Evaluating Your Negatives

So you’ve developed your first roll of film and made a contact sheet and now you’ve got both a positive and a negative version of your images. What next?

If you said that you’d pick an image to print - you’d be right. Of course, you could do that. However, there’s something to consider before you jump into that whole next stage, like which one? How do you choose?

Evaluating your negatives is the next important step in your path to making a print in the darkroom. A path that can go multiple directions depending on how you approach the process. Many folks like to choose their images to print based on what they want to see larger and more officially as a ‘photograph’ and others will take their time, using the contact sheet as their first pass or ‘proof’ in order to approach making prints as a step in a larger process.

Both are correct, however, there’s a way to approach this so that you’re making the most of your precious resources - time and money (by way of your supplies).

Going to Print

Evaluating a negative is a collaboration between yourself, your negatives and your contact sheet.

You decide which images to make and which to print based on your intention and pre visualization of your work. You choose your first round of images from the compositions, subjects or scenes that you’ve captured. Do these fit or not, with the idea you had in your head. Is there a stand out that has to be included or is there one that will ‘go’ with your idea and another that won’t but should be saved for another body of work or series?

This first round of curating is essentially part of finding images that fit your idea of the body of work as well as what you aesthetically find desirable. It is not uncommon to see folks circle frames on their contact sheets with red marker or use small post-its to indicate which images they need to investigate further. In the image below. The example is a contact sheet with images of Richard Avedon at opening of Diane Arbus exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art, 1972 by Sarchiapone, Cosmos Andrew, 1931-2011, photographer. You can see the notes that are written as part of the photographer’s notes to self and the other circles, arrows or markings that indicate either an important image or element. A lot of the notations tend to be some sort of ‘code’ that is often unique to the photographer. I myself, like circling what I need to look at first but I’m sure depending on the photographer and what their needs are, they will add more or less detail per their own method of working.

Smithsonian Archives, Cosmos Andrew Sarchiapone papers, circa 1860-2011, bulk 1940-2011

Comparing your Contact Sheet + Negative

Once you’ve got an idea of which images you want to work on, then you need to study them. What are you looking for? Overall, you’re looking to see if the image you want to print actually will be worth printing.

Image Credit: written by eparrino on 2022-12-22 #tutorials #negatives #exposure #darkroom #self-development #darkroom-print #inspect-the-negatives

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Photo 1: Underdeveloped and underexposed

• Contrast is flat - lacks clear definition of highlights and shadows

• Density is low - overall small latitude of values and no clearly sharp areas or edges, overall very thin or very opaque negative

• The Result: this image will never be able to be anything other than a print which mirrors the detail, density and contrast that you see here in the negative, regardless of the work one does to alter contrast, dodge, burn or tweak paper exposure or development. For most images like this - it would be more efficient to reshoot and expose, then develop the film correctly.

Photo 2: Underexposed, properly developed

• Contrast is clearly defined but not throughout the whole image, only in the extreme examples of highlights and shadows with little depth of middle values / mid tones

• Density is light and the negative is very thin in most areas with the negative overall very near to transparent in all but the extremely bright highlights

• The Result: While there are areas of distinct detail - the negative will be very quick to print and may not expose well at a time which allows the silver in the paper to properly expose to the light, therefore resulting in a very dark and low detailed image with the possibility of not ever reaching complete black in the darkest shadows because exposure time isn’t long enough to activate the silver in the paper’s emulsion.

Photo 3: Underexposed, Over developed

Contrast is quite high and there are distinct and clear differences between the highlights and shadows. Values in the mid tone range are perhaps ok but as they move towards either shadows or highlights, tend to disappear into either side of that range of exposure value. Some use of contrast filters can help make more ‘space’ between the middle values but the image also might need some dodging and burning to get it just right.

Density is fine - good differences in density and opacity and transparancy seem to match the values they’ve captured proportionately. The mid tones seem to be a little less nuanced or varied in detail but are an improvement and better for printing than the first photo and the second.

The Result: While far from perfect, this negative has a preferable amount of detail in most areas of the image including detail in a majority of the opaque = highlight and the transparent = shadow areas of the negative. This is a negative that you can work with, event hough there are some ‘problem areas’ you may need to suss out in the darkroom.

How do I evaluate the negative?

This image (above) can be evaluated through analyzing the areas that are great to print, as they are (in Green) the areas that are going to most likely need more light and maybe even some burning to get the detail you see in the negative in the print (Magenta) and the areas that are shadows and have detail but will need some dodging in order to retain the detail that you see in the negative (Cyan)

Knowing what is in store as you attempt to print a negative gives you a good view of how you might best approach printing a negative successfully.

Summary

Practice taking a beat to complete this step in your progress towards making your first print - the more you do this, the easier and faster and more accurate (I might add) your assessments of negatives will be and the more successful and quick your printing. Learning to work with any new material is going to be a process of trying, doing and reflecting - the more go through that cycle and take time for each step - the more you improve and develop your intuition through experience, not assumptions.

Site Specific - 2022

While I love using a lens to capture light I am recently enjoying more of  the iterative, step-by-step  process of making.  I am discovering how building towards something that isn’t preconceived can welcome experimentation and adventure - how the process becomes an integration of each texture, color, pattern - like fabric. Something cumulative out of small parts, not always greater than, but a cooperative effort that creates a subtle hand-loomed effect.  Nowhere have I been better able to explore this approach to my art than with the Cyanotype photographic process.

The Cyanotype is a process that came to mind when I was traveling abroad with students this Summer as a way to connect them to the land and cement their understanding of exposure, history and process through experience. We made blue impressions of coneflower, sage, clover and blackberry in the sun in the Czech Republic and later, I spent time, alone, on the far West coast of Ireland, and made my own impressions in blue.

I thought of Anna Atkins and her work combining science and nature in Photographs of British Algae 1843-53, and took the time to walk the shores on the Dingle Peninsula gathering from the edge of the waves and making camera-less images using everything from seaweed to jellyfish as the mist inevitably contributed a temporal ‘print’ to the very site-specific works before I ‘developed’ them in the waters of the Atlantic.

Once home, I returned again and again to the images I had gathered of lace curtains in cottage windows and thought of Julia Herschel’s book - also made using the Cyanotype Process - A Handbook for Greek and Roman Lace Making, 1869.   It has not been uncommon to see doilies, lace and other garments or items of tremendous skill and fragile pattern archived through the cyanotype process. Like the delicate edges and branches of seaweed and transparent agae, these textile pieces are also items  whose images are most faithfully translated  when they do that job themselves. The connection between the threads of lace, skeins of yarn and tendrils of the seaweed wove themselves naturally into something that I am only now just beginning to see the pattern and want to keep playing at the threads - pulling and tucking into something that is more personal and loomed from a rich variety of parts.

Over the Shoulder

There’s not much time between today and when the class ended in Prague. Already, those days feel very far away. Students have left and scattered to their next adventure or to return home. The students whose work remains unfinished is still not in my inbox, and of course, some are ignoring my last communications reminding them that WhatsApp isn’t a suitable way to communicate now that we’re outside of our ‘in-country’ program. None of this is surprising. What is, is that it all feels so far away already though really I feel as if I could look behind me and catch a glimpse of Jana walking to the tram and still, when I enter a spot, I expect and am disappointed that there isn’t the usual ‘ Dobré den!” Greeting me at the door.

Ireland so far has been nice - though I say Ireland and really, it’s only Dublin. As if one city, even one so central as Prague or Dublin, could give one a proper sense of place. I’ve already had, in two days, about as many conversations here as I think I did with strangers in Prague. The Irish are a chatty people - I count myself among them, for sure. I’m trying not to get my hopes and expectations up for. Dingle - not sure what I will find there. For sure, I have more work to do for the class and need to provide their feedback - I am fully aware that human nature is going to make me procrastinate. So perhaps tonight is a good night to chip away at it - or tomorrow morning.

Maybe I’ll get lucky and once I settle tonight, I’ll have a chance to go to a pub and get food and see how social folks are. It is Sunday, so perhaps not the best day for it, but I’m hoping that my adventures will end on a good note.

Focus on the Difficulty & Change your Perspective

Hidden Brain’s Episode: Reframing your Reality Part 1

This episode got me thinking about how things have gone the last few days and how changing out the lens through which we view difficulties can transform our attitude - and our ability make meaning out of our experience.

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A lot of what inspires me to want to write and failing that, create assignments or approaches to teaching in my own classroom, are podcasts, articles read or other obliquely related bits of information. It seems to be the way that my brain works. I get a spark from hearing information outside of my own field of understanding and immediately make some connection to my own life. Perhaps it’s an only child thing.

While teaching abroad, the classroom extends outside of the walls that usually help define boundaries of roles and behavior for both students and faculty. There is no “home: that takes someone outside of the school or class experience while one is abroad. This applies equally to students and to faculty and is something that, I would argue, is not something one can prepare for without having experienced it first hand. There’s no way to predict how a group of otherwise unfamiliar students will react as they have to become room or housemates, how the pressure cooker of every stress of new languages, environments, and transportation will work as a catalyst for the usual quirks that can result in behavioral issues in the dorms or in the classroom.

As the faculty in charge of that classroom, I’ve been experiencing a lot of push back - not to whether or not I have the authority and expertise to teach the subject matter (which is what I’m used to) - but rather the overall role of the instructor in the context of study abroad.

Throughout this class I’ve been challenged to provide structure to an itinerary that has, from the beginning, been tentative, given COVID, Summer holidays in Central Europe and the fact that when one travels, everything is a tentative itinerary - especially right now with post COVID shortages of labor and supply chain issues. It has been a challenge and ultimately, freeing, to have the structure clearly layed out for the course - posted on our institution’s class website - and then left alone (seriously, only one or two students have even logged on since the beginning of class). The course has been a day by day improvisational response to what the students need to know along the timeline of technical paired with aesthetic, etc. developed through experiential learning - hands-on, in person, with an emphasis on process. I’m using prompts to keep them focused on making images and to practice the technical skills we’re building and for the more advanced students, we’re meeting outside of class or as sidebars in class or on our activities to discuss and work on the process of building their body of work and focusing on an artifact that reflects their time and growth here as a artist, not just a photographer.

I know that I can explain what ‘experiential learning’ is to the students but just as teaching abroad for the first time, I’ve found that I need to throw my original plans out the window. This whole trip has been a learning experience - for everyone.

Alternative Approaches

“I find the work in “Past Paper // Present Marks” to be a lovely meditation on the randomness of creativity and the very essence of life, which is wrapped up in so much personal history, dings, scuffs, collisions. It’s what makes us who we are; it’s how we create the things we leave behind that prove we existed.””

— Kenneth Dickerman

From “Past Paper//Present Marks,” published by Radius Books. (Jennifer Garza-Cuen and Odette England)

These photograms made in Robert Rauschenberg’s pool contain multitudes

Perspective by Kenneth Dickerman

Photo assignment editor

July 13, 2022 at 6:00 a.m. EDT

For the last four months or so, I’ve been in a bit of a funk. The brutal news cycle detailing global unrest and domestic discord has eaten away at any sense of tranquility I had. Everything seems jumbled, upside down, nonsensical.

I’m just now starting to peek out of the funk. And one of the things I’ve found to be supremely helpful is taking respite in beautiful things — or things that I can get lost in, that carry me away into a sense of reverie. The book “Past Paper // Present Marks” (Radius, 2022) by artists Jennifer Garza-Cuen and Odette England is one of the books I’ve taken some refuge in.

The book itself is gorgeous, which only boosts the pleasure you’ll get while flipping through its pages. But the content (I hate that word!) borders on the sublime. It’s a collection of photograms — or photographic images produced without a camera — made in legendary artist Robert Rauschenberg’s swimming pool at his Florida home.

The images are experimental visions of wonder. Garza-Cuen and England made them in 2018 as part of the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation Residency in Captiva, Fla.

….. Read the full article HERE

You can read more about the book and purchase it on the publisher’s website, here.

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Alternative Approaches

This afternoon was the seventh day of a three week study abroad course in Prague, Cz. My seven students and myself along with our expat guide to the local outdoor life and foraging culture took the tram home and discussed everything from politics to dogs to our affection for Czech public transportation. Before settling into a bath to wash off the day and before going out to a bar for a poetry night named for a literary reference to Philip K. Dick, I happened upon this article written by Kenneth Dickerman that concerned photo books and photograms.

It has been challenging to organize a course around a particular theme knowing nothing really other than what I’ve been told about our host country and feeling relieved and surprised when come to find out that Prague has a rich and romanced history with the photograph and photographers throughout its history…. the little that I am aware of, to be sure.

This course has been the ultimate lesson in flipping the classroom. The course materials I worked to build online for months and weeks up to the last few days before departing sit untouched in our online shell and the usual ease with which I am able to access my teaching tools both online and otherwise are either missing or just really don’t feel like they ‘fit’ for the class. The readings, topics, videos, etc. are, of course, relevant, and some students are able to find time in our busy schedule to review or work ahead and add to their experience, but I’ve been honest with them and have said that our job here is to learn through experience.

Experiential learning is the ultimate hands-on and the greatest test of a student, at any level, finding comfort in the release of control over outcomes or seeing over the hill at what lies ahead on their path. It is totally uncomfortable as a teacher and for some students creates new opportunities to stretch and flex into the line between what they know what they expect to know and what they actually are presented with.

My own experience here has been that the usual touch points of assignments, regular, documented discussions and other ways in which students get ‘official’ feedback from the instructor don’t serve the students and therefore, I’m not using them for this class. We have two main assignments that will come out of this class and the whole enchilada depends on whether or not they do the work and move through the process as they experience - writing in their visual journals, making videos, voice notes and of course, images to chronicle their journey. Prompts help propel them but our activities hopefully give them opportunities and inspire.

The other assignment that is essential to this course is a collaborative photo book. My temptation today, after reading this article, was to post a link to the class and ask them to read it. However, I paused, wondering if it was actually useful for them to have one more thing to do before their weekend arrives.

I’m realizing that this book “Past Paper//Present Marks,” is relevant to the students in that it is another example of a photo book and therefore a good model by which to gauge their own content and design. It is also relevant to me and my own process. It has, for three years now, been really too much to ask that I make work. I’ve been simply teaching - ha ha - simply - no, I’ve been grinding and clawing my way towards teaching to students online, remotely and without the returns of getting to facilitate their work as they make it and celebrate their accomplishments in person.

This has been a real privilege to both teach as well as travel with this group of students and there is something in the approach that artists Jennifer Garza-Cuen and Odette England took towards the access they had to Robert Rauschenberg’s photographic supplies and home. Their use of the materials and the very specificity of the space in which them made the images seems to be a photographic record in a way that cuts and peels the process of photography back to its purest form.

Photography for early students is all about controlling variables and making precise decisions until the foundations are practiced and results are predictable. Photography is also the practice of taking that foundation and understanding of the precision, the chemistry, the variables and how to control them - and then throwing it all out the window and using expired film, paper, unpredictable light. It’s also about allowing chance and chaos and oblique strategies influence this precise and controlled field in way that only those with that strong foundation can - knowing that something will happen - but not knowing what.

The magic for me in photography is that there is a tremendous freedom from control for those who are receptive to it - an uncertainty that can be produced though setting things up so that the conditions are right for the unknown to breath and thrive.

Photography is always a reflection of ourselves, the photographer as well as ourselves, the viewer. In the case of the photograms made by England and Garza-Chuen, as they wrote, “ set them free in Bob’s pool///….accumulating itinerant light swimming through salt water ///“

Releasing our attachment to the outcomes is a beautiful thing

Short Exposures

April Snow in Portland, Oregon