What do you do when you have no model?

You do a self-portrait!

On Sunday night back in April 1988, I decided I was going to submit some work to Tuesday's Camera Club of Ottawa annual Portrait Competition. OK, short notice and no model. But I had an idea in mind. I set up my lights in my apartment hallway (about 6x6') The main light had a silver honeycomb and was just inside the living room, at the 45º 45º traditional position.



I hung a small slaved  shoe mount flash on the ceiling as a hair light. My second studio strobe (key light) this was set to skim across my skin to pick up texture (ala Mr. Karsh) this was in the hall closet. My frame had just the edges of the door frame at the frame edges. I had a mirror behind my camera for composition. masking tape on the door frame marked where the top of my head would be in the frame.

Pentax LX, SMC Pentax-M 85mm f:2 lens. 35mm Ilford FP-4, printed on Agfa Portriga Fibre Based paper. Selenium toned for archival. Processed and printed Monday evening, mounted at lunch time Tuesday. Entered into the Competition Tuesday, won Best B&W Portrait of 1988.



Darrell

Black and White Portraiture

This is old school, a sample of my pre-digital era B&W portraits.



I worked with Barb, and thought she would have potential for a shoot. Ilford FP-4 120, Mamiya 645, 150mm lens.



This was actually a colour negative (Kodak VPSIII), but instead of using a panchromatic paper like Panalure, I used Ilford Muligrade with an 80B filter to neutralize the orange mask. This gave Barb pan skin and pale eyes that I like in this study.



Debby was shot with the Mamiya 645, and 150mm lens combination onto Ilford FP-4 which is my favourite B&W emulsion. The print was printed 11x14" onto Kodak Ektalure paper, and selenium toned for the warm look.



Jennifer was a 35mm Kodak VPSIII negative, Pentax LX, 85mm f:2 lens converted to monochrome with Photoshop CS2.

Finally Nancy is the most Photoshopped portrait in this set. Lovely girl nice look. But she was wearing a tank top, that didn't really work in the photograph.



This caused a hot bare shoulder. So I added the textured black shoulder and sleeve to the photo. I also did a little smoothing out of her skintones.

Darrell

Nature Images

With the arrival of spring I look forward to walking along to river and seeing what presents itself to my lens.

There are a few areas locally that Great Blue Herons permit a close approach.



Same heron a little later the same day.





Taken with my Pentax * ist D and SMC Pentax-M* 300mm f:4 lens. Ottawa River midway between Tunney's Pasture and Island Park Dr.

Sometimes I get a treat, like this Mallard hen doing a little dance for the camera.



It's pretty hard to go anywhere near the river without seeing  gulls, here we have a Ring-billed Gull in winter plumage.



Not exactly National Geographic coverage, but I will look into shooting some more nature this year.

Darrell

Another nice day for a walk downtown

One camera body, one lens... 14mm f:2.8

It was a beautiful afternoon, so I decided to grab a camera body with my 14mm lens. So I took a 10 minute walk downtown to see what graphic design I could capture. The Export Development Corporation HQ has some interest lines and curves. This stainless steel clad curved building always presents interesting opportunities.





A few blocks north I shot 55 Metcalfe Street, well I think it's 55



I saw the bright highlights on the "55" so I exposed for the number, and let the rest fall into place. Digital to me is very much like shooting slide film, as you always expose for the highlights, and in this case I let the shadows fend for themselves. In the studio I expose for the main light, and fill the shadows as needed.

The clouds rolled on in, so I grabbed an Italian sausage from Terry' s cart at Bank & Laurier and walked back home.

Darrell

Downtown sunset

While not as exciting to some as the sun dipping into a tropical sea, if one see light then one can use light. I saw the late day sun streaks in the park below my window.



My main concern was if I could get down the elevator and to the park before the light was snuffed by the urban enviroment. Exposure was based solely on the highlighted tree trunks, with the warm golden "magic light" of the late day. I was only able to grab this shot before the sunbeam hid on me.

Darrell

Nice day for a walk

A nice downtown walk can find lots to shoot. We have signs of spring, no not crocus blooms, but convertibles..



 Like red, yellow is also an eyecatching colour, with a bit of red to add some visual interest.

 

I also enjoy downtown buildings...



Another angle...



yet another, I'll walk around downtown again tomorrow if the nice weather holds.



Darrell

B&W Conversion with Photoshop

Many will just go grey scale, while others will desaturate. This is really the best method. Starting with this digital image.



Pentax *ist D, SMC Pentax-M 85mm f:2 lens, Bowens Prolite 100, 1m softbox. Bowens Prolite 50 background, and reflector

You can play with the channel mixer. Here are some preset settings which I found on-line:

Image)Adjustments)Channel Mixer and check the monochrome box. Play with the top three sliders. Try to make them add up to 100%.

After tweaking the Channel Mixers, using the Agfapan 100 settings I got this result. Select the monochrome radio button at the bottom of the Channel Mixer dialog box. You may want to adjust manual levels, or brightness and contrast to fine tune. This is like changing  paper grades in a darkroom.



Here's some film emulation suggested settings:

Agfa 200X: 18,41,41
Agfapan 25: 25,39,36
Agfapan 100: 21,40,39
Agfapan 400: 20,41,39

Ilford Delta 100: 21,42,37
Ilford Delta 400: 22,42,36
Ilford Delta 400 Pro: 31,36,33
Ilford FP4: 28,41,31
Ilford HP5: 23,37,40
Ilford Pan F: 33,36,31
Ilford SFX: 36,31,33
Ilford XP2 Super: 21,42,37

Kodak Tmax 100: 24,37,39
Kodak Tmax 400: 27,36,37
Kodak Tri-X: 25,35,40

And these basic ones:

Normal Contrast: 43,33,30
High Contrast: 40,34,60

or alternatively try this .......

Step 1. Take your original colour image as one layer. Below it add a 50% grey fill layer. Change the blend mode of your original colour image to luminosity. You should now have a true B&W tonal image.

Step 2. Above of your colour image add a 20% (light) grey layer. Change the blend mode of this layer to colour burn and adjust the opacity to suit. (somewhere around 50%). If you want to tint your image pick a 20% tone of say blue instead.....

Step 3. Above these layers create a levels adjustment layer and adjust to suit. Drag the end sliders in until where the graph starts to rise. Do the same with a curves adjustment layer if you fancy..

(because all of these are done in layers you can waste endless hours playing with them....but surely you have better things to do?....)

Many modern dSLR have a B&W mode, and you can use your B&W contrast filters, but you are commited to B&W when you do that.

Darrell