Expecting this photographic weekend to be wright-off due to a cheap bottle of 3 Barrels brandy and some gale force wind and rain, somehow, I managed to get some darkroom printing done. This shit blog providing mild motivation to get a post out; despite all the odds, being knacked, half arsed and pissed off after another darkroom fuckup, here I am again, with another post.
No weekend would be complete without some screw up. This weekend I noticed some tiny, hardly notable water marks on my negatives. After printing the image, badly, that tiny water mark on my 35mm negative has totally buggered the whole image up with a massive shit patch in my sky. What’s worse is it doesn’t seem to be totally coming off with further washing.
Prime suspect as of today is that my tap water has gone to crap. After several burst water pipes in the village, my tap water looks cloudier than it used too. I might switch the last 2 negative washes to distilled water and maybe use a squeegee, I tend to avoid them things like the plague on my wet negs.
A few weeks back I tried my Amaran 60d. Inspired by an image by Julia Margret Cameron, it had a spiritual heavenly light that I wanted to emulate. I thought the Amaran 60 could be a handy little thing to take onto location shoots to add a bit of Godly light. It takes the affordable and compact Sony batteries as opposed to the V-Mount style. I was worried it would be a smidge underpowered; after trying it I think I need a slightly different approach to using it. I got the cute little soft box, it about fits in a backpack along with a load of other assorted photoshoot crap.
Now I have studied the images; I bloody love some of them. Other than being mesmerized as to how Holly is the perfect Pre-Raphaelite muse ever to live, I’m liking the lighting that isn’t overpowering or too obvious. I feel in future I could tweak my technique a little to maximize the LED’s effect whilst respecting its low power output. My approach was to find a dark area in the woods then light up Holly until her skin was Zone 6 on my spot meter and the image was still able to be shot handheld. I found Holly’s head gets illuminated properly and the background too dark. The light was also a little harsh and my DOF dangerously shallow. Next time I will take a tripod, expose for the shadows then add just a touch of light onto the model. I may also need to investigate hiring a small mule from Harbury Donkey Rescue.
My bigger worry is that artificial lighting is hardly ever used in any images I love. If you look at 1970s/folk Vinyl cover art, a wonderful universe of whimsical arty photography mostly hard to find on the web, so many photographs of dreamy woman’s faces are in full shadow, half tones and flat light. There are not that many images I like with what the ‘photography world’ expects from a well-lit subject. Psychologically it’s hard to look at some portraits and not imagine them being better with some “Perfect” lighting workshop 101 illumination. I probably need to study some images more that really work with lighting you’d expect to create a crap image but unexpectedly makes it brilliant. That said, I will probably use this 60W again, I just need to make sure I don’t go crazy with it.
