Print
Size: 11.5 x 17
Camera:
Panasonic Lumix G2
Lens:
Olympus Zoom ED 14-42
ISO:
200
Print:
Epson 3880/ Piezographic Inks/ Moab Lasal
Please
step down…
Philadelphia
is a city that is constantly in motion. The open sites, the digging in the
earth, the structural skeletons of buildings going up and the ruins of old
construction coming down, are often in my viewfinder. (I wish there was more
re-purposing and restoration.) The building collapse last Wednesday at 22nd
and Market Streets in addition to being a terrible tragedy had a further
chilling dimension for me as I had been in front of the site a scant two days
previously photographing it. I’ve been documenting that row of buildings in its
various stages of demolition from the very beginning when the salvage company
removed the ornamental façade from 2132 Market, a fantastic structure with a
carved stone façade that ended its days as a pornography emporium.
This shot is from a different spot. It was taken the
previous week at 20th and Race. The building was so undistinguished I
barely even noticed it in my travels. Apparently the front had been redone at
some point in a glass and tile, industrial fashion, popular in the 50’s/60’s.
The interior was clearly much older, likely from the turn of the century.
The
combination of the white wall, the contrast-y shadows, the abundant details and
textures, and the dark rubble in the foreground made this a difficult print to
get right. I was close to finishing up when I just kept on looking at the print
and feeling it was off, unbalanced, so I rebuilt the file, changing the
cropping slightly.
A
print remade and a lesson learned...
For
last week’s image, I suspected I could make a stronger print and I wanted to
test the limits of the image-making chain.
Even after fiddling with the existing file yet again, I was not
satisfied. There was tonal separation in the dark areas of the print, which was
visible in the 13 x 19 version. This is usually the result of overdoing the
adjustments in Photoshop, such as radically changing the lightness/darkness or
contrast of an area. You lose intermediate tones and end up with patches. Was
the problem in the camera, or the software, or the way I was working? It’s easy
to point the finger at the tools but my experience is that the biggest
fly-in-the-ointment is often the guy behind the camera or the editing desk. I’d
much rather turn deficiency into a “Eureka!” moment than blindly invest in more
gear.
The
original source file looked fine, but I could tell I had really bumped up the
contrast in certain areas when making the black and white print. It’s very easy
to overdo in Photoshop and radically changing brightness or contrast often
leads to mid-tones dropping out and a non-photographic, unpleasant look.
I
did an end-run around the problem by making multiple .tif files from the .raw
data the camera creates, one for each problem area of the print, doing my best
to get each as close to the envisioned final result as possible. The goal was
to make the tonal and contrast adjustments in Photoshop as mild as possible. I
then employed one aspect of a technique I often use called “layer masking.”
Layer masks allow certain areas of images aligned and stacked one on top of the
other, to either show or not show. The fusing of the visible areas from
different layers to make a unity is often the tricky part. There are ways to
automate the masking process, but each image is unique. Invariably it seems I
have to zoom into the image at high magnification and “paint” the masking in
for certain delicate areas. The pay-off is it allows a lot of control in
manipulating the print when the ambient lighting is not quite ideal.
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