[LargeFormat] Holiday Snapping

[animal]

> Dear Nephew Clive,
>
>      The list is not dead and neither are the participants. Your Olde
Uncle
> has spent a glorious Easter break with the large format camera in the
studio
> while his neighbors have been busy uprooting trees and weeding flower
beds.
> The whole street seems in a frenzy of yard tidying - one maniac has even
> bought a leaf blower and is cleaning the street gutter. My contribution to
> it all is to put the door back onto the '62 De Soto that is up on concrete
> blocks on the front lawn. That and turn the scrap rubber tyre pile over.
>
>     My subject has been a young woman who says she is a witch and wants to
> be photographed using elemental colours - red, blue, green, yellow, etc.
We
> did red this weekend - apparently it is associated with fire and the sun
and
> suchlike - I had to make a sun in the studio. Boy, you need a lot of space
> for a decent sun, not to mention the scorch marks. I am going to opt for
an
> outdoor shoot when it comes to blue and water. I figure we can hold her
> under with a pole long enough to get a good time exposure. I hope there
are
> no hammerheads....
>
>     The other discovery in the studio was how to copy large portraits
> through mottled glass to give an impressionistic feel to the picture. I
know
> this is probably duck soup for the Photoshoppers and there are no end of
> pushbuttons that reel Monets out of a printer, but I do it optically.
>
>     I have discovered that with the Linhof secured on the Gitzo tripod I
can
> extend one of the legs backwards like a machine gun tripod and suspend the
> tilt head and camera a long way out there in front. I put a sandbag on the
> extended rear leg. The effect of this is to give an unimpeded view
> vertically downward to the floor where the picture to be copied is placed.
> As luck would have it my studio floor is black and white Nelson chequer
and
> it is easy to focus and line up the prints down there. The field of view
of
> the 150mm lens is perfect for an 11 x 14 print on 4 x 5 film. If I want to
> recopy an 8 x 10 print it can be economically done on the 6 x 7 Super
Rollex
> back.
>
>     The trick with optical impressionism seems to be to have a clear dull
> day sending neutral light in through the glass doors and suspend a sheet
of
> mottled glass above the print. I use little wooden blocks or soup cans.
> Putting the glass sheet further from the print increases the size of the
> blotches and putting it close makes the effect of fine brushwork. You can
> suspend the glass with different blocks to tilt it and this gives
different
> areas of the print different-sized brushstrokes. Next time I do it I am
> going to divide the exposure into 4's and tilt the sheet in between the
> exposures to see what that does.
>
>      The negs are drying as I type and should be fun to print tomorrow.
>
>      Now - your turn. What did you do this weekend?
>
>      Uncle Dick
>
>
>
Well if you really want to know,I spend most of the sunday separating 1
liter of acrylic yellow paint and a 2.5 year old.
simon jessurun