Editors Note: we recently received the press release below from F295 member Robert Hirsch. This joint venture between Focal Press and Alan Griffiths fabulous website, Luminous Lint, is a wonderful addition to the canon of reliable and trustworthy online photographic content! It’s great to see this project come to fruition! Many thanks to all who were involved to make this happen.

Press Release – December 9, 2011
Focal Press and Luminous-Lint Announce a Joint Photography Biographical Project

In collaboration with Elsevier’s Focal Press and the assistance of Robert Hirsch, Luminous-Lint has obtained permission to include hundreds of biographies from The Focal Encyclopedia of Photography, 4th Edition*, on its website. These biographies will enrich the content on www.Luminous-Lint.com, which are supported by the wide range of materials already online.

An example of Robert Frank’s information may be seen here >>

Special thanks to the staff of Focal Press for embracing this project and to Robert Hirsch, Garie Waltzer, and Ken White for making their contributions available to the photo-history community.

For more information email Alan Griffiths at Luminous Lint or Kate Iannotti at Focal Press.

*If you don’t have the Focal Press Encyclopedia of Photography F295 highly suggests picking one up. While it’s not the most inexpensive book you’ll ever purchase it may be one of the most complete. As with all things you get what you pay for and with the Encyclopedia you get an awful lot. Check it out here >>

As 2011 draws to a close F295* would like to thank all of you for your interest, participation, and support over the past 12 months!

F295 exists because of you and the great work you’re doing. We hope that you will keep pushing the photographic envelope in 2012 and continue defining the new 21st Century Photographic paradigm.

We wish each of you Happy Holidays and Best Wishes for peace, love, and happiness in the New Year!

If you value the work F295 is doing please consider becoming a supporting member >>

damage, Lith Print by Kevin Logghe, © 2011

Object to Image: New Work by Kevin Logghe*
2-D and 3-D Presentations of Handcrafted Photography at Through This Lens Gallery, the Southeast’s Premier Gallery dedicated exclusively to photography located at 303 East Chapel Hill Street, Durham, NC, phone: 919-687-0250

Show is up through January 7, 2012

*Named “Top Pick” by The Independent Weekly
*Named “Best Bet” by the Durham News

Read about it in The Sun-Herald Newspapers >>

As we discussed in this piece on the color ratio system, creating custom curves can be as complicated as you’d like to make it.

In my experience, issues such as these derail many from historic process experimentation and practice. It’s easy to get bogged down in the complexities and vagaries of the minutiae and become paralyzed! To that end, F295 has been trying to simplify some of the initial obstacles and provide tools that help practitioners achieve immediate success. Some may scoff at their simplicity, but I’ve tested them and they work.

I wanted to pass along this simple curve for three color gum printing. It’s derived from Christina Z. Anderson’s method (as outlined in this article) and will make the negatives more suitable (flatter) for the gum process. There are other more precise calibration methods available, but this will get you up and running immediately and help you create a satisfactory print!

I suggest you try this, make a few prints and realize the fun of success and then possibly consider recalibrating your process with a more precise curve/method. You may find that this curve will give you everything you need.

Download the curve here >>

If you’re looking for a good overview regarding the Gum Bichromate process check out the inexpensive, lab ready, laminated F295 Quick Reference Card at Freestyle Photographic!

I’m pleased to announce that the next set of F295 reference cards are now available at Freestyle Photographic! Black and White Film from scratch (how to create your own developer, stop, fix, and hypo clear with just a few basic ingredients!), Calotype, Color Print Film (from Kit), Kallitype, and Palladium!

They’re available individually or you can save money by ordering the Value Pack!

We’ve received much positive feedback from those who purchased the first cards. Comments have ranged from “clearest, most concise, easy to follow reference” to that by removing the clutter of extraneous information we helped a user get to work faster and concentrate on creating work immediately! Not too mention there have been lots of great comments on the “cool, retro, design” — We couldn’t be happier! Thanks for your comments and support! We’d love to hear from you. Please Email us pics, comments, suggestions, etc!

They retail for $6.99 individually or $29.99 for the Value pack.

Value Pack 1 includes: Albumen, Cyanotype, Gum, Salt, and Van Dyke Brown
Value Pack 2 includes: Black and White Film from scratch, Calotype, Color Print Film, Kallitype, and Palladium

Group Showcase 2012
All entries must be received by December 1st, 2011
Deadline extended to December 9, 2011!

Muse
The goddess or the power regarded as inspiring a poet, artist, thinker, or the like.

‘Muse’ is a concept deeply seeded in the exploration of photography. Tina Modotti was the well-documented muse of Edward Weston. Paris was the muse of Eugene Atget, while some might argue that Edward Steichen’s muse was photography itself.

For this call we are considering works that address the concept of ‘The Muse.’ Your interpretation of what ‘muse’ means is entirely personal and we challenge you to think beyond the more common notions of the concept. Please provide a short artist statement explaining your ideas on what ‘muse’ is for you and how you’ve incorporated it into your work.

This call for art is open to all photographers internationally. All processes and techniques are welcomed but understand we are looking for unconventional photographic methods and alternative photographic processes.

Awards
All published photographers will receive a complimentary copy of Diffusion, Volume IV, 2012. Best of Show will also receive a copy of Diffusion Volume II, III and a feature spread in “Editor’s Selection”. 1st and 2nd place photographers will receive a feature spread in “Editor’s Selection”. Honorable Mentions will also be recognized.

Image specifications
Submit images (300 ppi) in JPEG or TIFF format, sized to approximately 12” in the longest direction. Images should be titled with photographers first name then last name and image title. For example, If the title of my photograph is “Learning to Feel” then my file name should look like: Blue_Mitchell_Learning_to_Feel.tiff

Submission fee
$20.00 submission fee for 5 images. $5.00 for each additional image with no maximum. Submission fees are non-refundable.

Payable to One Twelve Publishing (we accept check, money order, or Paypal for online submissions – see below procedure)

What to send us
No entry form is required, but please enclose a text document or PDF that includes your name, address, email (mandatory for notification and paypal payment request), image titles, photographic process, website, artist statement (Please provide a short artist statement explaining your ideas on what ‘muse’ is for you and how you’ve incorporated it into your work) and any other information pertinent to your submittal.

Mail Submissions
One Twelve Publishing
1631 NE Broadway #143
Portland, OR 97232
NEW: Online Submission procedure

Important
Please ZIP all files together (including images and above listed materials). Please title Zip file with your First and Last name.

Once we receive your materials we will send you a request for payment through paypal.

Visit Diffusion for complete information and the upload-entry link >>

The deadline looms for the 5th Annual Plastic Camera show at Rayko Photo!

DESCRIPTION
This competition is open to artists working with plastic cameras with plastic lenses. The more obsolete, flawed, and lo-tech, the better. Images should be taken with cameras with limited controls, such as Diana, Holga, Lubitel, Lomo, Banner, and Ansco cameras. Beautiful prints from less-than-gorgeous cameras – that’s what we’re looking for! This is RayKo’s largest exhibition of the year with artists from all over the globe submitting work, and hundreds of attendees at the reception.

ELIGIBILITY
All work must be taken with a plastic camera and plastic lens and must be original. Works previously shown at RayKo are not eligible.

ENTRY & SUBMISSION GUIDELINES
Entry Fee (non-refundable): $25/up to 3 images. $5/add’l image up to 10 images.
Limit 10 images per person
All entries must be jpegs (1280 pixels at longest side at 72dpi | RGB color space)
Save files with artist’s last name, first name and title of image
Example: Smith_Jane_Pigeons01.jpg
Any work deemed misrepresented by its jpeg will be declined
Click here to begin entry process

JUROR
Ann Jastrab, MFA, is a fine art photographer, master printer, and teacher. She is currently the Gallery Director at RayKo Photo Center. The RayKo Gallery offers over 1600 square feet of exhibition space and presents eight to ten shows annually featuring nationally recognized artists. Ann regularly participates as a juror and reviewer for a multitude of organizations: the SF Arts Commission, Academy of Art in SF, Artspan, SF Art Institute, Fotofest, Photolucida, Review Santa Fe, Review LA, PhotoAlliance, SPE, Fotovision, Click646, and Critical Mass. She has also taught at the Maine Media Workshops since 1994.
The deadline looms for the 5th Annual Plastic Camera show at Rayko Photo! Enter today!

EXHIBITION & ARTWORK DELIVERY/RETURN SCHEDULE
Friday, Nov 25, 2011 (11:59pm | PST)
Deadline for submissions. Late submissions will not be reviewed.

Thursday, Dec 1, 2011
Notification sent

Saturday, Jan 7, 2012
Hand delivery day

Monday, Jan 9, 2012
Deadline for shipped works (late submissions/substitute images will not be hung)

Jan 18, 2012
Opening reception, 6-8p

Jan 18–March 6
Exhibition on view

Don’t have a plastic camera? Grab one today >>

Editors Note: This piece comes to us from David George Brommer. F295 member, friend, photographer and accomplice. We’ve partnered with David for the past 5 years to bring you the free F295-B&H Photo day long seminar in New York City. We hope you enjoy it!

Do you shoot with film or capture with digital?

If you say the former, then you are in a minority and probably like it that way. It is estimated that in the United States 96% of professional wedding and portrait photographers currently are shooting with digital. The same could easily be said of journalists, which rely on digital workflow to get their images uploaded to their photo desks almost as fast as the news happens. Certainly, we are living in a digital world, yet some still choose to capture their images with film and the reasons are not simply being a photographic luddite.

There are several advantages to shooting film, some concrete and others philosophical. When you shoot film, you are exposing light onto silver halide crystals (covered in layers of dye in the instance of color film). The size of the average silver halide crystal is about 1 micron. Thus the total amount of “image receptors” for a piece of 35mm film will be about 100 million. That number will only jump up as we utilize medium or large format and you will near the one billion mark. This number of image receptors will manifest itself to the user as definable in detail, and especially so when enlarging negatives. Digital captures on a pixel, and a current pixel’s range in size from 3.4 to 11 microns. This translates to a full size 35mm sensor, say the one that is found in the Canon EOS-1Ds Mark III SLR Digital Camera as having about 14 million “image receptors”. To make matters more complicated for digital capture we have to factor in the Nyquist limit, which was discovered by a Swedish-American scientist of the same name. This sampling theorem proves that to avoid massive aliasing (distortion and artifacts) two pixels are needed to capture a single detail. Clearly, film has advantages in capturing details, especially when enlargements are made. This stands true today, but as the mega pixel count goes up, the gap will narrow. Advantages are not only found in the details, they continue onto dynamic range and exposure as well.

The latitude of exposure found on print negative is much greater than digital, and allows you to make adjustments and corrections while still retaining good print quality. If you were shooting a Jpeg you generally have a ½ stop of latitude before you loose detail in shadows and highlights. Raw files generally allow a 2 stop range of latitude before clipping (losing image detail in the shadows or highlights) occurs in your prints. Keep in mind that with digital, making exposure mistakes will hurt the dynamic range of your final prints. Digital simply allows zero fudge factor. Print film on the other hand, is very forgivable even with gross exposure miscalculations. Printing a thin negative can be tricky- but can be done well. Printing a dense negative is not really an issue, and you can achieve excellent results with 4 to 5 stops of over exposure. Transparency film is comparable to shooting Jpegs; you need to be right on the money with exposure. However, compare a projected slide with that of a projected LCD image and the difference in detail, sharpness and brightness is night and day.

It is true that many digital cameras have modes that can digitally emulate many characteristics of particular types of film. Digital achieves this admirably, while film only looks like one type of film (excluding cross processing or using different developers to alter grain quality and size). That one look however has something about it that is hard to put into words. It is the “elusive look of film” and is unique. Now that we have covered the scientific debate surrounding digital vs. film, lets turn our attention to the intangible advantages of shooting with film, which can be characterized as tactile and sensorial.

I asked a long time friend and colleague Gabe Bidderman an avid film shooter, accomplished photographer and certifiable gear fiend- why he shoots film. He explained it this way, “I love the process, control, and the ultimate surprise of film. It’s like opening a present. And of course the depth, detail, and dynamic range still surpass digital anyway.”
Black and White photography lends itself to film usage considerably due to the “craft” aspect of traditional dark room work. Its funny, we don’t hear the word craft associated with digital so much as we hear “workflow”. What would you rather do, craft a fine art black and white print or figure out a complicated workflow? There is a certain romance to a dark room, the smell of the fixer, the soothing sound of water washing over your prints. I have yet to see a black and white inkjet print that can match the glow of finely crafted silver gelatin print toned with selenium.
When it comes to safely storing your images, your negatives will survive for hundreds of years. Your hard drive, along with its data (your images) will be in a land fill. The story of “a lost box of negatives” is common and similar to an urban modern treasure. Can you imagine if E. J. Bellocq had a 70 year old hard drive of his work found? This most likely would have been discarded before investigated, but negatives are easily identified and viewed (even if found in a sofa), and thus preserved.

Vintage cameras play an important role as well. While modern digital cameras are capable of producing a high quality image, they often require a laborious read of an instruction manual just to understand the menus and basic functions. Alternatively, the simplicity of a manual film camera does not require computer fluency, nor complicated button pushing and menu navigation. Currently you can purchase an affordable fine used camera that would have cost a small fortune years ago. The distinctive ker-plump of a Hasselblad’s shutter is yours to enjoy at bargain prices. You could even say certain vintage cameras are an honor to make images with when taking into account the history of said camera. Camera “bling” is something you just don’t see in modern cameras, but the use of chrome body parts is common on many vintage cameras. Did I mention that you are completely battery dependent with electronic cameras?

It would be unwise to shoot exclusively with digital or film. Both clearly have their advantages in look, quality and budget. A good photographer will have to trust their judgment when choosing what to best use and for what subject matter. In the end, it’s the not the camera, be it digital or film, it’s the person behind the camera.

Check out David George Brommer’s website!