheap to make contact sheets.
Basically, making a contact sheet is very much the same process as making a photogram.
Nowadays making a contact sheet is easy thanks to the clear plastic negative file holders available in any photo store. So, needless to say, put your negatives in such negative sleeves.

Put a negative-carrier in the enlarger and turn it on. Adjust the focus knob and height of the enlarger so that you get a rectangle about 11 x 14 inches glowing on the baseboard. Set the aperture at 5.6.

You need to know where this rectangle of light is when the light is off so put a couple pieces of tape at right angles in one corner. Turn off the enlarger light now.

Make a test strip of one row of negatives giving each frame two or three seconds depending on how dense they look.
Put a new piece of photo paper within the rectangle with emulsion side up of course. Put your negatives, in their nice clear plastic sleeve on top of the photo paper and then put a piece of glass on top of all that so that you have a sandwich of paper, negs and glass.

Set the timer for the appropriate number of seconds and make an exposure.

Addenda

Black and white chemistry is not particularly harmful but do not put your hands in it more than necessary. Do not use chemistry which looks or smells raunchy. Virtually all black and white photo chemicals should look clear and clean. Brownish, brackish, purple or other weird colorations are a sign of exhaustion and oxidation.

Do not smoke in the darkroom; smoke particles and dust are a photographer’s archenemies.

When using multi/variable/poly-contrast paper you increase contrast by going up in filter numbers. Psychologically it is a good idea to begin with less contrast and move up rather than down. Just keep in mind that the "ideal" conventional black and white print should have some kind of pure black somewhere and some sort of glowing white somewhere with a beautiful array of grays in between. A sonnet is normally fourteen lines of iambic pentameter. You might chose to write poems and call them sonnets and they will be nine or fifteen lines of free verse. The only thing that really matters is if it works; if it expresses what it is you want to express.

Remember to agitate your prints in the developer. Agitation does not need to be vigorous nor should you scratch the prints with the tongs or rub them on the bottom of the tray.

When you transfer prints from one tray to the next, pick them up by one corner and let them drain for a moment before moving them to the next tray. Do not put the developer tongs in the stop tray. Remember, these two chemicals are antithetical to each other, one is alkali and the other is acidic. You may however, go back and forth between the stop and the fix. (Actually, stop is not even a necessary part of the process; you could go directly from the developer to the fix.
When you look at your newly made prints under the white light, you will first of all be looking for contrast, composition, focus and over-all content. Remember also to back off a few feet and look at the bigger shapes, the figure-ground effect. As a matter of fact, once you have been working in the darkroom for a few hours it is a good idea to put up several prints next to each other and back off and look at them to see if you are printing consistently which you might want to do for a given series dealing with the same subject, for example.

Remember, the easiest way to make good prints is to make good negatives. The right information has to be there in the negative in order to make a good print. Ansel was fond of saying, "The negative is the score and the print is the final performance." If the right notes aren’t in the score then even the Leipzig Gewandhaus cannot make it sound good.

With a good negative you should be able to make a good final print in three or four tries (test strip, first print, adjusted second print, adjusted third print and then a final print) Voila! The hundred yard dash of the art.

Composition

Like beauty, composition (actually, a key element of beauty) is almost passé in much of contemporary art. There are some very highly regarded painters and photographers who seem to specialize in mundane, boring images. Beauty is almost politically incorrect. Even talking about beauty in art is politically incorrect in some places; if not politically incorrect, life-threatening.

Edward Weston said that, "Composition is simply the strongest way of seeing." That, of course, was said in an age in which art was still synonymous with beauty or, at least somehow related to beauty. Nevertheless, for those of us not caught up in the deconstructionist anti-culture brigades, we might still think about it and ask ourselves, as we are photographing if we are in fact, getting the strongest point of view, the angle which best illustrates whatever we are looking for and so forth. The point is to not be lazy. You might eschew "composition" and "beauty" but just don’t be lazy damn it. Work hard at whatever you are photographing. Move all around, explore every angle, high, low, from this side and that. Then at least you go away satisfied that you did, in fact, give it your best effort.

Weston also said that, "photographing by the rules leads to sterile inventory." Well, duh??? But we need to be reminded of this in all things. I love the story of Al Oerter the great discus thrower. For years discus throwers took just one turn in the ring before letting go. Oerter, all 6 feet 4 inches of him, figured that an extra turn would provide even more centrifugal force and so he spun around twice and threw the damn thing about ten feet further than all previous records. Screw the rules, especially when talking about aesthetics.

Ben Shahn spoke of content, the Shape of Content. He believed fervently in art’s inextricable association with life. Can work without content have shape? Maybe then it falls in the realm of design rather than art. But so much art since the 1950’s is about shape without (much) content. In any event, I believe that with visceral content, shape and form will take care of themselves.

Balance, for example, is certainly a key element in any image. Simplicity and balance might be the seminal attributes of most art. Debatable. Balance does not necessarily mean symmetry…a pound of feathers, pound of lead sort of thing. One might consider balance two ways – static and dynamic. Static might be more symmetrical as:

While dynamic balance might suggest movement or tension as:

Basically, in the consideration of composition one must simply develop an awareness of shapes, light, line, distance, figure-ground and subject matter and the relationship of all these things to whatever it is that you want to say in your image. Ask yourself if the image is top-heavy, symmetrical, too centered, crooked or whatever; just ask yourself. Always be asking yourself. Seldom be satisfied. Does it all work together. Could you turn it upside down and still have an interesting composition? Does the foreground work with the background? Is the viewer’s attention arrested by the right things? Blah blah blah.

In all honesty, I feel that trying to teach composition is a bit like trying to teach melody to musicians. All the verbiage is just bullshit. If one is nevertheless insecure about the compositional elements in one’s work then I suggest simply going to the library every day for a few months and enjoying oneself sitting there looking through the collection of art books from Giotto to Picasso. Just sit there leafing through page after page of the real masters of composition. Then you will know.

In the latter half of the Twentieth Century, thanks in part to the "Pop Art" school of Warhol, Johns and Lichtenstein et. al. there has been a definite shift away from beauty in art which of course therefore relegates composition and form to the dark Cimmerian recesses of deconstructionism. Nevertheless, it seems that such dialogues are healthy and illustrate, in their perennial elocution only that there is no right or wrong in art. The most important thing is that each artist come to grips with himself and express his own true, real inner beliefs in his work.

As Robert Henri reminded his painting students seventy-five years ago, we are each special, unique individuals and by virtue of that alone everything we do will be special and unique, which is to say, don’t waste a lot of time trying to be different because we already are different. If you patiently pursue your own inclinations then your own individual creative genius will manifest itself in genuine art.

But then I am reminded of Paul Strand’s remark that "either you have it or you don’t." This, of course, is a very un-American, un-democratic concept. But I know that it is quite true in athletics. It is a gift to be able to run a hundred meters in less than ten seconds. Period. There is no way you can learn to do that if you don’t have the gift. I think this is true in art as well. No amount of study, application of rules, or emulation of past masters will grant us entry into the foyer of bona fide art if we don’t got it somewhere in our soul.

In the final analysis, art seems to be somewhere in that league with the Bible and World War I about which there have been written endless dissertations of one opinion or another with only a thin gray fabric of universality woven in between all the rhetoric. One can rhapsodize forever about the origins of art, the nature of art, the reason for art and so forth while in the end, as far as the public is concerned, it all boils down to the words of W. W. Wolcott in 1918 in which he said, "In art I pull no highbrow stuff: I know what I like and that’s enough." Yeah, he probably went to a museum once when he was a kid.

I prefer what my father said, "Actually, there is no such thing as democratic art. Only the aristocrat can recognize superiority among the multitude, and knows the average among the coterie. "

The Law of Reciprocity (Exposure = time x aperture)

Essentially, photography means making pictures with light. So, the question is: How much light? How do we control that light?

Light is controlled by both the speed of the shutter and the size of the lens aperture in combination with each other. This is the "Law of Reciprocity" pure and simple. It is easy and necessary. Not knowing the LOR and trying to be a photographer is about like trying to be a pianist and not knowing how to read music.

The Law of Reciprocity works on the principle that each aperture opening is exactly twice as large as the next one and each shutter speed is exactly twice as fast as the previous one. Thanks to the arcane laws of optics the apertures are expressed in weird numbers :f2, f3.5, f4, f5.6, f8 and so forth. With the (shutter) speeds the doubling effect is obvious of course: 1 second, 1/2 second, 1/4 second and so forth.

For example, let us say that our meter tells us that the correct exposure for a scene at the horse race is 1/60th of a second at f4. That is the correct exposure, the correct amount of light to hit the film and move those little silver halide crystals around to make a good latent image. But you might not want to shoot those fleeting nags at only a 60th of a second. You say to yourself that you would like to shoot at a 500th of a second in order to "freeze" the action. How do you do that? Very simple: the LOR!

As can be seen from the preceding chart, 1/60th second at f4 will produce exactly the same photographic exposure as 1/500th at f1.4….or the same as 1/4th second at f16. It is simply a reciprocal factor between the size of the hole and the speed of the shutter.  

Why do you HAVE to know the Law of Reciprocity? Let us say you are photographing your brother in an important leg of the Tour de France and you want his features clearly distinguishable as he flies through the turn. You do not want some artsy-fartsy creative blur of an image; you want it sharp! But your light meter tells you the correct exposure is 1/15th second at f16! You can’t even hold the camera steady for a fifteenth of a second so what do you do? You go through the whole arithmetic of the LOR…1/15 at f16 is equal to a 30th at f11…is equal to a 60th at f8….is equal to a 125 at f5.6…is equal to a 250th at f4….is equal to a 500th at f2.8….is equal to a 1000th at 1.4 and there you have it, a shutter speed fast enough to "stop" the action. Or let’s say you are photographing some jewelry laid out on a table and you want every piece to be in focus so you know you need a small aperture (more on "depth of field" later on). Let us stick with a 60th at f4. Again you have to go through the arithmetic…..1/60 at f4 is equal to 1/30 at f5.6….is equal to 1/15 at f8….is equal to 1/8 at f11…is equal to 1/4 at f16 and there you have a small aperture which will give you maximum depth of field.

Understanding the LOR is also absolutely necessary in the darkroom. Let us say you have determined (from your test print) the correct exposure for a print is two seconds at f4. Sometimes we might want to run off a lot of hack prints as quickly as possible, but usually two seconds is too short because there is too much room for error and not enough time for manipulation such as dodging and burning. An ideal time for making a print is somewhere between ten and twenty seconds. So, what do you do? Okay, so 2 seconds at f4 is equal to 4 seconds at f5.6 which is equal to 8 seconds at f8 which is equal to 16 seconds at f11, which is a perfect time.

Depth of Field

Depth of field refers to the optical phenomenon of (apparent) focus along an axis from the camera to infinity. Simply stated, the smaller the aperture (the hole in the lens) the better (greater) the depth of field. Depth of field refers to the apparent focus of the image; apparent because exact focus can occur at only one point – the film plane – and of course it is impossible to have everything in a three dimensional scene fall exactly in focus on a two dimensional film plane.

However, a small aperture, by virtue of the optical characteristics of the lens (of all lenses, including our eyes) can give the illusion of complete sharpness (or focus). This happens when any image on the film plane forms a point less than 1/100 inch in diameter. Such a point appears to be in focus to the naked eye.

Some Things to Know

The following words and phrases are all part of the photographic jargon. Throughout the course of the semester they will become part of your vocabulary and you can start to throw them around with authority.

Variable/poly-contrast paper (and filters)
Depth of Field
Parallax
Underexposure
Overexposure
Bracketing
Grain
Burning and dodging
Single lens reflex, rangefinder and view camera
f stop
Incident light meter and reflected light meter
Fixed focal length lens
Bulb
Latent image
Zone System
ASA and ISO
Film density
Backlight
Film speed
Flare
Fog
Contrast
Highlight
Infinity
Stop down
Collage
Multiple exposure
Opacity
Sandwich
Stock Solution
Tonal range
Vignetting

Selenium Toning ( Ansel Adams)

If there are any art photographers making a living selling their work they can thank Ansel. Single-handedly, Ansel made the "art photograph" an object of value in the art world. Needless to say, if somebody is going to pay a thousand, ten thousand or fifty thousand dollars for a photograph they want to know that that image is going to be around for a few years. Drug store color prints are good for about five years and then they begin to change and disappear. A black and white print, properly made, should last hundreds of years. Selenium resists common air-born pollutants (mostly sulfur compounds) better than anything except gold and Platinum. This is the main reason for "toning" your prints in selenium. However, stronger dilutions of selenium can produce shifts in tone; sometimes blacks will seem blacker and whites whiter. I say "seem" because this reaction depends on several factors such as type of paper and developer, strength of dilution and time of immersion.

As I infer above, the following procedure is taken almost verbatim from one of Ansel’s books or workshop hand-outs, I forget which. Thanks Ansel.

Set up three trays:

Tray #1 Dissolve pure sodium thiosulfate crystals in water: (2 pounds per gallon of water).
Tray #2 11 cc Hypo-eliminator stock solution to 400 cc water then add 50 cc Selenium Toner.
Tray #3 100 cc Hypo-eliminator stock solution to 400 cc water (1:4)

Agitate prints in tray #1 for three minutes. (if the prints had been dried then they should be pre-soaked in water for three minutes)
Move to tray #2 and agitate therein for three minutes.
Move to tray #3 and agitate therein for two minutes.
Wash thoroughly.

Different brands of paper tone differently just as different grades of the same brand tone differently. The brand of print developer also has an effect on the tone; Dektol will produce a different black than Ethol LPD for example. The final tone is also, needless to say, affected by one’s printing procedures – the length of time a print is in the developer seems to have an effect. Another factor influencing tone is the hardener in the fixer. With a hardener, a purple-black tone is often the result. Some people like the purple-black. A lot of people overtone. Toning is like alliteration or vibrato. A little alliteration goes a long way; same with vibrato, same with selenium.

Some people have used toning very creatively, most notably, Ted Orland who often does what we call "split-toning." He dries the print and then covers parts of it with rubber cement and then tones it so that only the parts not covered with rubber cement are toned. He achieves a good effect.

The Zone System

The Zone System is for photographers what color theory is for painters. You don’t need to know a damn thing about primary and secondary colors to be a good painter. Nor do you need to know a damn thing about "The Zone System" in order to be a good photographer. Keep in mind that the Zone System was developed by people like Ansel and Minor White who were using sheet film, which was shot and developed individually. Most of us use one kind or another of roll film. Understanding what the Zone System is all about can be helpful though.

Basically, the Zone system, which was named as such and refined by Ansel Adams, is no more than a practical way of "exposing for the shadows and developing for the highlights." This elemental fact of photo-sensitive materials was known long before Ansel first saw The Golden Gate. In the olden days the smart press photographers and other folks out there taking pictures figured out that on a bright sunny day for example, they should give the film a bit more exposure (to compensate for those deep, dark shadows) and a little less development (to compensate for those bright, bright whites). The reason for this, to be as simple as possible about it, is that the film increases with density the longer it is in the developer. And by increase in density we are really talking about an expansion of highlights, those bright areas in the picture such as, light colored skirts, clouds, skins and white picket fences.

Remember, we are talking about a classical, perfect image here; one that has within it some area of pure black and some area of seemingly pure white and with a full, rich range of beautiful grays in between. Not all poems are sonnets requiring fourteen lines of iambic pentameter. Not all great photographs are sharply-focused, fine-grain, full-scale images either. To be perfectly honest, I think most good photographers simply "center the needle and push the button."

Nowadays, with automatic cameras, we don’t even have to bother with "centering the needle." We just look through the viewfinder and push the button.

Nevertheless, the problem remains, that film has a certain limited latitude; that is, it is capable of holding only so many values between pure black and pure white. Sometimes that range is too short such as a scene with too little contrast such as an overcast day (so we expand the development to build up density and thereby achieve more contrast). Oliver Gagliani photographs some interior places in Nevada which have very, very little inherent contrast. His prints however, are brilliant. How does he do it? Sometimes he develops his film for hours instead of the "recommended" ten or twelve minutes to build up incredible densities and luminous highlights never thought possible before.

On the other hand, a scene might have too much contrast such as on a bright, sunny day in the mountains. Our eyes can adjust (with a little help from our brain also) as we look into a doorway and perceive the detail in the shadows and then our eyes re-adjust as we move away to the bright sun-lit step in front of the doorway…no problem. But it is a problem for the film to hold that enormous range of values from deep shadows to dazzling highlights. The old press photographers just guessed at such things. If their light meter said 1/125 second at f11, and it was one of those squinting, shimmering afternoons at the races, they just took a guess and opened up a stop or two to say, 1/125 at f8 and then when they got back to the darkroom they gave the film a little less than normal development.

Remember, Ansel began his art-trek as a pianist. If Mozart wrote a G flat you play a G flat, not a C major or F Sharp. Ansel was not one to guess, or indulge in anything less than perfection. The guessing was fine for press photographers but quite inadequate for the art photographer who wanted to express certain things with certain values, certain tones in his prints. If Ansel thought a scene required a certain shade of black in a shadow he wanted to be sure that in the final print he could get that certain shade of black. He wanted to control the light in every scene he photographed leaving nothing to serendipity.

Although Ansel worked on the Zone System with his friend Minor White their individual concepts of what different shades of black (zones) represent differs considerably. For Minor, Zone II might be pure black while for Ansel Zone II might be almost black but with some detail. Today there are many practitioners of the so-called Zone System producing beautifully "zoned" images but no art. Furthermore, as many people as there are using the Zone System I would guess that there are as many interpretations of what one zone or another is to each. One thing is constant and that is Zone V. All "Zoners" agree that Zone V is equal to 18% grey, that ubiquitous value calibrated into every light meter.

Below is a brief description of the various zones.
Zone 0 - blackest black paper can produce
Zone I - black with no visible change from Zone 0
Zone II - slight tonality in very, very dark grey
Zone III - textured dark grey
Zone IV - dark gray with very good detail
Zone V - middle gray; Kodak 18% gray card, Caucasian skin in shade
Zone VI - light gray; Caucasian skin in sunlight
Zone VII - very light gray, almost white, weathered white wall
Zone VIII - quite white, last sign of detail
Zone IX - white; the clearest white paper can produce
Zone X - absolute, densitometric white white

Remember, the Zone System is only a tool based on the adage, "expose for the shadows, develop for the highlights."
Realize furthermore that there is no "correct" shade of gray that is right or wrong for any given subject. Just because Ansel thought Caucasian skin in bright sunlight was zone VI doesn’t mean you have to. You are the only one to finally determine what shade of gray expresses what you are trying to say in a given photograph. This is what black and white photography is all about….using the abstractions of black and white to make individually creative interpretations. The Zone System is simply a left-brain tool to help you get to where your right brain wants to go.

Pre-exposure

The principle behind pre-exposure is to build up the film base threshold, that is, to "fog" the film, so to speak. To an extent, it is rather like "flashing" in the darkroom. (We flash, that is fog, the paper when the print has highlights which are otherwise unmanageable.

Pre-exposure is necessary under conditions of extreme contrast in which more than a normal scale of values exists, that is a scene in which we wish to maintain some shadow detail but not lose the highlights either. Pre-exposure can be used in conjunction with variable development, or simply as an aid in achieving basically the same result as a Normal-1 development.

Remember that the Zone System is based on a geometric scale using units of light for each zone progressing logically from Zone 1 = 1 unit, Zone II = 2 units, Zone III = 4 units, Zone IV = 8 units and so forth. Understanding this principle is crucial to determining pre-exposure.

In the example below, if the dark side of the house is placed on Zone III, then the front of the house would fall on Zone VIII and correspondingly, the cloud on Zone X. By using pre-exposure or, as you will, fogging the entire film to a Zone II by photographing an evenly-lit, textureless surface, we can effectively raise the dark side of the house to a Zone III while "placing" it on Zone II. Use the preceding chart to see how this happens. The result is that the higher values are not effected by the pre-exposure and the lower values are raised. The pre-exposed negative will give us the dark side placed on Zone II but raised to Zone III, while the front of the house will fall on Zone VII and the cloud on Zone IX, if the high values are still too high for your taste then N-1 (Normal minus one) development will pull them down to Zones VI and VIII respectively.

Some Thoughts on Reciprocity Failure

The principles of the Law of Reciprocity do not apply in all situations. One such situation is very low light in which exposures of more than one second are required. Basically, in very dim light there simply is not sufficient light-energy to activate the film at the low end of the scale. The low values, that is Zones I, II, III, and IV simply do not register according to the rules in very low light. Think of light as a physical force like wind and water. A Flag will blow in the wind won’t it? It might even ripple in a breeze. But in a very slight whiff or tender breeze it might not budge right? There has to be enough wind-force to get it moving from inertia. Well, the same with film; it will respond to light, but it needs enough light to move those little silver halide crystals around….otherwise they just sit there.

Obviously, to compensate for this, one must over-expose to give those dark areas more (light) time to register on the film. Now, since we have "over-exposed" to obtain a true Zone III, the Zone VII meanwhile has migrated to Zone VIII since it had its proper light to register its proper value on the film.

Now that you have compensated for the reciprocity failure with over-exposure for the low values you must now compensate for the over-exposure (and its effect on the high values) with decreased development to bring that Zone VIII back down to the Zone VII you wanted in the first place. All of this, by the way, is assuming you do want detail in your low values (shadows)….not everybody is concerned about such things. Basically, we are back to the adage, "Expose for the shadows, develop for the highlights." Essentially, this is all there is to the Zone System. Ha ha. See the chart below for the correct factors of exposure and development.

By the same token, "reciprocity failure" can be used to our advantage when working in flat light situations and restricted development capability (such as using roll films). Say the luminance values in a given scene range only from Zone III to Zone VI. Under normal circumstances (using regular large format sheet film) you would simply give the film N+1 or even N+2 development to expand the range. On the other hand, it that is not possible (because you are using roll film and do not want to "soup" the entire roll as N+1 you can use "reciprocity failure" to your advantage by adding some filters, (colored or neutral density) in order to obtain a longer exposure (assuming you have already stopped down all the way)….something on the order of two or three seconds, thus artificially creating some reciprocity failure. Assuming the stipulated exposure was then for three seconds at f45 you will now have to compensate for reciprocity failure at Zone III and thereby give an adjusted exposure of at least six seconds which will then provide good Zone III detail and meanwhile, with the extra time, the Zone VI will have migrated to Zone VII and you will have a negative which will give you a full-scale print!

Film Speed, Grain and other Mysteries

Much of the following information about film emulsions was plagiarized from an article written by a genuine photographic scientist who, I think, works for or used to work for "Big Yellow" (Eastman Kodak). I forget his name and have long-since misplaced his article. Whoever he is I hereby acknowledge his generous, precise, informative elucidation of the mystery of film, acutance, grain and so forth. A.B.

In a sense, it is a congenital problem, tied up with the circumstances of birth. When a film (or paper) is made, the light-sensitive silver halide crystals are created by precipitation with the still-liquid emulsion before it is coated onto the support material (film or paper). At first, these crystals are very, very tiny which means automatically that they are low in speed since they have very little surface area with which to accept light. The light sensitivity of the crystals depends upon their chemical composition as well as their size but the manufacturer almost always tries to maximize speed by optimizing the composition so in the end SIZE is the main factor affecting (controlling) speed (ASA/ISO).

So, when an emulsion is first made it’s speed is low because the crystals are tiny. In addition, since the crystals are all created at about the same time and under similar chemical conditions they are very nearly of the same small size which means that they all have very nearly the same sensitivity to light which means they will all respond to light at very nearly the same time.

Imagine that we expose such an emulsion to dim light. At first, if the light is dim enough (or the exposure short enough) the film will not respond at all (remember the analogy with the wind and the flag). Then if we gradually increase the exposure (the amount of light) we will eventually cross the threshold – the point at which the emulsion just begins to respond to light. But, since all the crystals are identically tiny, they all respond at virtually the same time. If you were to chart this on a graph you would get a very straight, steep line. So, if we expose the film to even more light nothing more will happen since all the crystals are already exposed. Such a film is either turned on or turned off with little or nothing in between. We call this a very slow, high-contrast film; the sort of film used in graphic arts for line copies, images or text with no grays.

If the emulsion is to be used for general purpose continuous-tone photography like most of us do, it needs to have a higher speed which requires bigger silver halide crystals and it needs to have a wide range of crystal sensitivities with some crystals responding to shadow exposures (bigger crystals) and some not responding until they are zapped by a lot of light (smaller crystals. In short, general-purpose films require a wide range of crystal sizes.

The manufacturer achieves these goals by aging the still-wet emulsion in an artful process that allows some crystals to grow at the expense of others. The result is to generate some larger crystals and some smaller ones at the same time but with an increase in average size. So the film speed and exposure-range both increase but at the cost of graininess. With an increase in graininess, resolving power suffers of course. The manufacturer gives up some advantages in order to gain others. Frankly, I think most manufacturers bend toward speed rather than acutance or sharpness; they manufacture films mainly for an amateur market and most snapshooters who come back from the supermarket one-hour print service with a handful of 3 x 6 prints could care less about maximum sharpness.

One more factor influencing "sharpness" is the thickness of the emulsion. Modern 35mm lenses are incredibly sharp, capable of resolving 200 lines/mm which is actually a good deal more than many 4 x 5 lenses can do. So why can’t a 35mm camera take pictures as sharp as a 4 x 5???

The problem is this: that when fine detail in the subject is squeezed down by the camera lens to fit on a 35mm negative, nearby details end up being microscopically close to each other. If the camera lens is very, very good these details will be resolved in the image as it arrives on the surface of the film. But consider what happens as the light comprising this detail, passes through the emulsion, with its tightly-packed clusters of silver halide crystals.

The emulsion of a typical film is thick enough to hold several layers of crystals – it is "several layers deep" so to speak. As the light passes through the first layer of crystals some of it ricochets from the crystals instead of being absorbed by them and this light goes off at angles, some of it being absorbed by other crystals further down in the emulsion. Since this light ricochets before being absorbed it ends up making a sliver image not where it is supposed to be but a little to the side. This is called irradiation and its effect is to blur the microscopic detail of the negative image. As a result, the developed image on the negative will not contain all of the fine detail that was sent to the film by the lens. Needless to say, a similar effect may occur during printing (enlarging).

The result of all this is to put small negatives at a distinct disadvantage compared to big negatives even though the optics available for smaller negatives are better. Three things can be done to ameliorate this. One is to forget about photography and take up painting; the second is to use films with extremely thin emulsions (one crystal layer thick, so to speak) to preclude irradiation. Two such films are Kodak Tech-Pan and H&W VTE Pan. These films are usually used only for litho and copy work but, with great care, in medium contrast situations and with the appropriate developers they can be used as continuous-tone films.

The second realistic solution is to use special developers which act only on the surface of the emulsion without developing the crystals further down.

Actually there is still another "solution" which is to forget all the super-hype about fine grain and just make images which speak to us regardless of the grain, shadow detail and zonal effulgence.

And then again, as I discovered while discussing this subject with a class recently, regarding landscape images and why we seem to crave detail (fine grain) therein, I realized that there is so much wonderful detail in Nature …every leaf is an entire system of skeletal and vein-like things going on, every rock is laden with a myriad suggestions of the Big Bang, every cloud has global particles of the hydrologic cycle, every big horizon suggests a Copernican view of the universe. To see this with less than maximum detail would be like listening to the slow movement of Beethoven’s Ninth on a pocket transistor radio. I mean, there do seem to be times for fine detail.

But, unarguably, in the final analysis, the main thing is the gesture, the rapport between photographer and subject, the soul, the significance o
f the image is more important than all the fine grain in the whole world.

The Ultimate Archival Print
P. Aronia

Recommended procedure for obtaining image permanence consistent with contemporary technology.

I.  Making the Image

1. The basic final print should be a carbon print made with electrolytically purified carbon.

2. This carbon print should be transferred to a sheet of pure platinum one-inch thick and four inches larger on a side than the image.

3. Before transferring the carbon print on to the platinum, the platinum sheet must be bent to match the exact curvature of the earth at the exact latitude and longitude of the point of final deposition (see III - Location) This is done to prevent any long term distortion of the image caused by metal creep due to uneven gravitational pull.

4. After transfer of the image from the carbon support material to the platinum plate, the gelatin of the image should be completely vaporized using a pulsed laser. Use of a pulsed laser serves two purposes:

a. prevents any thermal distortion caused by heating needed to evaporate the gelatin
b. prevents any chemical contamination which might be caused by burning the gelatin using other methods.

5. A recommended, but not required procedure, is that before vaporizing the gelatin the print should be impressed into the surface of the platinum plate. In this case, the final image would exist not only as a deposit of carbon, but also as a relief intaglio in the plate itself.

II .  Storage

6. The final plate containing the image should be placed in a container of pure platinum which is then pumped to ultra-high vacuum for one week to get rid of any gaseous impurities which might still remain in the carbon. At the end of this time the container would be sealed by welding it closed with pure platinum.

7. The sealed platinum container would then be placed in a lead container with 6 foot thick walls to protect against radioactivity.

8. This lead container should then be enclosed in a chrome-molybdenum stainless steel box with ten-foot thick walls.

9. The entire platinum-lead-steel container should then be buried in a vault 500 feet below the surface of the earth in an area known to be seismically stable such as northeast Nevada.

III.  Location of Vault

10. The site of the vault should be located so as to reduce the possibility of damage due to natural or man-made causes. It must be kept secret at all costs and be:

a. away from any area of natural or geologic activity, in an area of minimum seismic or volcanic activity or faults.
b. away from any valuable or potentially valuable mineral or petroleum deposits to preclude the danger of mining damage.
c. away from any large city or other strategic center to prevent war damage.

11. The entrance to the shaft to the vault should be concealed to reduce the possibility of detection and robbery;

a. after being dug and the box installed, the shaft should be refilled with rock that was originally removed to reduce the possibility of detection by gravity, magnetic field or vibrational devices.
b. Needless to say, the surface of the shaft, when installation is complete, should be covered, re-planted, groomed to exactly match the original landscape.

Summary

If the above outlined procedures are followed, and if sufficient security measures are instituted to prevent anyone who worked on the location of the storage site from ever divulging the location (need we be more specific?) we can, with reasonable certainty assume that this photograph will be safe from damage or destruction for at least several billion years. It is hoped that well before the sun becomes a supernova, expanding and engulfing the earth in its hot gases, a means might be found to remove the print in its storage box to a safer part of the universe.

Instant Art Critique Phrase Generator*

Art criticism is serious business. One needs to be prepared to do battle with the dragons of disdain with articulate professionalism. The following is a brief guide to survival in the arena of pedagogical predators. Pick at random any five-digit number such as 80479, then read off phrase number 8 in table A, phrase number 0 from Table B and so on. The result is a CRAP (Critical Response to the Art Product) sentence. Add a few more five-digit numbers to make a longer CRAP statement. After you have mastered the basic technique you can realize the full potential of CRAP by arranging the phrases in DAECB order , BCEAD order and so forth. Soon you can produce CRAP critiques as easily and fluently as anyone in your art department.

Table A

1. I am troubled by how…
2. With regard to the issue of content…
3. I find this work menacing/playful because of the way…
4. It should be added that…
5. Although I am not a photographer/painter, I think that…
6. Ummmmmm
7. I agree/disagree with some of the things that have just been said but..
8. I’m surprised that no one’s mentioned yet that…
9. It’s difficult to enter into this work because of how…
10. As an advocate of the Big Mac Aesthetic I feel that…

Table B

1. the internal dynamic
2. the sublime beauty
3. the disjunctive perturbation
4. the optical suggestions
5. the reductive quality
6. the sebaceous qualities
7. the iconicity
8. the aura
9. the mechanical mark-making
10. the metaphorical resonance

Table C

1. of the biomorphic forms
2. of the sexual signifier
3. of the negative space
4. of the spatial relationships
5. of the facture
6. of the purity of line
7. of the Egyptian motifs
8. of the gesture
9. of the figurative/narrative live space mark
10. of the sexy fish

Table D

1. verges on codifying
2. seems very disturbing in light of
3. contextualizes
4. endangers the devious simplicity of
5. brings within the realm of discourse
6. makes resonant
7. visually and conceptually activates
8. notates
9. spatially undermines
10. threatens to penetrate

Table E

1. the accessibility of the work
2. a participation in the critical dialogue of the 90’s
3. the eloquence of these pieces
4. the remarkable handling of light
5. the inherent overspecificity
6. the disjunctive formal juxtapositions
7. the essentially transitional quality
8. the larger carcass
9. the substructure of critical thinking
10. the exploration of montage elements

Example: The five-digit number proposed above (80479) would produce the following CRAP: "I’m surprised that no one has mentioned that the metaphorical resonance of the spatial relationships visually and conceptually activates the substructure of critical thinking."

With this simple tool you will never be at a loss for commanding bulshit. Use this marvelous tool to challenge, amaze, menace and maul your friends and enemies.

*Recommended to Arthur Bacon by Jerry Uelsmann

Suggested Reading

Ansel Adams - Natural Light Photography
Robert Adams - Beauty in Photography
Ernst Bacon - Notes on the Piano
Honore Balzac - The Unknown Masterpiece
Hector Berlioz - Autobiography
Richard Boleslavsky - Acting: the first lessons
Carlos Casteneda - Journey to Ixtlan
Robert Henri - The Art Spirit
Eugen Herigel - Zen in the Art of Archery
James Joyce - Portrait of an Artist as Young Man
Somerset Maugham - The Moon and Sixpence
Orland and Bayles - Art and Fear
Robert Pirsig - Zen and Motorcycle Maintenance
Ben Shahn - The Shape of Content
Irving Stone - The Agony and the Ecstasy
Susan Sontag -On Photography
Hiram Williams -Notes for a Young Painter
Tom Wolf - The Painted Word
Henrik Van Loon - The Arts
Jacques Barzun - The Use and Abuse of Art
Rollo May - The Courage to Create
Charles Hawthorn - Hawthorn on Painting
Emile Zola - The Masterpiece
Jussim and Lindquist - Landscape as Photograph
Vincent Van Gogh - Letters to Theo
Alan Watts - Zen and the Arts
Man Ray - Self Portrait

I suggest that one also familiarize oneself with the following people and their work: Ansel Adams, Robert Adams (no relation), Bravo, Atget, Brandt, Brassai, Callahan, Cameron, Cartier-Bresson, Coburn, Dater, Emerson, Frederick Evans, Walker Evans, Fenton, Frank, Halsmann, Heinekin, Hine, Jackson, Karsch, Kertescz, Lange, Moholy-Nagy (pronounced like garage), Siskind, Smith, Steichen (pronounced as with a long "i"), Stieglitz (pronounced as with a long "e"), Strand, Sudek, Talbot, Vroman, Uelsmann, Weston, Welpott, Clarence White, Minor White….and others such as Salgado, Bernhard, Davidson, Orland, Minnick and Capa.

Photo Quiz Prototype

1. Why do you suppose that most creative, art photographers prefer to work in black and white rather than color?
2. Your light meter breaks and you at the Oakland Coliseum in the bright sun using Tri-X (400 ASA) film. What is a good "ball park" exposure. That is what is the "sunny 16" rule (of thumb)?
3. If you were going to photograph the big anti-nuclear waste-dump rally next week how much and what kind of film would you take?
4. If you were photographing a landscape with some great white cumulus clouds they would be zone (a) two (b) five (c) eight?
5. If I am taking a portrait of my eighty-five year old aunt with a face creased like the Talkeetna Glacier would I be better off using 400 ASA film or 32 ASA film and why?
6. Which would be easier to see through, an over-exposed negative or an under-exposed negative?
7. If your negatives are really thin, with some totally clear areas, what is most likely wrong with them?
8. If you are photographing a car race and your meter tells you that the correct exposure is 1/30/ at f16 what would you do to make (increase) the shutter speed fast enough to "stop’ the action?
9. What is the most obvious result of over-developing your negatives? Could this information be useful the next time you are photographing on a grim, overcast day?
10. Which film is grainier, slow film or fast film…..and why?
11. How can you tell if there is film in your camera? There are at least three ways.
12. What is close to the correct exposure in a modern public building or other well-lit public place with Tri-X film (400 ASA)?
12. Your test strip tells you the correct exposure is two seconds at f5.6. What time and aperture would you use in making your print, especially if you anticipate doing a bit of dodging and burning?
13. Assuming you are working alone in the darkroom, what is an excellent way to "tone down" some nasty, chalky highlights?
14. Let us say you have some areas of a print that are not bright and snappy enough with a straight, normal print job; what is one way to liven-up those whites when you make the next prints?
15. What does ASA stand for? What about ISO?
16. How do we use Potassium ferrocyanide in the darkroom?
17. How does one "solarize" a print?
18. How do you make a "photogram?"
19. What is one good reason for going to the effort of making "window mats" for your prints?
20. In the darkroom, when you switch from a number one contrast filter to a number two, does the time change? How about when you switch from a number three to a number five?
20. Which filter gives a higher contrast print, a one or a five?
21. let us say that everything else is just right in the print but the sky is a bit too dark….do you dodge or burn?
22. What sort of pictures is Ansel Adams known for?
23. What sort of pictures is Cartier Bresson known for?
24. What is the best kind of camera?
25. What is probably the most important thing in a portrait to have in focus?
26. Why would I say that Michael Jackson is to music what color is to photography? You don’t have to agree, but I would like to know why.
27. If you are taking a head-and-shoulders portrait would you prefer a 28mm lens or a 105mm lens (assuming you are using a 35mm camera). And why.
28. Let us say that there is some distracting stuff going on in the background of this head-and-shoulders portrait of Mr. Arafat. Would you use a small or a large aperture and why.
29. Any and every light meter is designed to read the "foot candles" of light reflecting from or, as the case may be, falling on, a subject. Basically, these meters, yours included (the one in your camera) average all the light reflecting from a subject and then suggest a correct exposure. This average is 18% grey or, in Ansel’s Zone System, Zone V. if the scene being photographed is nothing more than a blank white wall, how would it be rendered according to the meter, assuming, of course, that you do not make any adjustments? That is to say, does this stupid little gadget know the difference between a white wall and a black wall?
30. So, let us say you are walking through El Mercado Oriental in Managua, Nicaragua expecting some "action." It is, as usual, a bright sunny day and you have 200 ASA film in your camera. Some kids might ride by on their bikes or there might be a fight. You have to be ready to shoot as fast as possible. How would you set your camera – aperture, shutter speed and distance – in order to be prepared to take this Pulitzer Prize winning image?
31. What would you say is the most important thing about taking any photograph?
32. Let us say you are making a print. Your exposure is 16 seconds at f8 with a number three filter. The print is flat as hell and clearly needs a number five contrast filter. What would the adjusted exposure be? Keep in mind that an ideal print exposure time is between ten and fifteen seconds.
33. Make up your own example of bracketing.
34. You are in a room and the person you want to photograph is sitting by the window, actually, in front of the window…the window is behind him. We call this kind of situation back-lighting. Why is this a technical problem and how do we solve it?
35. If the minimum hand-held shutter speed with a given lens is 1/60 second and the exposure indicates 1/8 second at f16, what would the correct equivalent exposure (aperture x speed) be at 1/60 second?
36. You are taking a picture at 1/125 second at f8 in manual mode. You decide to add a polarizing filter with a two stop factor. Maintaining the same depth of field, what would your new exposure be?
37. When photographing in fog there is (a) more….or (b) less….light than is apparent to the mind’s eye. Circle the correct answer.
38. So, are you inclined to (a) over expose… or (b) under-expose your film on that foggy day? Circle the correct answer.
39. As aperture size increases f-numbers get bigger or smaller?
40. In order to keep an equivalent exposure, as shutter speed is reduced, aperture size must be increased or decreased?
41. ASA 25 film is faster or slower than 400 ASA film?
42. As ASA/ISO numbers increase, film sensitivity increases or decreases?
43. In order to decrease depth of field (which one might want to do in taking a portrait) the f-number should be increased or decreased….that is should the aperture be "opened up" or "stopped down?"
44. In order to increase blur (accentuate movement) shutter speed should be increased or decreased?
45. Your camera’s shutter stays open (a) half as long …or (b) twice as long at 1/125 second as at 1/250 second?
46. As f numbers get smaller the size of the hole gets bigger or smaller?
47. A lens opening of f8 is twice as big as a lens opening of f………..?
48. What is the next smaller lens opening from f11?
49. F8 admits half or twice as much light as f5.6?
50. Which gives less exposure, 1/8 second or 1/5// second?
51. Let us say that your exposure for a given still-life scene is 1/60 at f11. To be sure you get a perfect negative you decide to "bracket." So, give the two outside exposures to complete the "bracket."
52. A scene is metered at 1/60 at f11. In order to stop the action a shutter speed of at least 1/500 is necessary. At 1/500 second what would the correct aperture be?
53. You are at a picnic and the battery goes dead in your light meter. It is a brilliant sunny day and you are beneath an enormous lucent white parachute strung between the Cottonwoods. What is a good exposure assuming you are using Tri-A film?
The Center for Advanced Study in Loa, Utah remains ambiguous as to whether there is an actual relationship between good photographs and technical proficiency.

A Useful Chart (Film Development)

Most films within the same ASA range are develop-able within the same time/temperature parameters with most common developers. For example, Tri-X with a 400 ASA rating and Agfapan 400 both require approximately the same time and temperature in D-76. In a pinch, the precept applies to most films and developers. I mean, if you are accustomed to using D-76 and you find yourself in a strange darkroom having to develop several rolls of film and there is nothing on the shelf but XYZ Generic film developer, just follow the directions for the film with the ASA closest to yours and you will at least, end up with workable negatives. The following chart gives some times for common developers. 68 degrees is the recommended temperature. Remember that any and every film developer time/temperature recommendation is just that, a recommendation, a starting point. After a while you will come to the perfect time/temperature combination that is right for your equipment and your personal predilections. The very best treatise on film development, bar none, is The Film Developing Cookbook by Stephen Anchell and Bill Troup. This is biblical for film processing.

Center for Advanced Study and Visual Dialogue. Loa, Utah.