Even More “Darkroom” Magic

Even  More “Darkroom” Magic

by William Lulow

Here is some more darkroom magic that I created many years ago and reproduced here digitally. The digital process is easier physically than using film used to be, but you need to learn new techniques.

Back in the days of film and the darkroom, I used to play around with high contrast graphic arts film, making images from other negatives using the contact method. I would take an original negative and make a positive, like the one on the very left here. Then, I would enlarge that on to graphic arts film which would yield a negative with many of the middle tones missing. I experimented with exposure in the enlarger until I got what I wanted. When I had a good negative, I would then enlarge it onto another piece of negative film which would yield a positive. I would then sandwich the negative with another piece of graphic arts film and get a negative on a positive image. In order to come up with a final image, which was a mixture of the positive and negative images, I would place the “sandwich” in the enlarger to obtain a final print.

The digital process is a bit less daunting. You can change the values in Photoshop and combine them with the computer. Sometimes I find it easier to manipulate various elements in QuarkXPress, create a page and then bring the other images into it and place them where I want. The same thing can be done in Photoshop. If you are working in a page-making software, you want to make sure that your final images are saved as JPEGs so that you can upload them.

So, here, the first image on the left was the original shot done in the studio. The next was a high contrast version of the same shot. Then came the negative image, the close-up of the face and then the sandwich.

There are many different things you can do with digital images these days. One thing became obvious to me after some experimentation. Multiple computer applications need to be used together to produce various results. I use a combination of Adobe Photoshop (required for any photographer these days), Adobe Lightroom and Adobe Bridge. All three are always open on my task bar whenever I am working with images. I prefer to use Bridge as my import application because I find Lightroom a bit of an overkill because of the separate files it creates. Also, although both applications are fine, Bridge’s preview tool is a bit easier to use with just the spacebar needed to get an enlarged preview. Lightroom is a much more complicated program to use, in my opinion.  (Incidentally, both programs come with the $11/month rental of Photoshop).  I use QuarkXpress (page making software) to arrange images and put them together on a page when I need to.(You can also use InDesign, which will do the same things, but since I’m used to Quark, that’s what I use). Again, you can even do similar things in Photoshop, but having learned how to use Quark, I just find it easier. Images have to be saved in specific formats that are compatible with the JPEG images so that they can be uploaded easily to a website. (For instance, Quark pages need to be output as EPS files so that they can be converted to JPEG files by Photoshop). But once you have mastered whatever software packages you like, the workflow you set up will then allow you to alter the images however you wish. The problem always is that it is often time-consuming to learn new software packages. So, it’s better to stick with procedures that you know before trying to learn something new.

So, again, in the digital era, you need to have the software packages I mentioned and be able to switch between them, and use a good, digital camera if you want to produce really professional results.