I made this photograph on my oldest medium format camera. It is a Mamiya C330 twin lens reflex my father gave me during my senior year of high school. I dug it out over the summer and went to the Turnbull National Wildlife Refuge south of Cheney Washington.
Today I chose this negative to do a printing demo in the darkroom. In the process of demonstrating how I use filters for contrast control I realized something. The true subject of any photograph is not the thing being photographed but rather it is the textures of the scene and the light and dark values created from the direction of light. Although this is a photograph of a wetland landscape with some pine trees, it is really a photograph made from the textures of light and dark values.
This isn’t earth shattering news. I teach about design elements and principles all the time. But sometimes those lessons sink in just a little deeper.
On a side note what was fun about making this print is that after I had made an exhibition print that was optimal without using any contrast filters, I attempted to demonstrate how to optimize contrast by using multiple contrast filters in the printing process. It is a technique known as split contrast printing.
Split contrast printing works well when you have a difficult negative because you can make one set of exposures using a #5 high contrast filter to control the shadow values and then make a series of test using a #0 low contrast filters to control the highlight values. In the end you make two exposures for the best of each contrast filter. It helps with negatives that are made in difficult lighting scenarios or when you have an improperly exposed negative.
After 30 minutes of making test trips I ended up making the exact same print I had made without any filter. The negative had been perfectly exposed in the first place!
One reason a photographer might need to use split contrast printing techniques is when you photograph a bright blue sky without using any colored filter to block the blue light. In that instance the sky will be over exposed because most films are excessively blue sensitive. However on this day I had worn my Kodak photo vest that had all my B&W color filters and I used a #22 Orange filter to block some of the blue light and help highlight the separation between the clouds and the sky.
I think it worked out okay. 🙂
