post your trees!

[Struan Gray]

Thanks for the complements Mark, and welcome to LF.info.

I am still a sucker for a well-done Grand Landscape, and I enjoy the frisson of the sublime as much as anyone, but it does get depressing - and oppressive - to see how little else seems to register with the world of photography. It's as if restaurants only served chocolate truffles, all day, every day.

I don't think there is, or can be, any one correct attitude to a given landscape. As a climber who lived through the trad-to-sport transition I found it fascinating to see the last vestiges of the romantic exultation of the mountains gave way to an unashamedly playground atmosphere. Many of today's outdoors enthusiasts think the traditional stance of awestruck wonder in the face of nature to be an anachronism on a par with young ladies in bonnets and corsets swooning in front of the Matterhorn - and yet their magazines and equipment brochures are full of photographs informed by exactly the attitudes they find so old-fashioned. There has to be a way to show nature, grand or otherwise, that reflects the real ways people interact with it.

I have a big stack of film waiting to be scanned which follows on from the Tanglings series. Most is 6x6, so I'm not sure how much I'll impose on this board by direct posting, but I intend to dribble new scans out onto the blog as I make sense of the themes my subconscious has gathered. I'll keep an eye on your site too.

[Steve M Hostetter]

Indiana Dunes National Lake Shore, Mt. Baldy 4x5 Sinar 90mm 5.6XL Polaroid iso 3000

[nathanm]

[sanking]

This is a 12X18" carbon transfer print. The original negative was made near Guillin, China, in September of this year. Contact print with a digital inkjet negative.

Sandy King

[EdWorkman]

Hey Sandy
What formats did you shoot in China?
Assuming big ones, how did you haul it/them around?
regards

[sanking]

Ed,

I have made several trips to Spain with 7X17 and 12X20 formats and the logistics was very difficult. These days my traveling LF camera is a small and very light 5X7 Nagaoka.

However, on the trip to China I worked exclusively with Mamiya 7, 6X7 cm format. Hope I was not out of line in posting the image here. Since I have to scan and then print a digital negative for contact printing I really don't think of the process in terms of format since the working procedure is basically the same with either a MF or 5X7 negative. But of course the logistics of MF is much easier to deal with when traveling.

Sandy

Hey Sandy
What formats did you shoot in China?
Assuming big ones, how did you haul it/them around?
regards

[Chris Dunham]

This is a 12X18" carbon transfer print. The original negative was made near Guillin, China, in September of this year. Contact print with a digital inkjet negative.

Sandy King

Hi Sandy,

Cool print ! Could you tell us a little about the digital inkjet negative process as this looks like a path I would like to explore.

Regards,

Chris.

[sanking]

Hi Chris,

Be happy to comment.

Alternative process printers began working with digital negatives in the early to mid 1990s. One of the pioneers in this was Dan Burkholder, who wrote an early book on the subject, Making Digital Negatives for Contact Printing. Later Mark Nelson introduced his PDN method on a CD, called Precision Digital Negatives. His method allowed for some refinements for process and printer not available with Dan's methods. More recently Ron Reeder wrote a book on making digital negatives and promotes the use of QTR to control ink deposits. There is also a very nice program called ChartThrob available for free that works great.

Basically, what we do is prepare our digital file in Photoshop, as one does for making a digital print on an inkjet printer. However, before sending the file to the printer we lay down a process curve, that attempts to calibrate input values of Photoshop to output values of the process, be it silver, pt/pd or carbon. The digital negative itself is printed on a OHP (overheard transparency material) that accepts the ink (or pigmented ink) of the printer being used.

Most people use Epson printers for this (Epson 2200, 2400, 3800, 4800,etc.) but practice shows that some of the new HP and Canon printers are also capable of making good digital negatives.

You can find a lot more information about this at the hybrid forum, http://www.hybridphoto.com/forums/

Sandy King

Hi Sandy,

Cool print ! Could you tell us a little about the digital inkjet negative process as this looks like a path I would like to explore.

Regards,

Chris.

[Chris Dunham]

Hi Chris,

Be happy to comment.

Alternative process printers began working with digital negatives in the early to mid 1990s. One of the pioneers in this was Dan Burkholder, who wrote an early book on the subject, Making Digital Negatives for Contact Printing. Later Mark Nelson introduced his PDN method on a CD, called Precision Digital Negatives. His method allowed for some refinements for process and printer not available with Dan's methods. More recently Ron Reeder wrote a book on making digital negatives and promotes the use of QTR to control ink deposits. There is also a very nice program called ChartThrob available for free that works great.

Basically, what we do is prepare our digital file in Photoshop, as one does for making a digital print on an inkjet printer. However, before sending the file to the printer we lay down a process curve, that attempts to calibrate input values of Photoshop to output values of the process, be it silver, pt/pd or carbon. The digital negative itself is printed on a OHP (overheard transparency material) that accepts the ink (or pigmented ink) of the printer being used.

Most people use Epson printers for this (Epson 2200, 2400, 3800, 4800,etc.) but practice shows that some of the new HP and Canon printers are also capable of making good digital negatives.

You can find a lot more information about this at the hybrid forum, http://www.hybridphoto.com/forums/

Sandy King

Sandy,

Fantastic, many thanks for the info - I'm off to try it out.

Regards,

Chris.

[sanking]

You are very welcome.

BTW, if you want to dive right into an alternative process, say carbon or kallitype, I have some documentation on line.

See

http://www.alternativephotography.co...es/art110.html

http://www.alternativephotography.co...kallitype.html


Regards,

Sandy

Sandy,

Fantastic, many thanks for the info - I'm off to try it out.

Regards,

Chris.