Scanning vs. Printing in a digital world

A photo of Kera Padget shot with my 42 year old Pentax SPII on Ilford FP4-Plus.

I love to print photos in a darkroom. It is a magical place where the red safe lights glow, the radio plays, and the photographer becomes a choreographer of sorts - waving hands, adding light, and making pictures appear out of trays of chemistry.

It is so relaxing and at the same time one of the most satisfying experiences to have. Sadly printing is not done very much anymore, and photos are made with zeros and ones in the digital world, shaped and prodded with software behind a large monitor in a room.

As much as I love to print, I have come into a long stretch lately where I am just not able to get the time to make it to the darkroom. I may have a half hour or an hour of spare time here and there between tasks. I have an enlarger and trays and could convert my bathroom into a darkroom. Unfortunately it takes longer to set up and tear down than to actually make a print.

I have access to a darkroom, but it is in the next town. So in between running errands, working, sleeping, eating and the other things that fill my life I have been scanning and using a digital darkroom.

It is a love hate relationship. I have been involved with Photoshop since version 2.0. I am as comfortable behind the computer monitor as I am behind the lens of a good enlarger. I can scan just as well as I can print.

Amanda Jacobs captured with a 100 year old Box Brownie and 120 film.

The real justification for scanning vs. printing for me is to finally get the work seen. The one factor that links printing and scanning is the fact that I still love to shoot film. I feel comfortable behind the lens of a film camera. I don't need the instant gratification of a LCD screen to tell me that I was able to get the shot I wanted. Although sometimes I tend to find myself looking for that screen when I have a difficult lighting condition or am shooting in an unknown location. It is a damn crutch. This digital world of instant gratification.

That is when I remember that for years before digital I did just that: shot film in any location, under any lighting at just about any time. State basketball finals-  film. Big bank fire - film. First baby of the new year - film. No LCD. No playback. No 1000 photos to cull out a good one. Only 36 exposures (or maybe a few rolls or even less with 120) to capture the moment.

Lyosha Svinarski shot with my 42 year old Pentax SPII on Ilford FP-4 film.

Developing negatives is such an amazing experience. Getting the chance to confirm that I actually was able to get the photo that I saw in my head is absolutely one of the most soul satisfying moments.

So my work is a hybrid of old school film and new technology in the digital darkroom.  My friend and former coworker Tom Sistak said that "You can't put the genie back in the bottle."  I may not be able to stop the march of photography from analog to digital, but I am using the technology I have available to make it possible to continue to still shoot film in this digital world.

Shooting with film makes me a better photographer. It makes me think about lighting and composition, and with the limited frame count it also makes each frame special and not just a series of clicks until getting the right one.

So.... I am scanning.  At the end of the day, for me anyway, I am still shooting film. That is what counts.

Boneyard Arts Festival - mini tintypes

I will be part of the Boneyard Arts Festival this year, making mini 35mm tintypes! I will set up my wet plate chemistry in the darkroom at the Urbana Museum of Photography making tintypes from 10 am to 2:30 pm both Friday April 12, and Saturday April 13th.

A 35mm sized tintype I created last summer for a series titled "Intimate Treasures."

Stop by to see some of my other work, and learn a little bit about the wet plate collodion process. With all the ether, collodion and iron sulfate developer being used, the museum should smell like a bonafide 150 year old wet plate studio. As my friend Allie Tomkie would say, "Wet Plate: Free Smells!"

Urbana Arts Grants Winner!

 I am proud to announce that my proposal "Urbana Pinhole Portrait Project" is one of 23 awards in this year's Urbana Arts Grants Program! I will be making pinhole photographs this spring and summer, with an exhibit in the fall.



The "Urbana Pinhole Portrait Project" will be a series of pinhole portraits made of Urbana residents. I am sure there are many reasons that people choose to live in Urbana. I would like to hear why they decided to live in Urbana in 2013 so a short essay will accompany each image. There will be an exhibit this fall at the Urbana Museum of Photography to showcase the photographs and essays.

Some of my homemade pinhole cameras. From left, a potato chip camera, baby formula camera, wooden 4x5 camera and bulk film canister camera. The last one makes cool round pinhole photos!

 In between taking portraits this year, I will be attending the Urbana's Market at the Square to set up appointments and let people in the area know about the project. I will also be holding pinhole camera workshops where everyone can build their very own pinhole camera!

A photograph of my daughter Kalli taken with a potato chip pinhole camera.

Pinhole portraits are unique because these lens-less images are made with simple light tight containers. In place of a lens, a small pinhole is placed the side of the container to allow light to enter and create the photograph. Due to the simplicity of the process, any light tight object can become a pinhole camera. I like to use everyday objects for my pinhole cameras. There is nothing more magical than taking a photo with a pinhole camera like a potato chip can!

I plan on kicking off the project with a pinhole portrait workshop at the Urbana Museum of Photography during Worldwide Pinhole Day on April 28th. We will be making cameras and taking pictures with pinhole cameras, and all the images can be uploaded to the Worldwide Pinhole Day gallery to be shared with everyone else's images from around the world!

If you would like more information about the workshop, please contact me through email, or stay tuned for more updates on my Facebook Fan page and web page.

If you are an Urbana resident and you would like to be part of this project, please send me an email and I will schedule an appointment to photograph you for the project.

You can reach me at singram@steveingramphoto.com

Stay tuned for more information!

Funding for this project is being provided by the Urbana Public Arts Program.

Historic Photo Demo in the Windy City!

Photo Courtesy of The Clarke House Museum.

  
On Saturday March 23rd I had a great time at the Glessner House Museum coach house in Chicago. I spent a few hours that afternoon talking about historical photographic processes and the correct way to store and preserve antique photographs. This was part of the Winter Workshop Series held by the Clarke House Museum.

Gallery of images from the event

After a talk about wet plate collodion, I did a live cyanotype demo with an ambrotype I created with my wet plate camera.

It was fun, and I enjoyed all the questions and comments I received from the folks that came to the event.

Luckily I beat the bad weather out of town, it snowed like the dickens on Sunday. We had about 14 inches of snow fall Sunday afternoon into Monday morning. Today it is 60 degrees, and the spring flowers are coming up. So goes springtime in Illinois!!

Pinhole camera fun!

I have been making pinhole cameras since my college days. A pinhole camera is amazingly simple technology. All that is needed is a light tight container of some sort with a pinhole poked in it to let in light.

These cameras can be as simple or as complexed as you want them to be. I have used many different containers from cookie tins, cardboard boxes and my favorite; mini Pringles chip cans.

Earlier this week I built a pinhole camera out of an old Kodak paper box left over from my newspaper days. In fact this particular box came from The Times in Ottawa, because it was the last newspaper I worked at where we actually made black and white prints from negatives. Shortly after I started, we started scanning everything, so this box is probably about 20 years old by now. This box had some photo junk in it of some sort, stored away in the back of a closet. I freed the box from it's lowly storage life and made it into a camera!

My Kodak "Professional" pinhole camera.

The "lens" of the camera is a piece of aluminum liberated from a pop can. A Sun Drop pop can to be exact. A sewing needle is gently drilled through the aluminum, and then it is lightly sanded to remove the burr and then taped to the front of the box. You can see my fancy tape job as well as my tape "shutter"  which is just a piece of black electrical tape.

The "film" in this particular camera is 8x10 photographic paper. Photographic paper is light sensitive, and I think has an ISO rating of about 3 which makes it a pretty slow emulsion. Not quite as slow as wet plate collodion, but still pretty slow. You can use regular film in your pinhole camera, I just like the ease of loading a camera with photo paper, because you can load and unload the camera in a red safe light darkroom.

Here is the camera, with the "film"  some Ilford pearl finish RC paper. Ilford paper in a Kodak box, that is just blasphemy!

 After building the camera, I took it outside and made some exposures. After a little bit of trial and error, I found the magic exposure number to be about one minute under mostly overcast afternoon skies.

The photos were processed in a makeshift darkroom in my windowless bathroom. All that was needed was a card table, one safe light, trays and photo chemistry.

My pinhole darkroom under safelight conditions.

A negative sits in the fix, after being developed.

As you can see from the above photo, the negatives are nice and large. The size of the box determines the focal length, and this particular box becomes a super wide angle 8x10 camera. It vignettes a bit on the negative, but I like the effect.

A series of six 8x10 paper negatives drying after being developed and washed.

And the result: Pretty nice photos! The images are fairly crisp and have a good exposure. Pinhole cameras are a fun way to learn about photography, because of their simple design and the inexpensive materials needed to make images.

A view of my back yard. The heart shaped mark was made by my kids, when they built their snowman. You can just barely see the snowman in the lower right corner of the photo.

A self portrait on the back stairs of my deck. I did pretty good sitting still for a minute long exposure!

Winter Wonderland

On Sunday December 30th, I spent the afternoon in Brazil, Indiana with Lillian Grey. She is a model that I have worked with many times over the last year or so, and we have a great working relationship together.

For me, the working relationship is just as important as the shoot itself. Lillian's husband Joe was with us on the shoot. He helped me set up and tear down my studio stuff, and is a great guy to be around. In fact most of the shoot was done in a historic second story studio that Lillian and Joe are working on.

The highlight of the day, however, was shooting in the snow!! We are on our second year without a major snowfall where I am at in Illinois. There are a couple of inches on the ground right now, with grass poking up through the snow and bare in some spots. Not really beautiful winter weather. A few days before this shoot it dumped about a foot of snow in east-central Indiana and parts of Illinois just south of here. So I knew I would have to drive a bit to get some nice snow photos.

Driving to Brazil was an amazing transformation. As I drove further east and south of my home the snow started piling up. The hills in Indiana, with snow covered tree trunks, snow drifts and frozen rivers were just amazing to look at through the filtered light of the afternoon sun.

Lillian was going to wear this beautiful white wedding gown. I knew that white on white was going to be a challenge. We waited until about a half hour before sunset to make the images, so the dynamic range of the dress and snow would work out without blowing out the highlights.

It was a balmy 35 degrees during the day, but the temperatures fell and the wind chill became wicked cold by the time we started shooting. Lillian of course was a true professional, and she handled the shoot with amazing grace, poise and focus. We spent only about 20 minutes on this shoot before the cold and the setting sun took away all the available light. It was quick but so worth it!

The shoot was a success, and we both spent about a half hour in front of the heater to warm up but it was worth it! If you would like to see more photos from this shoot, follow this link to my Facebook Fan page. If you like what you see, click the "like" button and get automatic updates to your Facebook feed as I add photos to my site.

I am open for bookings to schedule fun and creative portrait work. I love working with new people especially in locations I haven't photographed. Just send me a message if  you are interested.

Take care, and enjoy the new year!!!