Re: curves and gum and Christopher James book
Christina, here is a link to Reinhard paper http://www.cs.ucf.edu/~reinhard/papers/tvcg2005.pdf It is considered one of the very good operators. Thanks Yves ----- Original Message ----- From: "Christina Z. Anderson" <zphoto@montana.net> To: "Alt, List" <alt-photo-process-L@usask.ca> Sent: Thursday, March 06, 2008 10:06 AM Subject: curves and gum and Christopher James book > Hi all, > I am so thrilled with Christopher James' new edition of the Book of Alt > Proc. I'm not going to go into all the reasons why, just buy it you won't > regret it. Besides, it's got 3 Judy Seigels in there as well as Dan > Burkholder's piggies and Sandy King and probably more names otherwise you > all would recognize--can't say you don't get your money's worth from the > images therein! > > Anyway, we've talked off and on about curves and gum, about different > negatives and gum, etc. etc. As we have probably always concluded, gum will > suit itself to whatever practice is chosen, and there are many ways to skin > a cat. > > Lately I have been working with a variety of negative choices to compare my > practice (tricolor seps with individual PDN derived curves and colors for > each neg) with other lesser techy ways to teach students who may not have > Photoshop or even know what a curve is. Bitmap, all ink negs, CMYK, pulling > a curve out of my butt/on the fly...I have changed my teaching practice, > even, at MSU, to start the students with all inks greyscale neg one coat gum > first, then a Sam Wang duotone negative next (greyscale, no curve, all ink > neg), then an all inks tricolor third (no curve) and finally they will do > the grandaddy of them all, making a custom curve PDN Mark Nelson tricolor. > I find that starting students out low tech and moving to high is a way to > "hook" them into the process. > > So when I saw the gum curve of Tony Gonzalez in James' book I about died. > It is hilarious. I mimicked it on my computer and found that the range of > tones he has in it go from about 26 to 92! He has essentially clipped > almost 200 tones! It looks like a flatline/dead person curve. However, > THEN look at his gum print (curve p. 351, gum p. 352-3)! The proof of > someone's working process is ALWAYS in the pudding. > > I will try Gonzalez' curve but what I bet I will find is that I have to > alter other parts of my practice to fit into the curve, whether it be > pigment load or development time or dichromate amount or exposure time or > whatnot. The reason I bring it up is that as I tell my students, gum is > really not a photographic process. If you did a curve like that with pt/pd > you'd have posterization and a gross print, but with gum which is just > hardening a layer where it needs to harden, it just isn't the same (e.g. you > can choose an exposure time of 1 min vs. 8 minutes and get a thinner or > thicker layer of hardening which is not possible with BW printing or even > pt/pd--certainly not as much variability.) And Gonzalez looks like he is > just squushing all his tones into the narrow range of stops that gum > represents, being a shorter scale process than other longer ones like pt/pd. > > It looks like Gonzalez teaches at Queens College, CUNY so if he ever has an > exhibit I would run to it. Anyone on the list know him? I wonder if he was > a student of Sarah Van Keuren's? > > So check out the book--it'll definitely spur the creative alt juices going > with the images alone, much less the information. > Chris > > > Christina Z. Anderson > Assistant Professor > Photo Option Coordinator > Montana State University > CZAphotography.com > _______________ > >
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