Cabinette

[thronobulax]

[Feb. 2004] Cabinette



Wisner 4x5 Technical Field, 150mm f/5.6 APO Symmar, Bergger BPF 200, HC-110B, scan of silver print.

 

[thronobulax]

This is a scan of a workbook print I just made. This is a multi-year, and now almost complete project to revisit all my old negatives. I have gone through something between 8-10,000 monochrome negatives (50+ years worth) and selected which ones to print (or reprint) in 8x10 as workbook images. My printing experience and much better VC technology has made images I thought to be dreck, rather wonderful in this process.

This is a sort of first pass at a "Best Of" attempt which will be significantly whittled down further to determine which ones deserve larger printing and all hanging (the prints, not me!).

I keep favorites from the workbooks here (the first whittling):

Workbook Print Scans - Home

 

[Barney]

This is a scan of a workbook print I just made a multi-year, and now almost complete project to revisit all my old negatives. I have gone through something between 8-10,000 monochrome negatives (50+ years worth) and selected which ones to print (or reprint) in 8x10 as workbook images. My printing experience and much better VC technology has made images I thought to be dreck, rather wonderful in this process.

This is a sort of first pass at a "Best Of" attempt which will be significantly whittled down further to determine which ones deserve larger printing and all hanging (the prints, not me!).

I keep favorites from the workbooks here (the first whittling):

Workbook Print Scans - Home

Some beautiful photo's there, thanks for sharing. I enjoyed looking through those, some stunners with beautiful tonality.

 

[thronobulax]

Some beautiful photo's there, thanks for sharing. I enjoyed looking through those, some stunners with beautiful tonality.

Thanks for the kind words. Very much appreciated.

Every format from 35mm, 645, 6x6, 6x7, 6x9, and 4x5 is represented there. All are scans of 8x10 prints, not negatives and have been adjusted on a more-or-less calibrated monitor to try to represent the print faithfully on a computer screen.

I am happy to answer questions of materials, film, developer, location, camera, lens etc. should you (or anyone) want to know.

 

[MartyNL]

I'm curious about the following;
Firstly, your motivation and criteria for image selection.
And secondly, how to make a coherent body (bodies) of work?

 

[thronobulax]

I'm curious about the following;
Firstly, your motivation and criteria for image selection.
And secondly, how to make a coherent body (bodies) of work?

The criteria is what I like and what moves me, nothing else.

Not everything in the workbook is particularly good. I kept some things in there as reminders of some technique or another I was trying or a different developer or film or ...

I am not much compelled to produce formalities or rigor of a portfolio, coherence being but one example. Again, my sole purpose is to chase my own aesthetic wherever it may go. The only sense in which there is coherence, is that those images are in chronological order.

Some of the images in that workbook site are atavisms that take me back to a time or place. Some are expressly intended to look for a particular aesthetic - street, landscape, abstract, etc. Some are simply exercises - the photographic equivalent of playing scales or learning via etudes - that ended with a happy (to me) outcome.

I may someday get more serious about organizing all this stuff, but in the mean time, I'm having way too much fun shooting new images, developing the film, and printing traditionally.

If I have any credo it is this:

• Art is for the artist not primarily the audience
• It is produced at the intersection of technique, mechanics, and worldview, with the latter being the most important
• Good, and possibly great work comes from lots of work. After 50+ years my hit rate is 2.5-3.5%
• Use any and all excuses to take more pictures - new equipment, a different lens, a new way to do darkroom magick, etc.
• So ... never stop shooting and working

This weekend it will be a new-to-me Leica M3 that will help my wanderings