The AAD Photo thread - Photoshop NOT allowed!

This is the "Analog, Analog, Digital" photo thread. This thread is for us old enough to have done analog photography,
and/or purists of the fine art that photography once was. AAD means "Analog negative,
Analog print, and Digital scan for posting"... in other words, NO DIGITAL ORIGINALS ARE ALLOWED.

The rules:

1. Photo MUST be on an analog negative or positive medium
2. Print MUST be printed using "old school" analog techniques (ENLARGER ON PAPER!)
3. ABSOLUTELY ZERO digital "effects" allowed!!!! PERIOD!!!! No exceptions.
4. Digital "dust spotting" IS allowed ... sometimes scans gather dust spots.

In other words, if you SHOT A PICTURE WITH A DIGITAL CAMERA DO NOT POST IT HERE!!!!

This thread is for ANALOG, ANALOG, DIGITAL ONLY. Don't mess with the Jedi on this....

Lastly, this is NOT A CONTEST! It's a forum for those of us who've done THOUSANDS of
"analog" images over the decades... to give a nod to the CRAFT that once was photography,
before the age of Photo Shop.

So post on.... I'll start off with a few of my own - I have many THOUSANDS, but alas
not that many have been scanned. I'll add more over time, as I get to them.


Clear? Ok... start posting, analog fans!




Here's me - age 26, Mt. Rainier National Park - March, 1986. My good friend and
photographer assistant Brian McKenna and I were up very early to catch sunrise
on the mountain. This is near the end of the day. Photo by Brian, using my
Hasselblad 500C & processed in my darkroom - Plus-X 100, D76, Silver bromide print.
The camera next to me is the Omega 45-D 4x5 view camera mentioned in the following,
and a great many other, photos I made during this era.

Image Unavailable, Please Login



Apartment 12 - abandoned apartment building in downtown Tacoma, WA. ca. 1986
This apartment had been last occupied in the late 70s and boarded up ever since.
Mamiyaflex 220 camera, Plus-X 100, D76, Silver Bromide... part of a large series of
abandoned buildings in the city at the time.

Image Unavailable, Please Login



Catholic Church - Wilkinson, WA - ca. 1992... Wilkinson was a mining town in the
late 1800s and to this day is very very rural and isolated. This church is used every
Sunday, and has since the time it was founded. Omega 45-D 4x5 View Camera, Plus-X,
D76, printed on Brovira & selenium toned.

Image Unavailable, Please Login



Wilkinson Church, this time using Infrared 4x5 film on the Omega 45-D camera,
processed in D76, printed on hand-silvered, hand made paper....

Image Unavailable, Please Login


Log and Stream - ca. 1985 - Carbon River, Mt. Rainier National Park. Omega 45-D View
camera, 4x5 Plus-X, D76, Brovira print. 8 second exposure at sunrise to blur water.

Image Unavailable, Please Login


Bride With Doll... part of a series I did over a year, using this same creepy doll
in a variety of situations. This particular bride was kind of creepy herself, and
just seemed PERFECT, and she agreed to do the photo, moments after this shot I had
to shoot her wedding in full color and "wedding bliss".... the austere location was
an antiquated mansion that was used for weddings. Mamiyaflex 220, Plus-X,
D76, standard silver print.

Image Unavailable, Please Login


That's it for now... I have a LOT of black and white, as well as color slide (E6 mostly)
images from the last 25 years. I'll post more if this thread takes any wings. Otherwise,
we'll just let it die.

Have fun, fellow AAD photog fans....



Jedi

 

That's a cool picture... one of those "what is she thinking?", "what is she looking at and
smiling about?" sorts. I like it.

Jedi

 

It's simply Analog vs. Digital. There are a thousand web sites you can use now to
turn an ordinary image into something out of this world. In the analog world, sure
there were manipulations - double exposure, posterization, toning, emulsion distortion
(Poloroid prints), sepia, long exposure blur, etc. etc. etc. But they were ANALOG
techniques, and most of them were "one off" - it might have taken 15 wasted prints
to get an "effect" correct. There was no "undo" button!

IMO, the differences are SIGNIFICANT.

Jedi

 

Nice shots! I love wide angle.... always been my favorite perspective. I used
24mm and 28mm on my 35mm cameras, and have an old Russian medium-format
67x67mm beast of a camera that has the equivalent of 18mm were it a 35 format.
Any Silvers here that remember my "pix of where you got hitched" thread of the
mansion with the 3000-pipe organ in it, the wide angles from the balcony were
shot with that Russian camera.

Even today, my fave lens for my D40X is 18mm... but I'm hoping to add a 10-55 zoom soon.

Jedi

 

Very true. Yes, it was HARD to learn analog film techniques. EVERYTHING was exacting,
from exposure (I learned on a K1000 fully-manual, then on to a Hassy 500c manual), to
film development (especially if you dabbled in E6 and C41), to the "performance of
the negative" as Ansel Adams called it, the print. And that was just a NORMAL photo.
Add complex stuff like posterization, IR Film (VERY hard to work with), and it takes
MONTHS to perfect a technique. I was a "Zone System" afficianado and that method
of exposure / development / printing took YEARS to perfect.

With modern digital, pretty much anyone can turn out decent work - then add the fancy
web sites and editing tools and the results can be amazing.

But it's not the same... at ALL



Jedi

 

Very cool pix... I tried my hand at "hand coloring" back in the day - it's HARD! Whoever
did that portrait was probably a professional "colorist"... I love the look of that technique.

What payload was being launched on the Saturn V?

Jedi

 

Where'd the pictures go??? I'm confused....

Jedi

 

Yup. When I got into large format 4x5, I started with a couple old Speed Graphics as
I slowly acquired film holders (and skill!). I shot a LOT of weddings in the 80s and
used the SG for the "B&W" newspaper photo. Then I discovered Ansel Adams and
the Zone System, and the only 4x5 view camera I could afford was the Omega 45D.
Body was like $300, and the Fujinon 210 shutter/lens/lensboard was $250 more, plus
the Bogen 3030 tripod. I made my own dark cloth (stitched it myself!!)... that was a
LOT of bux for a weekend wedding photog with a full-time day job.

I believe the Omega Enlarger folks were a different company.... for my 4x5 work I
used a 1940s "Solar" brand enlarger with a GIGANTIC condenser. Worked very well,
with very even light. I miss that old enlarger....

Jedi

 

Gotcha. For some reason I thought the V was used for other payloads too....

Jedi

 

Here's a few more... this time in color. These are from April 2002, of rocker Joe
Walsh for a magazine cover (plus a 7000 word interview article I wrote). The
shots had to be 100 ISO E6 slides (digital just wasn't good enough then). Joe
was wearing a bright white shirt, and I had to ask him to change to get "black
space" for the cover text. I took shots all through the house and studio, all done
with tripod and multiple lights. But the magazine went with the single hand-held
shot of the lot - the one under the Collins wall light. It wasn't my first choice,
but hey - I got the cover regardless
Image Unavailable, Please Login
Image Unavailable, Please Login
Image Unavailable, Please Login
Image Unavailable, Please Login
Image Unavailable, Please Login