Category: Photo II

Ask for the pinhole body cap that fits your camera. Pinhole images are not as sharp as regular ones, but they can have wonderful tones and can help create a dreamlike atmosphere, an inner landscape. This exercise asks you to try out your pinhole body cap at least once, but you may find that it will allow you to make better images for some of your other regular assignments. The only challenging part of this exercise is getting the exposure right, and since the aperature is not adjustable, that means choosing how many seconds to expose the film. Look carefully at the exposure guide that comes with the body cap.

Step I
Load a roll of 100 ASA film, 20 images.

Step II
Take a tripod, cable release and hand light meter out to the lodaing dock behind MLC.

Step III
Select a scene you want to photograph. Remember that Pinhole images work best with closeup subjects, so avoid shots with distant subjects. Everything is always in focus, so get as close as you wish.

Step IV
Remove your regular lens and attach the pinhole body lens.

Step V
Take a light reading of your scene. Take a reading of the darkest parts and a reading of the brightest part, and average the two.

Step VI
Use the conversion chart to determine the correct number of seconds exposure.

Step VII
Put your camera on a steady surface or on a tripod and make two exposures.

Step VIII
Cut the seconds in half and make two more exposures and then double the seconds and make two more, for a total of six exposures of the same scene.

Step IX
Select two more scenes and go through the same bracketing sequence: two at “normal” exposure, two at one-half exposure and two at double exposure. This way, if your light meter reading is off, you have still protected yourself and will probably come out with something useable.

What should you see?
If the wind is blowing, you may not be able to recognize what you have photographed: it may just seem a mass of light and dark tones. If nothing moves, your images should look recognizable and in focus from very close to very far away. They will be slightly fuzzy, however.

One of the frustrating things about available-light (non-flash) photography is that the good shots sometimes occur in places and at times that put them just out of reach. If you lower shutter speed, camera shake ruins the image, or if you open up the aperture, you lose all depth of field. Pro photograhers have a good way of shooting in low-light that allows them to keep shutter speeds high and apertures small: they use a high-speed film. Before doing this exercise, look through the book Night Work, by Michael Kenna.

Step I
Load a roll of 400 film into your camera. This roll comes with 36 exposures. Change your ASA setting to 1600.

Step II
Take a lot of time thinking about what to shoot, and how to set up your shots. Take some test meter readings, just to make sure there will be enough light to hand-hold the camera, to keep the shutter speed above 125th second. These are low-light shots, not no-light shots.

Where to shoot? In a classroom, in Keku, outside at night under a streetlight.

In general, you want to find shots that don’t “straddle” two lighting situations, with huge extremes between highlights and shadows. For example, you might want to avoid indoor shots that look out through doors and windows to bright outdoor areas.

At the same time, try to locate shots that have some contrasts between highlights and shadows. It’s a fine line.

Step III
Take meter readings so that any light sources (lamps, streetlights, overhead lights, etc) do not appear in the viewfinder. You might have to point the camera down, away from the light sources to do this.

Step IV
STOP! Check your shutter speed. Is it above 125th second? If not, put the camera on something like a chair or table, or wait and borrow a tripod. If you need to shoot at 60th, also stop your breath and try not to jerk the shutter release.

Step V
As always, bracket. Since you have lots of film this time, bracket two stops in each direction, for a total of five negatives for each separate image.

Step VI
Take six different shots, for a total of 30 images. Six shots means six different compositions. This might mean changing from horizontal to vertical, or finding a different angle. In reality, you can take the whole roll of just one subject within ten or fifteen minutes.

Step VII
See me for instructions for processing in T-Max developer.

What should you see?
If you bracketed correctly, your contact sheet should look like a good darkroom test strip: some frames will be too dark and some too light. However, at least one should be correctly exposed in each group of five. If you were to print those five or six images, they should look similar to the images in Night Work. And like Kenna’s images you might notice that they will be extra grainy. You don’t get something for nothing: grain is the price you pay for increased film speed. Learn to like it.

This assignment, like the next one, is meant to encourage you to learn Photoshop and to take advantage of a special feature of our software. You can produce beautiful B&W prints that have just one or two areas colored. The results can be striking, if you choose the right image. You may have done something similar in Photo I, but this assignment asks you to produce an image that is more complex.

Step I
Go back through your negatives and pull out one that will look good colorized. Not every negative will work: spend some time looking for the right one.

Step II
Scan the negative, using these specifications:
• Grayscale
• 16 bits
• 4,800 dpi on the Epson flatbed scanners. This is the maximum optical resolution of these scanners.

Step III
In Photoshop, go through these basic steps, in this order:
• Adjust the whitest and blackest points. Go to ImageAdjustments and adjust levels. Use the “auto” button or ask me for help.
• Adjust all the middle grays. Go to ImageAdjustments and adjust curves. Just do a rough adjustment at this point. A curve usually has two “handles” and looks like a mild “S.” Again, ask for help if you need it.

Step IV
Under Layers, add a new, blank layer. You will be coloring on this layer, not on the image itself. Set that layer as a “Soft Light” layer. Ask if you need to see where this command is located.

Step V
Change that new blank layer to a “Soft Light” layer under the pull-down menu in the layers dialogue box. Some images don’t work well with the blank layer set as a Soft light layer. In that case, change the blank layer back to a normal layer, but change the layer opacity instead.

Step VI
Choose your color in the Swatches window, select the paintbrush and start coloring. Here are some things you need to know:
• The space bar changes the paintbrush to a hand and lets you quickly move to different areas.
• The square bracket keys will either increase or decrease the size of the paintbrush.

Step VII
Use at least four different colors and color an area this is at least 20% of the total image area, so that the color is a significant element of the overall impact.

Step VIII
See me for help printing the image out through our RIP, Imageprint. You can’t just use the “print” command in Photoshop.

What should you see?
Something with power and beauty, an image that, if it were up on a wall among other photos, would make people passing by stop and come for a closer look, and then stop again the next time they pass.

You do not need to shoot any new film to do this exercise, although you are welcome to. There are several ways to approach this assignment, outlined below.

Step I

Go back through your negatives (or digital files) and pull out at least three that would look good combined in some way. Spend some time looking for the right negatives. You do not need to use 100% of every negative you select; perhaps you are just interested in one person among four or five of your friends.

Step II

Scan the negatives, using these specifications:
• Grayscale
• 16 bits
• 3,200 dpi on the Epson V700 flatbed scanners. This is the maximum optical resolution of these scanners.
• Use the crop tool if you are just interested in one small area of a negative.

Step III

In Photoshop, go through these basic steps for each negative, in this order:
• Adjust the whitest and blackest points. Go to ImageAdjustmentsadjust levels. Use the “auto” button or ask me for help.
• Adjust all the middle grays. Go to ImageAdjustments and adjust curves. Just do a rough adjustment at this point. A curve usually has two “handles” and looks like a mild “S.” Again, ask for help if you need it.

Step IV

Assemble the images. They all need to be the same format, either RGB for color images or 16-bit grayscale for black-and-white images.
• Decide on which image is your base image.
• Drag other images over to your base image, or just drag the parts you are interested in.  If you select parts of an image, be sure to ask me to show you how to feather selections, so that they will appear natural. When you drag them, they will be placed on new layers in your base image.
• Use the Image/transform/scale command to resize the imported images. Use the image/scale/rotate command to rotate them if necessary.

Step V

At this point, you have any number of strategies. Avoid the simple montage that just blends one image into another. Here are just a few possibilities:
• Selectively erase parts of one image to allow the layer underneath to show through.
• Use filters on one of the images and then allow the altered parts to show through in certain areas to create a half-real, half-dream effect
• Repeat some of the images you import. Resize or rotate or otherwise distort them if that works.

Step VI

Use the layers/make adjustment layer/curves command to create a separate curve adjustment layer for each of the main layers of your image. To do this, put the cursor at the point between the image layer and the adjustment layer and press option/click. (See me for help if you haven’t done this before.)

What should you see?

An image that makes us go “Wow!”