3 Tips to 'make' a photograph not 'take' a photograph
I think these are great tips that help slow down your photography and make great photographs.
When you see something you want to photograph:
1. Stop and think. Is this the best position? Moving just a short distance can sometimes make a much better picture.
2. Is this the best light? Following on from 1, is the light showing off your subject? Can you wait for a cloud to pass or move to capture shadows differently?
3. Is this the best time of day? People, traffic, even sun's position might be improved by coming back at another time.
Think of these three things, when you next bring your camera to your eye, and you'll 'make' great photographs.
Casework Findhorn
Sailor’s warning.
Pyrocat-HD 1:1:100 12 minutes @ 20c
Film: Ilford FP4+
Findhorn Bay and the surrounding beaches are some of finest in Scotland. Miles and miles of beautiful sands run along the coast of the Moray Firth. Occasionally, as on many beaches in the UK, the beach is interrupted by old weather-worn World War II tank traps and bunkers that present a fascinating insight into the past.
As I walked down the beach I spotted this warning sign. A warning to sailors of a hidden danger near the shore. It stood stark against the sand, the contrast of the sun etching it from reality and pasting it back again, almost as an afterthought.
Setting up the shot
I walked around the scene looking for the best point of view and set up my tripod and camera, fitting the almost obligatory yellow filter to darken the blue sky. I needed the white clouds to give that huge Scottish sky some interest and the yellow filter would set them off against the blue well.
Personal film speed
Running a personal film speed tests had given me very accurate exposure control and adding the compensation for each colour filter is easy, yellow being two thirds of a stop. To compensate I use the exposure meter which can be adjusted in third stop increments.
My personal film speed with Pyrocat-HD is 125 ISO for Ilford FP4+ film and of course that’s what I had on my meter. To adjust for the yellow filter which ‘steals’ 2/3 of a stop of light, I set the meter to 80 ISO, 2/3 less that 125 ISO. In effect, this is telling the meter that my film needs two thirds of a stop more light than normal. If the filter takes one stop of light I would have set 64ISO on the meter, and so on.
Exposing the scene
Exposing, for a scene like this is potentially difficult. I could see that the sky was bright, the sand was bright, pretty much everything is bright in this shot. Any regular meter reading would be too dark and under expose the film. As I’ve explained before, with black and white film, we need to expose for the shadows and control the highlights through development. “Exposing for the shadows” means placing the shadows correctly in the zone system. My usual way of getting exposure is to look for shadows that I want to have detail in and take a meter reading of them. I then close down two stops. In this scene I saw that the left side of the warning is in shadow and so I took a spot meter reading of those shadows, set it onto the camera, and closed the camera down two stops.That places the shadows in just right place! Let your development do the rest.
Results
I think the photograph works. It’s stark, just as the warning should be to he who ignores it. Yes, one of my better shots I think.
This is a blog post from a few years ago that I’m reposting.
The Best Negatives are Suprisingly Easy
Snowy Chairs
If you want a guaranteed method of making great negatives just reach for Barry Thornton’s two bath metol developer. The man was a master of simple formulations providing this and his pyrocatechin 2-bath for our pleasure. This metol 2-bath is like an updated Stoekler, sharper, and with great contrast. His pyrocatechin 2-bath is maybe the sharpest pictoral developer I’ve ever used - bar none. Just look at the photograph above. The detail in the snow is beautiful, something many developers cannot easily attain and this developer did it automatically.
Bath A Metol 6.5g Sodium sulphite 80g Water to 1 liter
Bath B Sodium metaborate 12g Water to 1 liter (To make the metaborate use 8.4g borax and 1.8g sodium hydroxide)
Develop FP4+ for 4.5 mins in A agitating for the first 30 seconds then 5 seconds each 30 seconds. Pour back and pour in bath B and agitate for the first 5 seconds, then 10 seconds every minute for 4.5 minutes.
Stop and fix.
Gorgeous negatives every time!
- HP5+ needs 5 minutes A and the same for B
- PAN F+ needs ~4 minutes.
- Unknown film? Give it 4.5 mins A and B.
- Don’t rinse between A and B.
- Don’t pre-wet
- Don’t throw away the developer but pour back A into its bottle for reuse, same for B.
- Develops 15 films
Beutler's High Acutance Divided Developer
Beutler's, the topic of this post, is another metol based developer, like D-23, but uses a quite different strategy to develop the film. It’s a high acutance surface developer, similar to Crawley’s FX-1, using very low levels of Metol and the high alkalinity of sodium carbonate. This produces well compensated, very sharp negatives, especially when used in its divided mode. Willi Beutler formulated this developer in the 1930s for the then new 35mm films. It’s not particularly fine grained, compared to say 510-Pyro or D-23 and maybe a little larger than D-76 1+1 but, due to the high resolution, the apparent grain is minimised.
This is one of the only true divided developers. Let me explain. Divided development, that is true divided development, is where the developer has been split between two baths. The first bath contains the developing agent and some preservative and the second bath the accelerator that kicks the developing agent into action. Don’t confuse this with two-bath development! Two-bath is where you use a “normal” developer in bath A and a further accelerator in bath B - there’s the subtle difference. You see, in a two-bath the negatives are actually developing in bath A and, in fact, will develop to completion if left long enough. Bath B is being used for contrast control only, to bring down excessive highlights into a more printable range.
So, in divided development we have no development in Bath A (the alkalinity is too low). Bath A is only used to swell the gelatine emulsion and soak up the developing agent. When this is complete we pour out the first solution and pour in the accelerator. This starts the development reaction with the shadows slowly developing and the highlights quickly developing. The developing agent quickly runs out in the highlights but not in the shadows. What does this mean? Well, the shadows continue developing to completion but the highlights have stopped in a controlled manner.
Concentrate A Water 400ml Metol 5g Sodium Sulfite 25g Water to make 500ml
- To make working solution A mix 1+2. For example 200ml of Concentrate A with 400ml water to make 600ml total. Discard after use.
Concentrate B Water 400ml Sodium Carbonate (anhyd)* 25g Water to make 500ml
- To make working solution B mix 1+10. For example 60ml Concentrate B with 600ml water. Discard after use.
To use Beutler 105 as a divided developer:
- Pour in working solution A
- Soak the film for 8 minutes with initial agitation of 30 seconds and then 10 seconds per minute
- Empty the tank
- Do not rinse the film
- Do not stop the film
- Pour in the working solution B
- Agitate for 10 seconds and then each minute for 4 minutes
- Empty the tank, stop with two fresh water baths of 30 seconds and fix the film as normal
- All at 20C
Beutler divided development gives full film speed and produces thinner than normal negatives (the top negatives in the picture below) which are very sharp and should print at grade 3. It’s one of my most compensating developers.
img_2256.jpg
Beutler negatives (top) have a thinner look
Using Beutler 105 as a single developer
You can also use this developer as a single bath. The formula remains the same and to make up your working solution mix it 1+1+8. For example 50ml A with 50ml B to 400ml water making a total working solution of 500ml. Agitation should be no more than 10 seconds each minute. Negatives will be thin but print at grade 2-3 nicely. If you find your negatives to be too contrasty (if you use a condenser enlarger for instance) then you can increase the dilution to 1+1+10.
Development times are around:
- ISO 25-50 5-10 minutes
- ISO 64-125 7-10 minutes
- ISO 400 9-12 minutes