Film Photography Podcast Episode 138 – December 24, 2015
The internet radio show for people who love to shoot film! In this special episode Mat Marrash recounts the experience of his one-on-one workshop with Mr Alan Ross. Alan Ross is a renowned photographer whose unique vision combines traditional photographic methods with today’s technology. He worked side-by-side with Ansel Adams as his photographic assistant, and was personally selected by Ansel to print his Yosemite Special Edition negatives.
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Show Notes
Notes by Mat Marrash
Back in late August of this year, I had a fantastic opportunity to learn one-on-one with a photographer that leaves me only two degrees of separation from Ansel Adams! A master photographer and insanely good printer, Alan Ross was a joy to learn from, an experience I won’t soon be forgetting. In this XMAS bonus episode, you’ll get to listen to my experience on the road, and see a few examples of just what I was up to in Santa Fe.
Day 1 Take-Aways:
- If the information isn’t there on the negative, shoot it again!
- “It’s hard to follow up a brass band with a string quartet.”
- Control is the name of the game in the B&W darkroom.
- Large format ground glasses are chipped for a reason.
- Selective masking background, how-to, and practice
- The negative is the starting point in making a print!
- Pre-flashing of B&W materials and color transparencies in-camera
- Spotting of B&W prints and removing silver from B&W prints
- Filtration for creative control on B&W films
- Leave. More. Headroom. – check those compositions!
- Don’t be afraid to overexpose even more!
Here are some examples from some from my negatives that I took to Santa Fe to print.
Going from a very, very hard to print negative to a repeatable, nice print is quite an amazing feat! As you can see above, the print is a lot more even with both highlight and shadow information controlled. The image of the final print is a scan of the actual print, done on an Epson V700. All B&W prints were made on Ilford Multigrade Classic Fiber.
Links:
Andrew Smith Gallery – Santa Fe, NM
http://www.andrewsmithgallery.com/artists.html
One-on-One Workshops range from 3-5 days. Alan recommends the five day workshops to get the most out of the B&W process from start to finish. Group and travel workshops also available.
“Exposure is the only absolute in photography…everything else is like cooking…”
That’s it for this show. Enjoy the Holiday Season! FPP Will be back on January 1, 2016 – less than two weeks. Love the podcast? Help keep us going by visiting our donate page!
Music this year was provided by Darren “Ballard” Riley and our very own Smoove Sailors (featuring John Fedele, Mark Dalzell and Dane Johnson)