hello everyone :)

many thanks for your ongoing support and feedback. it’ very much appreciated.
today I’m going to reveal some steps I’ve done to create “RAY”

so here you go:

the “dry” part:
cam: plaubel profia 4×5
lens: symmar 210mm
negative: 4×5” fomapan 100 film

Development details on FilmDev

the “wet” part:
laborator 1200 enlarger with heiland splitgrade head
rodenstock 210mm/f8 lens
fomabrom classic paper
exp.-time 26 secs
dodge/burn center/sides ~10 secs

developed in agfa neutol
blue toned with rollei azur
bleached with thiocarbamide
berg copper toner

et voilà

thanks again and have a nice day :)
Vernon

http://www.studioq.com/statements/whatiscollodion.htm

http://www.alternativephotography.com/process_wetplate.html

There was a two days fun and all five attendees had a lot of motivation to learn the process and create stunning images. Thanks for coming, guys… Was a pleasure to meet you all.

The slideshow shown below is from images taken during the workshop. Huge thanks to Robby for taking and providing the images :)

[There is a video that cannot be displayed in this feed. Visit the blog entry to see the video.]

Cheers, VT

Back from testing and shooting that took place two weeks ago, I could not wait too long until developing the new film. I was curious like a cat how the images would come out. A really BIG surprize and much better than expected.

I have tested the Rollei Universal 200, a black&white medium format film manufactured by Rolleifilm (http://www.rolleifilm.com) under conditions I normally use to take my pictures, including lots of structures, harsh light and deep shadows, using reflective clothes fabric and also a huge red scarf to test the red sensivity of the film.

What I can say now is, that the film honors the right exposure/metering with an immense amount of details and fine gradients from pure white to deep blacks.

I’m going to write a review with example images pretty soon, but for now I just wanted to leave these lines here and praise the film as my new film for the next shootings.

Have a great weekend, take care,

Vernon Trent

It is the dream of every photographer when renowned film manufacturer invite one to test their new products.

I am invited to test a brand new product release and the best is, that there is no restriction or a given roadmap for the test.
Just doing it my way, with my style and my visions with tons of film at no costs.

The test will be accompanied by a journalistic article and will be published worldwide.

I’m looking forward to the test and also to having a good session with 5 models at a very cool location. YAY!

~ • ~

Have a nice day :)
Vernon Trent

Hi folks,
here we go again with another “The Story Behind” post :)

One of my premises for the new year is that I want to start again working with alternative processes. After a very long break, almost 8 years, I started last Sunday to create a bromoil image.
I really have enjoyed to create it, all the preparations and then the work itself.

A paint brush instead of a mouse, a sheet of paper instead of a screen… like a travel back in time… the process itself as a whole unit, making me being a part of it, with every brush move, with every break to look at it and every decision where to reveal more of the hidden beauty and make a unique piece of art… that’s something I enjoy again and again.

The preparation was a bit “modern” as I have created a digital negative to start working.

A good ressource how to create such negatives is the book
Digital Negatives by Ron Reeder and Brad Hinkel.

A digital negative, prepared in Photoshop, allows you to skip the dark room time developing the negatives-getting straight to a variety of printing processes including silver, platinum, and a host of other “alternative” processes.

The book also includes a number of fine art and practical process illustrations, such as how to create a Becquerel contact Daguerreotype from a RAW file.
I strongly recommend this book for every alternative process artist who is ready to move from litho film and pyro developer to digtial contact negative production.

Give it a try, you won’t regret.

The photographic medium I have used is also self made, Hahnemühle Etching paper and FOMA liquid emulsion to create the light sensistive medium.

The bromoil process is best explained here. It’s still valid, even after 100 years!

All in one, it was an exciting experience to combine the modern with the classic and achieve the result as shown above.

Featuring model is Kat Love.

I’m really happy :-)

Take care,
Vernon Trent

Happy new year everyone :-)

I hope you had a good slip into the new year 2009 and your party was cool with no injuries  :-)

Today’s post is also a brief tutorial, which is specially written for my friend Dave Aharonian, from Victoria, Canada.

He is a pro I had the honour and pleasure to meet during my stay at Joshua Tree, California last September.

So dear Dave, here you go, I show you how the above shot was made.
(click the image thumbnails to get bigger lightbox view)

We have Madame Bink at the “animal-party-house-wall” (remember, during the shot you have loaded your film in the kitchen :-))

Madame Bink

Then we have an image of a sheet of paper, which we use later as a “light structure”

light structure

And then we have another image, taken from an aquarium with some bubbles.

bubbles

We load these images in Photoshop and start with the work. We start with Madame Bink and do a clean-up, adjustments (light, colors, straighten) and some clone stamping to remove the bright light from the wall.  Then we flip the image 90° anti-clockwise. It then looks like shown below

image corrections and adjustments

Then we add the bubble image as a new layer and set the layer to “brighten” blending mode. It will look like this

Madame Bink and Bubbles

After that we convert the image to B&W using the blue channel. The blue channel conversion gives a uniform grey skin tone with deeper blacks.

B&W conversion (blue channel)

After that, we add the paper image as new layer and set the layer to “soft light” blending mode. It gives the image a kind of light shades, like the light that goes thru waves at the surface.

lightwaves

Finally we add another layer and choose a light warm greytone to give some calmness to the image

Final image (warm grey toned)

Voilá, that’s all. Simple, isn’t it?  :-)

Cheers,
Vernon Trent

The inspiration for “The bluest blues” series was born on an evening when I was listening to Alvin Lee’s song, The Bluest Blues.

I love this song and the lyrics inspired me to the shots I have taken, to express my feelings and give the song a kind of visual lyrics.

Model: Madame Bink

As for the presentation, I used the “VT-Style” to implement and accentuate the mood, the blue hues for the masculine, the gold/copper tones for the preciousness, yet the treasure a man has when he loves a woman, the structure for the highs and lows in one’s life.

The nostalgic feeling is another element I have added, to accentuate that love is something which lasts forever, no matter what we love.

Model: Kat Love

And for all that I have added flora as an element of life, the growing and developing life, with its delicateness and beauty when it starts and the maturity we achieve in our life.
It has to do with the stages in our life, with birth, growing up, love, sex and passing away… What else can describe the stages better as a floral element?

Model: Xaina

The series comprises 50 images, sized at 120 x 120 cm (4ft. x 4ft.) and it’s printed on special film which is applied to an aluminum plate. 12 of those images are available for online viewing, the other 38 only at my exhibitions.

Model: Candace Nirvana

Cheers & have a pleasant holiday season.

Vernon Trent

Printing digital photographs or making photo books becomes more and more popular, whether it’s a gift for good friends, a presentation of your work or prints for an exhibition.

Most of the labs and printing plants have automated processes for printing, but these processes need the right “input”, that means, your files should meet some requirements, such as resolution and colorspace. Modern machines can fix some issues with the resolution and colorspace but in the end there is no warranty that the output is that what you really wanted. So in the next steps, we’ll go thru the tasks you need to do, to deliver the right “input” and get the right “output” :-)

The screenshots below are made using Adobe Photoshop CS2 and are similar to most of the “modern” photo editing software, however the terms may be different but the workflow is the same.

1. Open your file
2. After that press “ctrl + alt + i” to get the image size dialog

untick

* scale styles
* constrain proportions
* resample image

then type the desired dpi (300) in the resolution field and hit OK

Now the file is been set to 300 dpi without resampling the pixels. Please make sure that the file is big enough for a real print (look at the size cm/in)

3. Assign colorspace

Some cameras assign their own colorspace to the files, so it’s always good to check if the file has teh right colorspace and apply the right one if there is a different colorspace embedded.

Menue: edit – convert to profile
The dialog box shows the destination space and the settings you should use (red stroked box)

Hit OK

(if your image has more layers, then it will be automatically flattened)

4. Save the image

Press “ctrl + shift + s”, the save as dialog box appears

Choose a name (different than your initial file, so you have always a backup), include the colorspace in the file and press “save”.

The next dialog box appears to set the tiff options. Set image compression to “LZW” and leave the other settings as shown in the box.

That’s all. :-)

As a sidenote, you may check the sharpness of the file. Because some of you use the camera “built in” sharpening process, or prefer to sharpen when developing the raw files and others may sharpen when the file is being post processed, I haven’t put the sharpening in the workflow shown above.

The “Sharpening 1×1″ will be part of my next post. Stay tuned.

Cheers, Vernon Trent

The work mentioned below can be done with any image editing software which supports layer techniques and layer blending modes. Adobe Photoshop is my choice but you can do this with Gimp or PaintShop Pro as well. Please keep in mind that in Gimp or PaintShop Pro the blending modes have different names. Please consult your manual or grab the internet for appropriate instructions.

Note: click on the thumbnails to get full size images (lightbox)

OK, let’s start.

1. We load our basic image

2. After duplicating the layer, we do a brightness/contrast adjustment. In this case I took the contrast +30 and added +10 brightness, so the image is not too dark.

3. Now we duplicate the adjusted layer and desaturate it with ctrl+shift+u.

After that, we set the blending mode to overlay and set the opacity to 50%

4. Well, we normally could finish here but let’s tweak the image a bit more. We add a new layer, set the blending mode to overlay and use a big soft brush with 20% opacity and paint with black color the edges, in fact we paint a slight vignette to focus the main subject. As the result, the waterdrops are now more accentuated.

5. The color friends stop here and the B&W friends follow me with the next steps. We add a gradient layer and choose the black/white gradient.

6. After that we add another layer. This time we choose the levels layer and adjust the mids and blacks to boost the overall contrast.

Now your image is ready for print. If you intend to publish online, then flatten the image, assign the sRGB color profile, resize for web, sharpen and you’re done.

A working file with all the steps above is attached as a zipped layered tiff.

Have fun processing. Feedback is very much appreciated. :)

Cheers, Vernon Trent

All steps shown below do not require any special 3rd party filters or other gimmicks, just the built-in features delivered with Adobe Photoshop and an intermediate level of knowledge about using Adobe Photoshop.

Note: click on the thumbnails to get full size images (lightbox)

We start with the collection of the “requisites” for our composition. We’ll use the shots as shown below:

2 shots from Porto, a bankhouse and the promenade near Pont Louis

A Chevrolet Bel Air, shot taken in Bern, Switzerland

and finaly, a shot of myself, taken in studio in a blue screen environment.

I wanted to have this composite big enough for a poster, so I choosed the canvas size of 40 x 60 cm at 300 dpi.

As the next layer we drag the promenade shot and desaturate it

After that we drag the chevy on the left corner. Using a soft brush with 10% opacity and blending mode set to “soft light” we paint the car lights of the chevy (painting with light). With strg+u we do a partial desaturation of the chevy layer app. 30%.

We switch back to the promenade layer and add a lens blur to simulate a DOF referring to the chevy in the foreground. I used 24%.
Now we place the bank house and use the perspective function to match the perspective to the promenade. When this is done, we desaturate the layer completely using “strg+shift+u”.
Like shown above, we apply the lens blur to this layer as well.
The background is almost done but it needs some correction. Using layer masks we erase the hard borders and edges to become a “fluid surface” between the three layers.

In the next step we load the studio shot and remove the blue background color.
After that we place the new layer on the composition

We add a new layer with strg+shif+n and fill it with black color. Using a soft brush with 10% opacity and blending mode set to “soft light” we paint some lines and then apply radial blur to the layer. We have now created a kind of fog

and apply the “screen” blending mode to the layer.

At this moment we add another layer and increase the lights of the car by painting with light.

Now comes the most interesting part, the typicaly “sin city” rain. We add a new layer and fill it with black color. Go to Filter menu and choose Noise->Add Noise.
Now depending how much rain you want, adjust the amount slider (35% seems to okay). Set distribution to gaussian and activate Monochromatic. Then change the blending mode to disolve. Using the motion blur filter, try to adjust the rain drops trails to your needs

After applying the blur filter, change the blending mode of the layer to “linear dodge”. We add an additional layer draw some diagonal lines and process it like the fog layer mentioned above without applying the radial blur filter and set the blending mode to “screen”.

With these two layers we have now the rain and kinda helicopter lights
With a “S” curves layer we increase the contrast and make the whole composition a bit darker

As the last step I used a hue / saturation layer to give a slight blueish touch. Below you see the whole composition in photoshop with all the layers
and the final image

I hope you can follow the steps easily and use the workflow to create your own “Sin City” ideas. Feedback is very much appreciated.

Thank You, Vernon Trent

P.S.
A big “Thank You” to Mal for editorial reading and telling me that it is “perfect”. English is not my native language, so you can imagine how my ego raised. :-)

Hahnemüle will showcase first samples of “FineArt Baryta 325″, made from 100% alpha cellulose with an ultra smooth surface and a grammage of 325 gsm, at upcoming international photo shows: Sonimagphoto in Barcelona, Salon de la Photo in Paris, Imaging Expo in Shanghai and PhotoPlus International in New York.

Market launch is set for autumn 2007. YAY! :-)

So here you go :-)

First of all we should specify the content and define the composition. Then we should get all the elements we need to compose the image.

Project: A kneeling sworded knight in front of an “artistic” window based in a “church-like” environment, surrounded by magic and dramatic lights.
*hah* :-)

(On all images shown from here on, click on thumbnail to get full size)

1. A shot in a blue screen environment, raw mode is better to controll the blue for a better masking.

2. Everything dramatic is accompanied by heavy dark clouds, so we take some clouds

3. Now we need the building and the place for the window. This has been rendered with Bryce using a wire frame model and adding stone textures and some lights to the model. After 10 mins of rendering, here’s what we’ve got.

4. The sunset light should shine thru the window, so we need some warm rays of light. Use a brush to paint some rays in yellow, orange and some white. Use then the motion blur to get the soft look.

5. Now we create the “artistic” window from images taken by V.T. :-)

6. OK. Now we have all the stuff ready to be composed. We start Photoshop and create a new document, A4 size at 300 dpi white background color and 8 bit.

• place the clouds at the desired position (see no. 2)
• then we place the builing as new layer (see no. 3)
• having that, we now drag the lights layer in the right position and set the blending mode to screen. the lights are bright now *oh, a higher sign* :-) (see no. 4)
• we place then the window and set the layer effects to “shine” (see no. 5)
• at least we place V.T. in the right position and do some adjustments on lights/shadows (menu image/adjust/lights and shadows).
• after that we add a new gradient map layer b/w to get a b/w image
• now we add another curves layer and change the curve on the blue channel to get a blueish tone

DONE! :-)

Curious about the result? See below :-)

Big thanks to BrownZ for help.