Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2001/06/03
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]Ken Lee wrote: > > I guess the title says it all. What do you do with your images when they are > not taken specifically for someone else? I am thinking of selling my Leica > Ms because I am just not using them. I think the real reason I am not > taking many pictures is I don't know what to do with the result. > A little background.. I am 57, and have been taking pictures since I was 12. > Looking back, except for pictures taken for a specific purpose, whether it > was the high school yearbook or someone's wedding, the slides are just filed > or the negs may never be printed. > I guess I need a reason to take the pictures, and thought maybe you folks > could help me find one. > > Thanks........ > Ken Lee > Oakville, ON The reason is in the doing. But the doing involves follow though. Slides hide but there are ways of getting around it. Show me a book and i will fill it! Last weekend i spotted three 11x14 prints from the same neg I had just reprinted the day before of one of my best shots. I went through ten sheets of paper and these three were the best. All good. I had printed Thursday but by the weekend i could see it was wrong. I had printed down the shadows too much. None were light enough. So i went down there AGAIN and remixed up all my trays and used the warm Ilford paper this time and brought down the enlarger a couple more inches to make the image full frame black border this time. Less figure more ground. 10 seconds with the blue 20 with the green but held back 5 on the face. The last time i printed this image was when i first shot it in 1980. I had printed it with not a great lens on 8x10 Agfa Broviraspeed 312. #3 paper. I winced every time someone saw it because it was too contrasty with not enough detail in the whites. (the pants) Twenty years later i scanned it nicely and put it on my website and it looked better. But an inkjet i made of it looked Crusty. I was not going to sent this of or frame it! And Panatomic X (ASA 32) is not crusty. Inkjet usually works out better than this but not this time! So down to the darkroom i go. This time it's a new ballgame as i really know how to print now and i have better stuff to print it with. And an 8x10 is not an 11x14. The first of the images i have just spotted become the first page of a new "book" i got from "light impressions" from Rochester Thursday. http://www.lightimpressionsdirect.com/lightimpressions/product.icl?orderidentifier=ID99073952032776335D&SecID=1&subsecID=15&catID=39 A transport album which already fits in a case with a strap i have. This book will be or already is my new portfolio. (I stuck another picture in it already since) When someone says "do you take pictures Mark?" I don't' pull out my Leica or my Hasselblad I pull out this book. The other two of these three newly printed, spotted and signed prints I cut mats for. They are not perfect. But they are done by the "artist." (me) So in some way that is a plus. I put one in a black metal frame behind glass. The frame makes it look twice better as did the mat but the glass makes it look indecently better. I'm starting to get all excited thinking that maybe i really am a photographer of some ability and consequence even. I have hooks up all over my house/studio and i pick the set of hooks in the right place to hang it up on. It ends up looking much better upstairs then right down here in my Kitchen office. The 14x18 black metal frame is too glossy and i have 8 more of them!!! The third of the three identical images which i bubble wrapped around it's mat and sent off to Worcester Mass to a friend who i had promised it too and who had really liked it from my website. Nothing like a deadline to get me into the darkroom! The whole printmaking matting process is not for everybody. Either is having others do it. I have pages with slides in them that go with my book. They never WERE my book but that's the case with plenty of people. I know a guy who makes slides of his fiber archival prints to put in these presentation slide pages so his whole "book" is just these slide pages, no paper prints or tear sheets so he has perfect continuity. Celluloid are us! Some of these slides are medium and large format though but the black cardboard is the same size for all. People hire him from these pages but he could just as easily be a fine art photographer or a serious photo enthusiast. Some photographers have a "tray." instead. A Kodak Ektagraphic 80 slide tray and there are all kinds of boxes for them and cases with straps for them now. You most often just use their projector and Leica very recently has come out with projectors which take these standard for the U.S.A. trays so maybe it will be one of those. I've gone this route at times. You can set the projector on auto and play music. Projected slides are like being there a bit more than a fine art fiber matted print. I could keep writing but i guess my point is slides in boxes at 57 might not be a reason to keep shooting. Get em printed or inkjet em yourself! And put the best ones in a book or box. (I'm 50) And/or make a book of the slides themselves by putting them in pages and put them on acoffee table so you can spill coffee all over them. A reason to invite friends over! Or have little slide shows. You click the shutter you think "that image belongs between slide 61 and 63 in my tray" Or "that's the last page in my portfolio now!" You can't wait to get them procesesed so they can be but where they belong. Show me a book and i will fill it! Function follows form. Without form there is no function. (with my Leica!) Mark Rabiner (but i do use other cameras yikes!) Portland, Oregon USA http://www.rabiner.cncoffice.com/