Creative steps to a display photograph - A Darkroom Adventure - Brief Article

PSA Journal, March, 2002 by George E. Landis

Using a musical reference, the noted photographer Ansel Adams was known to say that he considered the negative as the score, and the print as the performance. His point was that there often is much work to do to elevate the image captured by the camera to its maximum potential as a display print. Virtually anyone who creates prints can enjoy the rewards of seeing his or her works improve through judicious and careful evaluation and execution in the printing phase. The following is a tale of just such a journey.

Last fall our photography club, the Charter Oak Photographic Society, took a field trip to a wildlife rehabilitation facility in southern Connecticut. All of the animals in this setting have suffered emotional or physical abuse, which rules out their independent survival in the wild, unless successful rehabilitation can be achieved. Such work is the focus of this organization, and they offer photographers controlled access to some of the animals as part of their educational and awareness-raising activities.

Our club members worked with a number of birds of prey that morning. One of my images has gone from a virtual snapshot to a competition print via a series of refinements. Perhaps some of these ideas will spark your imagination as you seek ways to alter or improve your images, and enhance your enjoyment of our hobby.

Image #1 shows the actual full frame of the film as it recorded the image that day. The golden eagle, as seen, was perched upon the handler's arm, and secured by a jess. Several things about this picture offer distraction, from the human appendage (lower left) to the disquieting background. While the raptor is sharp and well exposed, what could I do to improve the quality of this photograph?

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Initially I saw that cropping was an essential requirement. Image #2 shows how I chose to eliminate the human element and create a vertical presentation of my subject.

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The next step was to see that by reversing the image an improved feeling of left to right movement might be achieved, so I flipped the negative and printed the eagle backward, as show in Image #3.

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While this was an improvement, I still needed to force more attention on the bird, and to make the detail in the feathers more apparent. First things first. I began by making a series of test prints to determine how much burning-in of the background would be required to subdue the distractions. This meant added exposure both to the left and right of the bird, as well as above its head. Image #4 is a diagram showing how much additional exposure in each area of the print was required to produce sufficient darkening for my vision of this image.

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Image #5 is a finished print, revealing what results when customized printing instructions are followed. The pronounced detail in the feathers was produced by using two different contrast filters for the two separate sets of exposures on this print. A relatively weak filter (#1) was used to record all of the basic tones, and a higher contrast filter (#3 1/2) was used for a much shorter exposure to intensify the blacks, building contrast and making the tonal separation between the lighter and darker portions more striking.

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By comparing the original image shown in Image #1 with the final print shown in Image #5, it is easy to see how dramatically the image has been changed. Many members of our club attended this session, and a number of good images were secured. I did not realize just how rewarding the day had been until I studied my pictures and determined that this golden eagle held particular promise.

An excellent text covering this and many additional fine printing techniques is, "Black & White Photographic Printing Workshop," by Larry Bartlett with Jon Tarrant, and published by Silver Pixel Press. The ISBN number is 1-883403-39-1.

It takes some effort to go through these various stages of improvement, but I believe you will also be amazed at the rich rewards of being able to enhance one of your own images with these and similar efforts. Best wishes for our mutual success, as we continually strive for creative ways to improve our photographs!

George E. Landis -- Cromwell, CT