In the course of my digital career over the past decade, I get asked time and again whether or not I miss the control, beauty and overall experience of having a complete B&W darkroom. The simple answer is: “No.” Alright, so there is something wistfully nostalgic about secluding oneself alone in the darkroom to mix chemistry, run water baths and watch in amazement again and again as a latent print image emerges from below the Dektol in a tray, but really I don’t miss it. Really.
“But there is something about B&W prints that digital just can’t match”, I hear. Okay, for selenium toned silver prints, or luscious palladium contact prints I agree; there is something to the medium in nice gallery lighting that is hard to match, but it never stopped Graham Nash or Stephen Johnson. “But digital can’t match the tone & range of B&W film!”
That’s poppycock. Let’s look. Here’s a Scitex CT scan done in 1999 from one of my more iconic images:
Scitex CT scan of black hands & flower.
And, you know something? That’s pretty much what the contact sheets looked like on a grade 1 paper with low contrast proofing development. The negative is thin (as intended, and as correct) but the full range of tones are there in both the neg and the excellent scan. Just check the histogram:
Lightroom histogram of shot above.
Of course, as with any B&W photographer, how I imagined the final print to be from the shot was something entirely different. The setup of this shot was rather simple: I found a model with massive black hands, and then found a variety of small white flowers for him to gently hold. I had him lay his hands over a black velvet tabletop, and uses a single overhead parabolic reflector with mylar diffusion for the lighting. Armed with my Hasselbald 500 CM, Planar 100mm f/3.5 CF, and Kodak Plus-X film, I proceeded to take a series of shots all metered with the flower placed on Zone 8, and let everything else fall along the curve. The result was an image that printed like this:
Same Scitex CT scan processed in LR via RGB for selenium tone effect.
And, let’s see just what happened to that Lightroom histogram:
Lightroom histogram of shot after processing.
Notice that not only do we achieve the full range of the negative, but we can even detect the red-blue shift (purple) that emerged after I applied a digital selenium tone effect. I would say in fact that this digital version not only matches what I was able to produce on Ilford Gallerie FB paper years ago, but surpasses it. So, do I miss the B&W darkroom? Hardly – especially now that I have a Lightroom. ;-)
One light, a neutral background, 100s of repeatable colors. No tricks, SFX, or Photoshop.
If I told you I could create any one of the colors you see above at a client’s request in under 5 minutes, would you believe me? What if I told you I’d do it all in camera, without ever launching Photoshop? Or, that I could deliver the precise RGB or CMYK values, and assure you that it would fit within the gamut of the target output device? Maybe we’re a little old school around the studio here, but it’s really just the way we do things. We love the craft & science of photography as much as the magic & art. We don’t do fads; we deconstruct them. We don’t ever think “fix it in post”, we always strive to nail it in camera the first time. Always.
I’ve only had a handful of mentors & heroes in my photography career, but Dean Collins was certainly one of them. I regret that I never got to meet him in person, or even attend one of his seminars. In fact, until recently I’d never even seen a video of him speaking. I learned about Dean Collins while working at NIU (Northern Illinois University) in their Art/Photo department through my boss, Herb Nelson. Herb went to one of Dean’s seminars, and purchased this beautiful 3 ring binder of photos and lighting diagrams that I pored over one day at work. Herb wouldn’t let me take it home, so I made copy slides of the whole book, and took those home to view on my own slide projector for study. (Wow, life was really different before the Internet; sometimes I forget just how different)
One of the key things that Dean Collins taught was really quite simple. So simple in fact, that for most people –including me– it was mind boggling for awhile: “chromazones”. So, just what are chromazones, and why should anyone care? Well, Dean took two key concepts and combined them into one simple method, and then shared it with the world. First, he recognized that for decades, designers & art directors relied on Pantone colors chips for their designs & layouts. Second, he adapted Ansel Adams’ Zone System to everyday color roll film in a way that would provide repeatable results on press. And, so was born the concept of “chromazones” – any color on any zone anytime.
This concept is so simple it’s stunning. Thanks to Dean for sharing, and reminding me to share alike.