ku # 1219 ~ entre chien et loup

Moon over Blue Mountain Lake ~ Blue Mountain Lake, NY - in the Adirondack Park • click to embiggenWere I to be light chaser, the light to be encountered during the time of day the French call entre chien et loup - literally translated as between the dog and the wolf - would be the light I would chase. That is, the soft light which bathes the landscape after the sun has set but before darkness descends).

In fact, I have a body of work which is comprised of just such light. Most of the pictures in that body of work were made with my 8×10 Arca Swiss view camera utilizing 8×10 Type L (long exposure) color negative film (some exposures were up to 20 minutes long and Type L color negative film was formulated to deal with the reciprocity failure - color-shifting, as dye layers of the film absorb light unevenly over the prolonged exposure). The color results from that combination, printed by me or one of my assistants on Ektacolor paper (C print), were amazingly delicate / subtle - a result which also recorded the same entre chein et loup qualities of the light.

Some may be wondering why I used past tense verbs (was ... were) in the preceding paragraph. That's simply because I haven't made pictures with that view camera / film for over a decade more. The reason for that is also simple - as sheet film + processing have become harder to find than hen's teeth, I simply wasn't up the task of dealing with the film / processing issue, not to mention having to set up a darkroom in which to make prints (which assumes C print paper and chemistry won't become equally scarce).

In any event, I am currently closing in on a digital domain image file processing routine which is coming close to my past film / C print results.

Comments

[Sven W]

I really like the way you and another photographer / blogger (Ming Thein) handle colour.

I do pay attention to colour (mainly correcting for colour casts, over-saturation, setting black and white points), but my efforts are ham-fisted compared to you two guys.

Any advice on the topic would be appreciated !

[John Linn]

I thought the French called it l'heure bleue. Your phrase is much more colorful however.

I have finally acquired the Stephen Shore, "Uncommon Places" book (the newer expanded version). Of course he too used 8 x 10 at that time. I like much of the work in the book and have really been taken by the technical quality, depth and sharpness of the pictures (long before there was Photoshop to help out!). It seems that that large format really did enable extreme sharpness. The image capture area of 8 x 10 is order of magnitude larger than the full-frame 35 and of course full frame is order of magnitude larger than most digital camera sensors. At these scales the quality of optics is super critical, but still, is 8 x 10 quality really possible with comparatively tiny digital CCD and CMOS sensors?

By the way, I also bought the new Vivian Maier book, Out of the Shadows, and highly recommend it. As for the Shore volume, I appreciate it for the subject as a peek back in time (about when I was in college). Many of the pictures are really wonderful, but some I just do not get from an artistic point of view (not subject... composition). Being considered a ground breaking work I guess I expected more.

John