Aubrey, San Franciscso, Ca. September of 2015
Leica M2, 35mm lens, Ilford FP4 film.
No. p20151004_105
in Polaroids
Marina, San Francisco, Ca. 2015
Modified Polaroid Land Camera, Fuji FP3000b film.
No. p20151004_102-03
in Polaroids
Diptych / Polaroids - Marina, San Francisco, Ca. 2015
Modified Polaroid Land Camera, Fuji FP3000b film.
No. 0386_04
Montgomery Station, San Francisco, Ca. 2015
Voigtlander Bessa L, 21mm lens, Ilford HP5 film.
Self Portrait, October 2015
Self Portrait, San Francisco, CA. October of 2015.
Panasonic GF1, 20mm lens. Processed with UFRaw and GIMP.
No. 0373_36
Yerba Buena. San Francisco, Ca. 2015.
Voigtlander R3m, 35mm lens, Ilford HP5 film.
No. 0373_30
Montgomery Station, San Francisco, Ca. 2015.
Voigtlander R3m, 35mm lens, Ilford HP5 Film.
No. 0373_29
Commuters, San Francisco, Ca. 2015.
Voigtlander R3m, 21mm lens, Ilford HP5 film.
No. 0373_12
Mission and New Montgomery Streets. San Francisco, Ca. 2015.
Voigtlander R3m, 21mm lens, Ilford HP5 film.
No. 0357_37 - 0358_13
Diptych, Keira Grant. Leica M2, 35mm / Leica M3, 50mm, Ilford FP4 film.
No. 0373_22
Louie’s Barber Shop, Castro Street. San Francisco, Ca. 2015.
Voigtlander R3m, 21mm lens, Ilford HP5 film.
Notes On Process...
I've recently started tinkering around with a page on Patreon, which is a site for creative folks to basically crowd source funding on a monthly or per project basis. An interesting idea to say the least, so in an effort to subsidize some of my own work I'm going to be releasing prints and some exclusive content there in the coming months. So in the interest of transparency I thought it would be useful to lay out my print process, such as it is...
Cameras, Film and Processing
Some years ago I started shooting Leica rangefinders. I’m not a Leica freak, I don’t collect cameras. I am notoriously hard on my gear, and I shoot Leicas because, quite frankly, Germans make really good cameras. The glass is razor sharp and the bodies last forever. All the equipment I own is twice as old as I am. For a larger rant on this please see Notes on gear, film, process and the like…
I shoot predominantly with Ilford HP-5 Plus rated at ISO 320 to give the negs a little more punch. It has great detail even when printing 20 x 24 inches and larger, as well as a great deal of exposure latitude, which is good since I’m lazy with the light meter and tend to guess. I normally develop with Rodinal, which cranks up the grain but leaves the negs pretty sharp.
Again, see this post for more on the this...
Enlarger / The Beast
I’m currently using an old Omega D2 variable condenser enlarger with a Rodenstock 50mm lens, and this thing is built like a tank... I've removed the glass condensers and hot lamp in the head and replaced them with an Aristo Cold Light head that sits directly above the negative stage. The cold light head produces a very sharp, high contrast print with little or no filtration, and without the condensers, dust on the negative is less likely to print. Cold heads use a fluorescent tube in a grid pattern, giving perfectly even illumination across the film, eliminating soft corners that often occur with condensers. The light is much more intense than a hot bulb, exposure time is cut nearly in half. I’ve also filed out all my negative carriers to print full frame.
Paper and Development
My paper of choice is Oriental-Seagull variable contrast fiber base. Oriental is a high contrast, cold tone paper, with rich blacks and a clean white base. It filters well with the cold head and is pretty similar to the Seagull G paper that Ansel Adams used. It's a really lovely paper and makes an amazingly rich print, especially when toned.
My typical recipe for developer these days is Legacy Pro B&W Powder, which is basically identical to Kodak Dektol (the greatest developer ever made) at half the price and with a longer shelf life. I add a couple milliliters of restrainer, which is a developer additive that cools the image tone down a bit more and cleans up the highlights.
From there the prints get a good wash before a second fixer bath, then are toned in Selenium toner to pump up the blacks. The selenium toner also improves longevity, making the shelf life of the print pretty close to the half life of uranium...
From there everything gets washed, flattened, spotted for dust, signed, dated, and sold for exceedingly large sums of money... or more likely, stuck in a box to appreciate in value until I'm dead.
Sarah, digital test...
Sarah, Digital Test - October of 2015
Got the chance to work with Sarah again late last week... She was one of the first models I ever worked with. Sad to say she's leaving the Bay Area like so many other creative folks these days. I often wonder how long San Francisco can support the crushing weight of mediocrity that's chasing everyone worth a damn out of this town...
No. 0373_35
Yerba Buena. San Francisco, Ca. 2015.
Voigtlander R3m, 35mm lens, Ilford HP5 film.
No. 0373_31
Howard Street. San Francisco, Ca. 2015.
Voigtlander R3m, 35mm lens, Ilford HP5 film.
No. 0373_20
Louie's Barber Shop, Castro Street. San Francisco, Ca. 2015.
Voigtlander R3m, 21mm lens, Ilford HP5 film.
“We stand to lose a lot of our history"
“If we don’t find a solution our 21st Century will be an information black hole. “Future generations will wonder about us but they will have very great difficulty knowing about us.
“We think about digitising things because we think we will preserve them, but what we don't understand is that unless we take other steps, those digital versions may not be any better, and may even be worse than, the artefacts that we digitised.
“We stand to lose a lot of our history. If you think about the quantity of documentation from our daily lives which is captured in digital form, like our interactions by email, people's tweets, all of the world wide web, then if you wanted to see what was on the web in 1994 you'd have trouble doing that. A lot of the stuff disappears.
“We don't want our digital lives to fade away. If we want to preserve them the same way we preserve books and so on we need to make sure that the digital objects we create will be rendered far into the future.”
- Vint Cerf, Google Vice President
No. 0373_17
Montgomery Station. San Francisco, Ca. 2015.
Voigtlander R3m, 21mm lens, Ilford HP5 film.
No. 0373_11
Woman with Dogs, Howard Street. San Francisco, Ca. 2015.
Voigtlander R3m, 21mm lens, Ilford HP5 film.
No. 0373_09
Panhandler, New Montgomery Street. San Francisco, Ca. 2015.
Voigtlander R3m, 21mm lens, Ilford HP5 film.