Take one image

Just one image.

Every now and then one makes an exposure and immediately knows, or perhaps more accurately, feels, that it will be a good image. As a film photographer there isn’t the immediate validation of a preview on the LCD screen of course, it’s definitely more of a “feeling”. As an aside, I’ve not always found the LCD preview to be helpful; sometimes it convinces me that it’s a rubbish picture and so I move on disappointed and demotivated. You could argue that it’s a bonus when you get the file on a larger screen and see it’s a keeper after all but to my way of thinking the damage was done when the flow was interrupted in the field. But, once again, I digress.

In Chester recently I made an image in a churchyard of a man, sat on a bench feeding the birds, seemingly enveloped by trees. He is a tiny but important part of the scene. I raised the camera to my eye, quickly focused and made two exposures. I quietly walked on and “knew” it was a keeper.

Fast forward three days and I’m just taking the film from the developing reel to hang it to dry and I can see instantly that the first half of the roll is badly under exposed. I instantly suspect user-error. I tend to take a meter reading periodically when out on the streets, tweaking it as required using experience as a guide. I only re-meter when the scene or lighting changes noticeably, I’d clearly got this base reading wrong as I know that the exposures were tweaked and the degree of under-exposure is consistent from frame to frame across the first half of that roll.

If that wasn’t enough, the first part of the roll, including the under-exposed churchyard images, had suffered from light-piping. Again user error (I’d had a bad hour in Chester it seems) as I’d forgotten the requirement to load that film stock in subdued light.

But, these are part and parcel of the film photographer’s daily lot and que sera sera as Doris Day sang. You might argue that had I been able to view it on an LCD screen I’d have noticed and possibly had the chance to try again and you’d be correct. But that’s not an argument in my book for going back to digital. I am a film photographer in part because it isn’t as easy. There are fewer failsafes and checkpoints. Indeed, it’s the absence of the ability to check, review and reconsider that makes photography on the street with a film camera such a fluid experience.

And I’m not alone in this belief. I was watching a video on YouTube recently from Jeff Ascough, a professional photographer with a passion for street photography. In his words, looking at the screen after every shot is a “really, really bad thing” as it takes your eye away from the scene and down to the back of your camera. This breaks the visual flow and you are likely to miss other opportunities whilst “chimping”. For the record, Ascough uses Leica digital cameras and so his views aren’t based on it being Hobson’s Choice.

Realising that I’d made an error was disappointing, but it’s part of the process and proves we are human I guess. I simply didn’t copy the first half of that roll when I was digitising the negatives with my digital camera later that evening and moved on.

Now, I recently replaced my ancient computer and have bit by bit been installing software and peripherals. It takes me weeks as it’s not a chore I enjoy. Fast forward four days from developing that fateful roll of film and I’m sat in my study installing scanner software. I had just installed the Plustek OpticFilm 8100 35mm scanner and needing to test it I took out a strip of negatives which coincidentally included the “lost” churchyard image.

The scanner functioned as expected, saved the scans to Dropbox as instructed and was clearly functioning as expected so I moved on to the next job on the list. Later that evening though I remembered the churchyard image that I’d scanned and downloaded it to my iPad for a better look.

I was not expecting to be able to create a usable image but was curious as to what could be done.

I needed to crop out the effects of the light-piping, evident only across the foreground of the image and the sprocket holes fortunately – my first bit of luck with this roll. I then proceeded to apply global and local adjustments to the image to tease out the best from the scene that I could (see below). Of course, I was doing this in Snapseed on my tablet rather than in Photoshop on the computer but remember I habitually work this way as I avoid the computer as much as possible. Half a dozen steps is my norm, this one has eleven!

My Snapseed workflow – “Brush” is where the dodging and burning happens

I rarely spend more than a few minutes with an image on the tablet. If I wanted to spend hours on individual images I know from experience that the computer is far easier to use so I deliberately restrict post processing to a few minutes. A gentle toning was applied followed by some light dodging and burning before adding a border and clicking “save”.

“Contemplation” – Leica IIIf, Elmar 50mm, Washi Z film

I was happy with the result. It’s not exactly as I’d envisaged being darker and moodier and of course has had to be salvaged as it were but it’s still a pleasing result. I hope both my readers enjoy this final image too.

LINK to larger file on Flickr