I. Light is Light, Dark is Dark. The Twain must never Meet.
II. Thou shalt Respect the Distinction between Wet and Dry Areas.
III. Thou shalt Hew to the Precision of Thy Process.
IV. Thou shalt not Contaminate with Arbitrary Chemical Traces.
V. Thou shalt Observe the Passage of Time in all its Manifestations and Ramifications.
VI. Thou shalt Regard Thy Neighbors’ Work as Thine Own.
I don’t want to die:
“In life outside music, ambiguity is not necessarily a positive attribute—it is often a sign of indecision and, in politics, a lack of firm direction—but in the world of sound, ambiguity becomes a virtue in that it offers many different possibilities from which to proceed. Sound has the ability to make a link between all elements, so that no element is exclusively negative or positive… Feeling is an expression of the struggle for balance, and it cannot be allowed independence from thought. As Spinoza shows us, joy and its variants lead to a greater functional perfection; sorrow and its related affects are unhealthy and should therefore be avoided. In music, though, joy and sorrow exist simultaneously and therefore allow us to feel a sense of harmony. Music is always contrapuntal, involving an interplay of independent voices, in the philosophical sense of the word. Even when it is linear, there are always opposing elements coexisting, occasionally even in conflict with each other. Music accepts comments from one voice to the other at all times and tolerates subversive accompaniments as a necessary antipode to leading voices. Conflict, denial and commitment coexist at all times in music.”
-Daniel Barenboim, “Music Quickens Time”
Photograph: Frederick Sommer
National Novel Writing Month, or NaNoWri Mo, is a non-competition, a challenge to oneself, wherein writers work to complete a 175-page, 50,000 word novel in one month. It’s an up-front admission by that organization: “Make no mistake: You will be writing a lot of crap.’ The fo-do version of this is Solo Photo Book Month, wherein workers make a virtual on-line “book” of at least 35 pictures inside 31 days.
Scraps of paper have been piling up all around me for decades. Since I’ve never had a cigarette, this has not been much of a hazard. Everything seemed to have pictorial potential: notebooks, hand-drawn maps, found notes, anonymous grocery lists (someone has a website of these; hell, that can be said about everything), signs I’ve appropriated (Walker did it too). Keeping in mind the dicta of Garry Winogrand — “Any and all things are photographable” — and of Harold Allen, that what matters is where you put the camera and where you place the edges, I plumbed my archive and plucked pix thereof.
Ray Metzker speaks of working from a set of concerns, and that’s what happened with this little project. In no particular order, there was the texture of the surfaces, the limited (but real) color palette, regard for “horizon” in each image, the writers’ script, their legibility, and the words themselves.
Because I have attained certain level of cyber-capability (just enough), and working under their deadline, the display of the images isn’t what I envisioned (double-page spreads, blank pages as caesurae). If (when) this appears as a hard copy through blurb or whatever, those and other issues will get resolved to some degree. “Writing” is rewriting.
Most of the other 221 completed books employ more traditional / expected / pictorial subject matter, and may be easier to take at first viewing than this subject matter. Please offer me some feedback on this experiment; thanks.
“MIT ‘develops’ a camera-like fabric.” Put all your equipment on craigslist.
http://theonlinephotographer.typepad.com/the_online_photographer/2009/07/picture-postcards.html
It’s true: processing film ranks right up there with running, and with making good-looking entrees.
Let’s consider what one would need to make ’em (negatives) at home and how to do it. You can find this information at plenty of locations on the World Wide Intercom, so I’ll do it as though we’re chatting.
Bare minimum: reel & tank & lid & cap, clock, thermometer, dark. Developer, fixer, water.
One step up: a photo thermometer, a (darkroom) timer, hypo clearing agent, wetting solution.
The chemicals, in reverse order:
Wetting solution is sold as LFN or Photo Flo 200 (you don’t need Photo Flo 600). For either, drop a drop or two into a pint of water for a final rinse of 30-60 seconds. Any suds you generate in this will run off and leave nothing on the film. The pint is usually good for all day. An alternate method I’ve not tried is to spray the film, hanging in position to dry, with distilled water from a plant, Mister (I mean, a plant mister).
Hypo clearing agent (HCA) breaks down the fixer that remains on film (or in paper fibers) so that the wash times may be kept to an efficient minimum. Implied in that: enough washing makes HCA unnecessary. Kodak makes it, and so does Edwal and others; it’s easy to make with just a couple of common chemicals and a scale. You know what, though: just pick up a quart of Perma Wash. 3 ounces makes a gallon; nothing to it.
Fixer is a sine qua non of processing, so get over the aroma, OK? Most gang darkrooms use Kodak Rapid Fixer (there are equivalents) because it’s cost effective, but the critical thing is not to overextend its use. It’s very important to know how much material has gone through a given batch of working solution fixer. I’ve always been reluctant to mix from packages in powder form (fear of contamination), and the extra expense of liquid concentrate is a small upgrade. Until I changed fixers a while back (BIG upgrade; more later) I usually preferred Edwal Quick Fix.
“Working solution?” Most, if not all, rapid fixer liquid concentrates get diluted 1:3 for film and 1:7 for prints, although there are reasons to stick with 1:3 for paper as well. This means that for our paltry needs, eight ounces of rapid fixer makes a quart of working solution fixer good for a dozen rolls of film in a six-month period. Be sure to stir thoroughly, until all the striations are gone, and it will remain in solution from then on.
So. If you make HCA by mixing one ounce of Perma Wash into a third of a gallon of water, that will last as long as the quart of fixer. Keep a tally and dates on the containers. Simple and reliable.
The biggest, most important deal of all is the developer. Perhaps no one but you will be aware of the difference that the choice of a developer makes, but oh, you’ll know. Seems odd, I know, not to touch on the fine points of types of grain and compensating qualities and exposure indices, but right now let’s be practical.
Xtol is currently the reigning developer in terms of quality, flexibility and cost effectiveness; it’s easy to mix at room temperature, it’s relatively environmentally friendly citric acid-based) and it acts as its own replenisher. The only catch is that it must be purchased and mixed in FIVE LITER batches! Originally it was also available in one-liter packages, but there were quality control problems in manufacture. This brings us back to previous gold standards among developers: D-76 and HC-110.
D-76 was first concocted (see how far out of my way I go to avoid saying it was developed?) in 1927 as a “fine-grain” motion-picture film developer. It’s still the standard to which every other formula compared. There are home-brew variations, but every darkroom worker has it memorized: 400TX, 1:1, 68F., 10 minutes. The stuff is available in packages to make one quart at a time. For 35mm that’ll do eight rolls at a 1:1 dilution. It keeps for six months in a filled and stoppered glass bottle, and when the bottle becomes partially full, the guarantee slips to 2 months; still not bad.
HC-110 comes as viscous pint (yellow or orange? It changed from one to the other) that you first dilute to a half-gallon, and then further as needed. There are at least 8 recommended dilutions, all with their own times. In school we diluted only a half-ounce or so at a time from the pint; I don’t know why we thought that was accurate, with its syrupy consistency. Times are seductively short. Don’t fall for it. Only if your processing techniques are flawless would I suggest you go this route.
What else do you need? A dust-free place to hang film to dry, and a clip for hanging. I don’t know any dust-free places, but if things aren’t stirred up you should be fine. Keep large dogs out of the room, and don’t use catnip as a weight on the bottom end. Although a slight weight is nice to have (especially in low humidity) to discourage curling, it’s equally effective to crease the blank leader backward against the curl twice, and all will be well.
If anything is unclear or you want me to elaborate, just post a comment. As Ted did. Thanks for the kick in the pants.
Update: http://www.holgablog.com/2009/03/20/processing-bw-film-and-how-i-do-it/ is a pleasant tutorial by “Veronica.” It includes a link to an Ilford pdf of the same stuff in more formal terms.
http://lens.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/05/29/readers-photos/
…is a collection of readers’ Polaroids. It’s a great way for you to begin looking at their variety of posts, all of which are very high quality.
Not to put too fine a point on it, but this is currently the most nourishing video piece available to you:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6m5flmLiEDA
Also: look for, covet, and acquire ” The Nature of Photographs” by Stephen Shore. Thank you, and good night.
These are my notes from Ray K. Metzker’s lecture at Columbia College:
“10/15/80-Ray’s Lecture, ‘Something Else,’ in the horrible new auditorium: Some current perceivable trends are characterized by the electronic media making older, slower processes look outmoded and unwieldy; a constant flow of information turning folks into junkies; need for instant gratification and shortening of attention spans caused by the above. There is a predominance of shallow formalism and nihilistic modernism. One can choose, or not (Ray does) to believe in more – humanism, a spiritual life, whatever – which informs good work. Talk like this can sound awfully pretentious before showing one’s work, but it’s important to put everything on the line, to test the work and the artist. Ray admits to influences by, or at least a great interest in, Matisse, and sculptor Robert Hudson.”
“Dr. D- As I sit here rereading/relooking at Beaumont Newhall’s History of Photography I am pleasantly reminded that I know how to see. This is a deeply visceral knowledge that can’t be entirely taught and can never be taken away. It is a thing that opens worlds to me that are closed to most. It is a complex skill that came about under your … tutelage at the age when I was ready for it/ could learn it/ was bright enough to battle against it. You took intuition and ground it into a way to perceive the world. Twenty years on, after many attempts to bury it alive… it breathes life into my being. Unkillable.
So now, after many years and thousands of photographs, I thank you.
And a word to the cherubs in D’s present care… be steadfast, rebellious and mindful of the Old Man’s words and wisdom… it will serve you well in more ways than you presently know.”
Creative Camerawork 