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About Photography |
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Unlike many photographers I do not particularly care about the technical aspects of the craft. Obviously I understand the basics and can apply them as required. I never keep records of the camera settings used. To me this would be the same as a painter keeping a record of the size of type of brushes used and the colors and brands of paint used for a particular work and then copying this to the back of each canvas. The images work or fail in their own right. That having been said virtually all of the source images in these galleries were taken with my trusty Canon F1 35mm SLR and a Cannon Zoom Lens. The vast majority of photographs I have taken over the years were color transparencies. Print film was used either when purchased by mistake or when slide film was unavailable. I generally preferred Kodak Ektachrome Color Slide Film and used it for years before it was discontinued. Nowadays I normally use Kokak Elite Chrome. One of the reasons I prefer slide film is that it enables prints to be made using the Ilfochrome (formerly known as Cibachrome) direct from transparency to print process. I love the rich saturation and luminescent colors possible with Ilfochrome. Another reason to prefer slides is that the master images, when stored at subzero temperatures, are very color fast. I have slides taken 35 years ago that look virtually the same as when they were originally shot. I have always kept the master images in a deep freeze. In addition, the Ilfochrome prints themselves have excellent color stability, estimated to be 30 years or better. The 35mm source slides have sufficient resolution to support enlargements of 16X20 inches with clarity. Obviously
the images found on this web site are but a suggestion of the original
due to the limitations of the film to digital transfer and to the severe
JPEG compression used to bring the files down to a relatively manageable
size. The composition of the images can be fairly well ascertained and
since this is, to me, one of the most important aspects of the photography
I do I have placed selected images in the galleries in spite of the
limitations of web publishing. See Links At
the present time I find that I am using traditional film photography
much less and substituting digital photography instead. Although my
Nikon D50 SLR digital camera has much less resolution than a 35 mm SLR
I have become more interested in the "digital darkroom" manipulation
of images to inhance the essential elements of of the composition and
less interested in razor sharp photo realism of the origional scene.
Examples of this evolution may be seen on the Graphics
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