18 posts tagged “2 zone technique”

Mr. Magic.

I have found a technique that allows me to add metallic colors to my hand tinted black and white photos. This Black and white photo is Hand tinted the "Classic way", never computer aided in any way. I use color film to produce my Black and white Print. My photos are produced on fiber based, double weight black and white printing paper. All of my photos are toned with selenium, copper, sepia, gold, nickel, platinum-palladium, coffee's, or tea's.

My next project that I will complete before new year is my stereo hand tinted photo art using mirrors placed at a 45 degree angle; the late  Dali Salvador had many failed attempts making a stereo picture work using stainless steel, polished aluminum dishes, metals and of course mirrors. Philippe Devaud  (2001) from Switzerland had the opportunity to work  with Dali in the early eighties. Philippe had a theory on how to solve Dali's problem with the double image that distorted his stereo art work. Philippe noticed that the double image was due to the rear silver coating,  stereo pictures that worked were merely a choice of mirrors. Philippe had that discovered that if you use a front coated mirror the double ghost image disappears. I apply this same theory to my stereo photo art. 

Why I use Color Film.
  Color films records most all the color of the spectrum, nearly all colors can be reproduced by mixing only a few basic or primary colors. Color films are made with three color-sensitive layers, each of which records the wave lengths of lights in a different third of the color spectrum. Colors negative film is processed to be the opposite in colors and density of the original scene; then it is printed onto a sheet of sensitized paper to make a positive color print.
   This is why I shoot color films to Print out my Black and White Photos the Classic way. Color films gives more details in my prints. The colors remain true and the tones are richer. I use the actual color photo as a guide when my Hand Tinting my Black and White Prints.

This is a Color Photo the Classic way.

This a Black and White Photo the Classic way, delivered inside my darkroom.

This is a Hand Tinted Black and White Photo the Classic way, Never computer aided in any way. Photo Art is Original and signed.

My Photo Art is Original. No one does it better. I can use either a Color or Black and
White negative to create my Photo Art the Classic way.

This is a Color Photo Born Inside  a Camera.
 
 I use the rules of third  as guide to determine where I place my colors.
 This is a Side view of a Photograph.
 

This is Frontal view of a Photograph or scene.

This Technique can be applied to any Media. The colors lead the viewers eye to focus on certain areas of the Final Photo Art.  I use only color film to create my Black and White Photo Art. Color films have three layers and Black and White Film have only two layers. I find that color films record the true mood of each scene as it really is. Reds are red, blues are blue, and greens are green. Black and white films records the tones and not the hues and the chroma of each scene as it exist. I use my color prints to aide in my color balancing process. This is the most exciting aspect of my 2 Zone Technique. I use Zone "A" to compose my Color Photo Art inside the camera. I then use Zone "B" to develop my Black and White Print. 
  I have a simple formula that I created to achieve my color balance and color contrast of each final print. I use the actual Color Photo as a guide when I Hand Tint my Black and White Photo the Classic way. I use up to 27 points when I color my prints.
 The foreground = A, middle = B, back = C. The bottom = 1, middle = 2, and top = 3. I can place my hues of color in one the cubes to create unimaginable illusions of Grandeur.

*I want to bring Hand Tinting back into the main stream. Since we have our computers and high tech soft ware we often fail to realize that computer generated imagery or photos are not the same as in the past. The reason is, that the computer generated images lacks Zone "A" and Zone "B". Its merely a copy or a duplicate of a scene. All computer generated photos or prints will oxidize or fade. The sole purpose of making Photographs are to record, document historical events, creating advertisements, family events, weddings and the list goes on. Archiving Photos that are computer generated defeats this goal. In most museums you will only find Black and White Photos, they know that any other type of print won't last long enough to achieve their objective. Digital Photography has its' place, and should be recognized as an Art form based on its content and style.
*When we look back in the early 1800's, most Photo images that were produced have looked as if they were made yesterday. What if our Great masters used pixels to record there Art. They would have never imagined of wasting there time and effort to gain fame by employing methods other than the Classical techniques to create their Art. When history is written, those who have negatives and Hand developed Prints will have works of Arts that will be priceless.
*The Great masters such Van Goghs, Picasso's, Rembrandts, Cezanne's, Seraut's, El greco,s, Constables, Botticellis, Angelico's and Bounnarroti's would not exist today as we know them if they had used digital assisted soft ware to create their works of Art. I have over 50,000 images and over 90,000 negatives that will be worth more than any digital print or digital file made today.
*Photo Art has been around in the main stream for quite some time. No one has change or improved on what George Eastman, Joeseph Niepce, Giovanni Battista, Thomas Wedgwood and Louis Jacques Mande Daguerre attempted . The computer can never allow any one the freedom that gives you the ability to capture an image as on sees it. Ansel Adams was the last person to that gave us a new set of rules and technique.
*I have developed a "2" Zone that takes his ideas and the other great Photographers of the past and improve how we see and reproduce our Photos.
Don't miss out, if you can have the luck of buying a old Photo of the past, you will own tomorrows Picassos' Van Goghs' or even an Rembrandt.
*The only worth while investment in todays Art Market will be a Hand Tinted Photograph. The other Great works of Art merely exchange owners and becomes more expensive in the process.

 How long does a Photograph last ? Some of the first ever made have held up perfectly, their images as durable as if they had been carved in stone. For Black and white Photos, archival processing is not very different from customary method of developing, fixing and washing. It basically an extension of the ordinary procedures, involving a few extra steps.
During development, those grains of silver salts that have been exposed to light are reduced to black metallic silver, which forms the image; but unexposed grains are reduced and remain in silver form of a silver compound.
When these silver-fixer complexes decompose they produce a brown-yellow compound may discolor the entire print. Archival processing includes procedures that eliminate the traces of residual chemical that washing alone cannot entirely remove.
 I Hand Tone all of my Black and White Photo Art the Classic way. There are several reasons for toning a black and white print: to make the photograph more permanent; I love to use BERG BROWN/COPPER Toning Solution is a single bath solution used for toning black and white prints or films, having no offensive odor. The tonal range is very long, giving initially a warming effect, then a brown tone, followed by a sepia and flesh, and finally a deep metallic copper tone. The actual tone produced depends on the length of time of toning and the photographic material.
                                               Color Photo Art born inside a camera.

Pumped, Germany, 1999.

Pumped.

Pumped, Germany, 1999,Limited Edition.

 A Black and White Negative is a reversal of the tones in the original scene. Where the scene is bright, the negative develops many dense, dark grains of silver. These dense areas hold back light from the paper, they prevent the formation of silver in the papers emulsion and so creates a bright area corresponding to the bright area in the scene. Where the scene was dark, the negative is thin or even clear. It passes much light to the paper and dark silver is formed in the emulsion, resulting in a dark area in the print.
   Color films records most all the color of the spectrum, nearly all colors can be reproduced by mixing only a few basic or primary colors. Color films are made with three color-sensitive layers, each of which records the wave lengths of lights in a different third of the color spectrum. Colors negative film is processed to be the opposite in colors and density of the original scene; then it is printed onto a sheet of sensitized paper to make a positive color print.
   This is why I shoot color films to Print out my Black and White Photos the Classic way. Color films gives more details in my prints. The colors remain true and the tones are richer. I use the actual color photo as a guide when my Hand Tint my Black and White Prints.
                        Color Photo Art Born inside a Camera the Classic way.

Petals, Seoul, Korea,1982.

Black and White Photo Art delivered in my Dark room the Classic way. 

Petals, Seoul, Korea, 1982

Petals, Seoul, Korea, 1982. Limited Edition.

   History should be recorded on film. There were many inventions in the 19^th Century..  The car was invented and massed produced as a means of a new and efficient mode of transportation, which rendered the horse and buggy obsolete. (Co2). The incandescent light was discovered replacing  candles and kerosene lamps. Our world today is a glow with many types of lighting, i.e. xenon, led, neon, led, and many more. The light bulb as we know it will become extinct. The conveyor belt was implemented in manufacturing to speed up and increase production (The late Ray Kroch). Most of all of our goods today are products of automation and robotics. The discovery of Dynamite gave way to new methods moving mass amounts of land. We are now in the nuclear age, we can now remove countries from the face of the earth with the push of a Button.  

   The camera was born and it became know as Photography, it changed the way we record visual images. Of all the inventions Photography had the greatest impact in our lives. We have computers which allow us to transfer large amounts of data to any place in the world. Most internet traffic consist of transferring photo images. Iphones,ipods, black berries,cable, faxes, lap tops, gps, cell phones,the list goes on. What is the speed of information ? Does any body know ?  

     Digital Art is here to stay, Classic Photography has taken a back seat for many reasons. Digital Art has change the Art world like no other, affording any one with a digital camera and a computer a chance to take photos with little knowledge. Digital Photo Art is very easy to create with the proper soft ware and a little practice.    

There has never been an era that so many photos taken and recorded in such a short period of time.

    Classic Hand Tinted Photo Art can be processed using Archive methods of the past will last for generations. Digital images lack zone A (subject to film) and zone B (film to print). Of  all the inventions, some will never change, the wheel, and Classic Photography, the laws of Physics makes this impossible to replace them. I developed  a 2 Zone Technique to create my Black and White Photo Art the Classic way. Never computer aided in any way.

Black and White Photo Art.

**When part of a picture is sharp and part out of focus (or soft), a viewer
looks first at the sharply focus area. What exactly is sharpness and how
much can it be controlled ?
**How sharp an image apears depends on the size of the circles of confusion,
the tiny, overlapping circles formed by the lens as it focuses the image.
The circles are seldom actually seen as disc although occasionally, when
bright points of light are photographed, individual circles do appear. The
smaller the circles, the less they overlap and the sharper the image appears
to be.
**In theory, a lens can focus the image of objects at only one distance at a
time and objects at other distances will be more or less out of focus. Several
factors control the extent of the depth of field, the f-stop used, the focal
lenght of the lens and the lens to subject disance.
**The relationship is a simple mathematical one: the f-stop number equals
the focal length of the lens divided by the aperture diameter. If the focal
length of the lens is 100mm and the actual diameter of the aperture is 50mm,
the f-stop is number is 2.
** I shoot all of my Black and White Photos between f-3.5 and f-11. This
gives me the needed depth of field to bring the middle field in focus. When I
print my Black and White Prints I set my enlarger accordingly. This gives me
added depth and contrast in zone B. All of my black and white prints are in zone
IV to zone VII, I prefer middle grays oppose to typically print a Black and White
print. When I Hand Tint shades of middle grays the colors seem to float or
levitate. The color are more vivid and intense.
**My 2 Zone Technique works only when using roll film the Classic way. This is the
reason why digital Photogrpahy has it limitations. With digital cameras, the
photographers imagination is held hostage to technology at hand. I will never
shoot a digital camera for this very reason. I want complete control of what my
camera sees.
**I become an interpreter of light when I capture images that I see. My camera
can't make adjustments as required to capture a scene as I would like. I use no
computer soft ware to create my Black and White Photo Art.

**The first known attempts to Hand Tint Black and White Photographs were by
assistants of W.H. Fox Talbot, the Englishman credited with perfecting the
paper negative process. After the final prints were produced on a matte surface
paper, the applications transparent oil paints and water color.
**Hand coloring was used extensively in the Post Card boom in the early 1900's.
The color combinations ranged from gaudy to surreal, some of the colorist created
fantastic visions of the various destinations.
**After Color Photography for the masses emerged in the 1950's, the use of hand-
coloring went into a period of decline. Those who were dedicated to the art
continued througout the years, but most artist gave more attention to color film
and printing. Photo labs started to offer services that improve color photos
dramatically.
**In the late 1960's there was a reappearance of Hand Coloring as an Art form.
Hand coloring allowed Artist to add whatever colors they pleased, some painted
"within the lines", some as an Art collage.
**The renaissance of Black and White Photography has meant a similar growth in
the use and practice of Hand Coloring. Today Artist uses computer generated
imagery which allows unlimited possibilties to accomplish the same task as in
the past. It gives anyone with a computer to create works of art unthought of
with conventional and classical techniques. The major draw back with computer
generated imagery is, they don't last very long, they seem to oxidize the minute
they leave the printer. The paper and equipment has improved, but the quality
can never be compared to the claasical print of the past.
**I Specialize in Hand Tinting Black and White Photos the Classic way. I
have over 50,000 color negatives which I convert into Black and White prints.
I use exclusively color film to create my works of Art. My Photo Art meets
or exceeds Archive standards. My Photo Art will out live the owners.
**I have developed a "2 Zone Technique" that gives me an advantage of how my
final print will look. I don't need a patent for my process because only I can
take any color negative and bring them back to life. Don't miss out on a chance
to own one of these works of Photo Art.