Hi guys, i'm new to this forum and I'm wondering if you guys could teach me some darkroom manipulation like Jerry Uelsmann. I would really apriciate your help.
Thanks, dulioil.
Btw, I can't find any tutorials on google so i tought it would be best If i could ask some professionals ^_^
Additional details: I know how to process photos with enlarger and the chemicals in the dark.
To be blunt your nutsBut I encourage you to do it often and with 16x20 sheet film bought from Ilford!
The skills involved takes lots of time and practice as well as now expensive materials. If you asked Jerry how long it took him to acquire and become proficient with the skills of masking and printing you might get and answer of 15 years "or more". In college back in 1986 I tried doing a couple of photo comps using a homemade pinbar and punch. Basically you make litho masks and reversed litho masks of your primary background negative, to leave areas of the paper unexposed and then you expose them with the sandwiched reversed mask and image you want to appear in the unexposed area. You can also use red liquid masking agent to hold back areas by painting onto your masks thereby creating custom areas to expose through onto the paper.
Originally Posted by dulioil
He also used an assembly line of six enlargers, as I recall.
Mr. Uelsmann was the master at this, but to be frank, this is MUCH easier accomplished today with Photoshop. You can still shoot LF film, then scan your negs and do it in PS.
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The person who got my started in photography in the early 80's, studied under Jerry at the University of Florida in the mid 70,s and showed me how it was done. Several enlargers set up with different negatives set in each enlargers. Prints were made,then cut out were made in the prints than put back in the easels to block or print different negatives on the same paper. Very time /labor intensive. . All blended together ,same tones, different subject matter. This is the general process.
hi dulioil
while it won't be the same thing
you could also coat paper and then coat and recoat area ..
and re-expose / feather-in these areas and re-process the image ...
then either use that as your final print or make a copy negative to reprint it.
another way would be to collage different prints onto
the background print ( cutting and putting the image BEHIND the background instead of re-exposing onto the paper )
and when you finish the image, rephotograph it, and blend the tones by retouching the film ( or work print ).
when i was a student i made collages both ways, except i didn't retouch the film
i used photographic emulsion on large glass plates, not paper ... and then contact print a final image onto photo paper ...
it was very time consuming, a lot of trial and error, but it was a lot of fun and worth it in the end ...
while photoshop may make things easier, sometimes doing things the old fashioned way is worth the time and effort ...
have fun
- john
Photo Comp is a very complex technique. One has to be able to see how each element sits on top of the one below and by looking down on the image, seeing what needs to sit on top of each element and then figuring out how to make the masks , sharp , unsharp, hard/ soft and then make them all work together is IMHO mind blowing and very hard to grasp, In the 80's my job at a very large lab was photo composition using multiple images and laying them all down on one piece of film or paper. I took me 9 months of 15 hour days/ 7 days a week to get a grasp of this .
Mr Ullesman was a master of this and could make images that were not considered Kitch. Today any wanker can try to emulate his style with PS but unfortunately most of it belongs in the trash can. Most of mask making and selections that are in PS and other editing software today mimic principles that Mr Ullesman and others did under an enlarger over 30 years ago.
I burned out some of my vision making 1000 of an inch mask corrections to make a perfect overlap.
It totally blows me away the power of PS to do in a minute what would take hours of painstaking rubylith cutting, micro modification blending and then double exposure years ago.
Notting can move during the whole process, easels, masks,negs, all has to line up.
Why is it easier to do in Photoshop? I don't know everyything, but it was my understanding that Photoshop is a digital image manipulation program. I don't even see how photoshop is relevant to purely optical photomanipulation such as that done by Jerry Uelsmann.Mr. Uelsmann was the master at this, but to be frank, this is MUCH easier accomplished today with Photoshop.
Of course one can do digital art INSTEAD of doing complex darkroom photo-manipulation. That is one option, as is splatter painting, making ham sandwiches, and being king of londinium and wearing a shiney hat. But don't say that this kind of art is "easier to do in photoshop". By that line of thinking, painting is easier to do with cameras, and horseback riding is easier now that we have cars.
Today making selections , masks and bluring images together in PS is very easy. Any student in digital imaging can do this with ease.
Doing this with an enlarger and a micro modifier, a blade and rubylith was very difficult and labour intensive. For fun try and put together three images on top of each other and let me know your views and post the image.
Try placing a drop shadow on the ground of an object floating in the sky and make it realistic enough to fool the eye , by hand it could take you all day, even to get to a point where the comp looked realistic.
Placing one image in front and behind another image was really tough to do and once a technician mastered that hand photocomposition became easier to grasp.
The maskmaking techniques of hand optical photocomp were mimiced in PS and I have done both manual and digitally with PS and you may or may not believe me but today it is much easier to do with PS.
Jerry Uelsmann was great at hand comps, I do not know the man and I do not know if he is still doing montage and am not aware how he is doing it today. I only know I have huge respect for him as an artist and probably more as a techician as I have walked in the somewhat same shoes in my past career as a photocomp technician.*Yes there use to be this job title in any major lab worldwide*
I know he used many enlargers , as did others, all locked down, I do know he blurred micro modified masks to shrink or swell *feather* to allow images to fit . I also know he used objects under the enlarger to create shadows.
I think he would agree that most of the montaging stages done in PS are variations of what he did in the darkroom.
There are a lot of good PS technicians on this site, I would say that a 50 image composed image from supplied layout and files in PS would probably take anywhere from three hours to 2 days depending upon the skill level of the technician.
By hand , a 50 image composed image using rubylith masks and enlarger took myself and a second technician 7 full working days to complete.
At the end of the day both images in magazine would look the same .
The original poster is asking a specific question regarding Jerry Uellseman and his methods, and I hope some of what I have said answers his question.
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