On May 20, 2005, at 8:02 AM, Ann Sanfedele wrote:
...Did you ever make paper negs in the darkroom, Godfrey? WHen I was
first doing darkroom stuff I think the first year was devoted to "playing"
have some pretty silly looking stuff from those days.
Yes, reminds me of a story from my past:
Some years ago (early 1980s), I had a little side business photographing a few of the local artists' work for their portfolios. I didn't have much money for a sophisticated light setup. One of the artists did ceramic sculptures of exquisite delicacy and form ... I just could not seem to get the lighting correct AND consistent in color, every piece seemed to shift when expressed on transparency film and it made the portfolio presentation look awful. Mostly likely due to the inexpensive lighting I was using, but there wasn't much I could do about that. She needed transparencies and needed them in a hurry...
I suggested that we try Polaroid B&W transparency film and see if the results would be acceptable. Removing the color shifting and lighting them for B&W was far far easier and I quickly came up with a two page selection of mounted transparencies for the portfolio that she was delighted with. Her submission to one show was accepted on the first round, we were both happy.
About a month later, she calls me up and says, "This other group I want to submit to wants 8x10 prints ..." I didn't want to re-shoot the pieces and she liked the slides we'd done already, so I quickly put them into the enlarger, printed an 8x10 B&W contact negative from each, and then contact printed a positive for the portfolio submission. They came out very nicely!
Godfrey
