понеделник, 10 януари 2011 г.

Handmade Color Processing/ Lomography

How to process color film at home, in your bathroom

After using an automatic photo processor (JOBO ATL 3) for about two years, I realized that I didn’t need it. Anyway, I didn’t have any choice since I left my JOBO in Québec when I moved to Halifax…

All you need is a warm water-bath in which your chemistries and photo drum are maintained at a relatively constant temperature. The advantage of processing in your bathroom is that you have access to hot water from your shower hose and that you can throw your used chemistries in the toilet (except for the fixer which contains silver and that you must bring to a photo lab, or use a silver magnet, or use asilver recovery unit). By the way, always inform yourself about the toxicity of the products you’re using.

What you need:

1. A photo processing drum and film spools (I love JOBO spools)

2. Protective gloves to rotate the drum in the water bath

3. Un-powdered latex gloves to remove the stabilizer remaining on the film after the process

4. Protective goggles

5. A Funnel, used to pour sequentially the chemistry from each bottle into the drum

6. A Thermometer

7. A Chronometer

8. Two suction cups, a string and clothes-pins, to hang films for drying after the process

9. Bottles containing the chemistries*

10. Yogurt cups for the ‘stabilizer’ (C41) or the ‘final rinse’ (E6), outside of the drum

11. A watertight plastic container, used as water bath for the process (and to store all this mess after the process, away from the eyes of your girlfriend, boyfriend or roommate)

I use Fischer bottles for the next reasons: 1. They hold up to 700 mL which is perfect for my drum. 2. They’re glass bottles which means they’re heavy (won’t float) and keep the temperature more stable. 3. They can be closed to avoid spilling chemistry in the bath. 4. They initially contain a delicious beer.

How to proceed:

1. Prepare your chemistries (I use Kodak Chemistries). The concentration (ratio water to concentrate) is given for each chemistry by the manufacturer. Note that there are two different types of Kodak C-41 chemistries: the ‘Normal’ and the ‘RA’. RA stands for Rapid Access, these chemistries don’t need dilution with water and must be used for a shorter time.

2. Place the drum containing the films on their spool, the bottles containing the chemistries and the thermometer in the plastic container, in your bathtub. Pour hot water in the container (38-39°C) and wait about half an hour until your chemistries are warmed-up.

3. Use your shower hose every once in a while to add hot water if you feel that the temperature is decreasing. Between you and me, the precision and constancy of temperature are not as important as said. In fact, I got to the conclusion that if I feel that the water is at a temperature for a nice bath for myself (I like them a bit hot) everything is good, and I don’t use the thermometer anymore… And overheating produces nice color saturations (but burnt skies, as we’ll see later). During the warm-up you can prepare your yogurt cups for the final rinse.

4. Light a candle, prepare your chronometer and start the process. The first chemistries are supposed to be poured in the dark, but with just a candle it’s fine, your drum is supposed to be light-proof anyway.

5. Pour the first chemistry, rotate the drum in the water bath as long as needed, then empty your drum in the toilet (or in a container if you want to re-use them) and go to the next chemistry. Follow these durations for Kodak chemistries:

6. After the process, put your films in the final rinse for a minute, and hang them to dry for 1-2 hours.

7. Cut, scan and upload.

Here are some results from E6 processes:

Here are some results from Cross-processes (C-41):

Here’s a tipster within the tipster: the super-supersampler:

Here are some underwater shots from Alonissos using a canon F-1N or a Holga in a ewa-marine housing:

Here are some over-heated processes (around 40°C):

From www.lomography.com

вторник, 13 януари 2009 г.

5 Complimentary Skills to Graphic Design

In today’s economy competition is rougher than ever and even before this economic down turn I had mentioned how competitive the field of graphic design was getting and how more and more job listings were looking for multi-talented designers. By this I mean many employers want you to not only be a graphic designer, but also a web designer with knowledge of multiple coding language and much more.

If you are freelancing from home than you will need even more skills to make the most of your home business so you can bring in as much steady income as possible. Below are some areas I recommend designers branch off into once they have a solid foundation in design. Even having basic skills in these areas will help a ton!

1. Web Design

Web design is probably the most valuable skill to have as a graphic designer. It will open up a large new client base for you, allow you to create and update your portfolio site and much more. Being fluent in web design and multiple coding languages will not only make it easier to keep steady work from home, but will make you much more attractive to potential employers who are looking to cut costs by finding multi-talented designers.

2. Illustration

Designers often have backgrounds in fine art such as drawing and illustration, but end up putting their focus on commercial graphic design which can create a disconnect from their fine art origins. Keeping your illustration skills sharp or becoming a better illustrator will allow you to create more creative designs, do freelance illustration work and even sell stock illustrations online! Plus you can save money doing your own illustrations for your graphic and web designs.

3. Online Marketing

Online marketing is an essential skill for anyone looking to make the most of their freelance design business. Knowing the latest marketing tactics will help you gain exposure, name recognition and more clients. There are dozens of easy ways to increase traffic to your portfolio site and not taking advantage of them would be a very big missed opportunity!

4. Search Engine Optimization

This is an often over looked skill for any business. Anyone who has an online business presence should research search engine optimization and even if you pay some one its good to know what its all about and how to do it correctly. Bad search engine optimization tactics can hurt your site badly and produce no results, but good SEO can provide you with a steady stream of new clients and really take you to the next level

5. Blogging

Starting a blog is probably the easiest and best thing you can do to increase awareness of your portfolio. Knowing about web design, online marketing and search engine optimization, which we mentioned above will help you turn your blog into a powerful and useful tool as opposed to a waste of time. You need to research blogging before hand, optimize your blog, post regularly and promote your blog posts in order to achieve maximum results.

петък, 26 декември 2008 г.

Dorothea Lange

Born: May 26, 1895 Died: October 11, 1965

Photographer Dorothea Lange was born in Hoboken, New Jersey, in 1895. Lange is best known for her work documenting poor conditions of the migrant workers who traveled in large numbers to California during the Great Depression of the late 1920s and 1930s. Her photographs brought much-needed attention to their plight. Lange used photography to document the difficult period of the Depression and to motivate agencies and individuals to take action to improve the situation. With her photographs Lange was able to capture the emotional and physical toll that the Depression and other events took on human beings across the country.

Lange and the Relocation Camps
After taking photos of people during the Depression, Lange turned her lens on another subject. The United States entered World War II in December 1941. In 1942, President Franklin Roosevelt signed an Executive Order to create the War Relocation Authority, which forced Japanese Americans to live in camps while America was at war with Japan. Dorothea Lange was invited to photograph the camps, whose residents were "interned," or confined. Can you imagine what it must have been like to live in one of those camps?

Of the 10 internment camps that were established, two of the larger ones were in Arizona. Overall, more than 110,000 Japanese Americans were interned from 1942 until 1946. Even though she was against the policy of imprisoning Japanese Americans during the war, Lange photographed the people in these camps. Do you know why Lange took the job if she didn't believe that it was fair to imprison these people?

Lange agreed to take photographs in the camps because she hoped that once people saw what was happening, the internment would stop. The idea that photographs could influence people to help the oppressed members of society was a theme in almost all of Lange's work. Have you ever been influenced by a photograph?

White angel

Dorothea Lange, Apprentice Photographer When Dorothea Lange was seven years old, she contracted polio, a disease that caused her to walk with a limp. Her father abandoned the family when Dorothea was 12, and her mother went to work, first as a librarian and then as a social worker. Dorothea attended school in New York City, where, on her way home, she saw many people who were poor and homeless. Her illness, the abandonment by her father, and the people she observed in New York may have helped her understand some of the suffering of the people she would later photograph.

Lange decided at 18 that she wanted to be a photographer and began learning the skill through classes and apprenticeships, in which she worked with other photographers to learn her craft. She also attended classes in New York City. She did not consider photography to be an art form, but today many of her pictures hang in museums. Do you think of photography as a form of art or merely as a record?

Although Lange could not see the "art" in her pictures, her work has many of the same features as a painting. She captured not only images of people on film, but also the conditions under which they lived. What can you tell about the person who is the subject of the photo from this image? Like many paintings, Dorothea Lange's photographs tell a story, often sending a powerful social message.

The Migrant Mother Sequence

This sequence of 6 photographs should exemplify the process a photographer goes through to come out with such a dynamite image, that is, the image on the bottom right, entitled "Migrant Mother"(California, 1936).(To see a larger version of it, please click on the image). It is evident that from the first to the last image, Lange had moved in closer, and created an emphasis on the mother. Even (by the final image) hiding the faces of the two children who cower on her shoulders. In fact, we see that the family may have been as big as seven total--there are six figures in the second image (top center), and the father, who Lange photographed later, is absent from all of these images. Lange has manipulated her subjects, to imply that a poor mother with two children (an average amount) will be capable to lead her family(doesn't her face express it?) out of their state of suffering, into the more prosperous future, if she is given the chance.

Stryker said of this image:

  When Dorothea took that picture, that was the ultimate.
She never surpassed it.  To me it was the picture
of Farm Security.
She has all the suffering of mankind in her, but all
the perserverance too.  A restraint and a strange courage.

I do not know what type of camera Lange used here; like Evans, she uses sharp focus, but both Lange and Evans were technical experts anyway. I think it is more important, as far as comparing her photographs to Evans', to recognize the "future-orientation" of "Migrant Mother"--and how she had to shoot a sequence before getting what she wanted. (I do not, in any way, mean to degrade Lange's ability as a photographer; I do, however, mean to show the subjective nature of this image, as opposed to Evans' objective style.) Also, it is worthy to note how much Stryker emphasises that this image serves as the paradigm of the entire FSA collection.

Dorothea Lange
Migrant Mother;
Nipomo, California
1936