Bob Keefer
Is a writer and photographer who lives in rural Oregon. This is an informal blog with no particular purpose other than to give myself something to do with some of the welter of photographs I take each day.
For more considered work, see my hand-colored photography at BobKeeferPhoto.com.
You can email me at bob/at/bkpix.com.
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Monthly Archives: April 2010
A black and white digital printing frenzy
I’ve been keeping the printer busy with experiments in black and white. As you can see in the photo, I’m working out ways to make digital prints that — maybe — look something like the black and white prints I get in the darkroom. And, yes, it’s a steep curve. The material you can read online is over-technical, fussy and boring, for the most part.
On Saturday I went out in the woods and shot a roll of Tri-X on the Pentax LX; I also carried the K-7 and duplicated all 30 images, shot for shot, on the digital camera. (The lenses were fairly well matched in length: a 28mm f/2.8 on the LX and a 21mm f/3.2 on the K-7.)
I’m liking these first experiments. Initial reaction: Digital prints — at least the ones I make on watercolor paper — are sharper and cleaner, but don’t have the full dynamic range of darkroom prints. They’re also cheaper if you buy regular artist’s watercolor paper and cut it down and use non-manufacturer ink, like the MIS continuous inking system I bought.
Initial reactions to the MIS system: Like all things digital, it’s fussy. But, with excellent help from the support folks at inksupply.com, I got the thing up and running and it’s only stumbled a couple times.
I especially like having a big stack of paper and big bottle of ink to play with, without having sunk much money into it.
More as I learn more.
PS: You can see in the photo that I’m beginning to hand color some digital prints. That, too, is very different.
The forest by night
One of a series I recently posted to my web gallery. I am getting to like the faux-documentary look of harsh flash on nature subjects.
Photo: Night Forest 4, 2010
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Digital print experiments
OK, I’m not a total Luddite. (I’m writing this on a computer, after all.)
And I truly am interested in digital printing.
Up until lately, though, I haven’t much liked what I saw. But reading more the other day about carbon-ink printing on 100 percent cotton watercolor paper — and, especially, the fact that my old, unused Epson C88+ could be rejiggered with carbon inks — inspired me to give it a try.
As with all things digital, there is a learning curve. And as with all my previous digital printing experiences, the curve is very, very irritating.
But, on Friday, I finally got the C88 matched up with a continuous inking system from inksupply.com, which also provided me four bottles of varyingly intense warm-black inks. (Total cost, about $135, plus some days of waiting while they cheerfully diagnosed a chip problem on the ink cartridges…. don’t ask. Anyway, they’re working now.)
And on Saturday I spent about $20 at the local art supply store on nine full-sized sheets of good watercolor paper, which I cut down to 81 smaller sheets, each about 7.3 by 10 inches (a full sheet is 22×30, so do the math).
I bought a few sheets each of Arches coldpressed, Arches hotpressed and Canson Montval, all 90-pound thickness, which is thin for a watercolor paper, but I have had trouble getting 140-pound paper through the printer.
Results so far:
The Arches hotpressed paper, which is pretty slick to the touch, gives the cleanest, sharpest image, though that is not exactly what I am after for hand coloring. The coldpress paper is rougher and more interesting, but knocks contrast down a bit.
The Montval paper doesn’t work well at all; for some reason it shows significant banding in dark areas.
The image above was printed on the Arches coldpress and then hand colored with acrylics.
Yes, the wet paint smudged the image. This is a problem.
There may be ways to fix it, from using a spray-on fixative (yuck) to washing the finished but uncolored print in running cold water to remove loose pigment particles (hey, one of the ideas of digital is not to have to wash prints….) to working more quickly with an initial coat of acrylic medium to seal the surface.
The color is not at all what I am used to. Whether that’s a bad or good thing remains to be seen.
In any case, though, I feel like I have an escape if good darkroom photo paper disappears completely.
Photo: Ferns, 5×7 hand colored carbon pigment print, 2010
Another “new” 16×20 hand colored print
I popped this 2008 photo of a ranch gate in Harney County — that’s Oregon’s high-desert cowboy country, east of the Cascades — out of a frame to rotate in another photo this morning. Then I realized I had never put it on the website.
The picture was taken on a very cold day at Roaring Springs Ranch, south of Frenchglen. It is very, very lightly colored, so that in some light it still looks black and white. Look closer, though, and you find subtle hints of winter color.
photo: Harney gate, 2008
New hand colored photos — and big, too!
Photo: Forest path, 16×20 hand colored black and white photo, 2010
Here are three new hand-colored prints that I was able to enjoy finishing up on a rainy Sunday afternoon. All are from recent black and white excursions into the woods around our house. This one, above, shows the trail that leads from our driveway to the upper well; I walk up that way several times a week.
One big difference to most of the work you see on this site is that these prints are big: 16 by 20 inches. When I get around to posting them in the sales gallery I will have to make a new price category for them. (I’ll also have to note that matting won’t be included, as it would be unrealistically expensive to pack and ship a matted photo of this size.)
Below, a look at a group of ferns and a very abstract flash blur of some viney maple.
photo: Ferns, 16×20 hand colored black and white photo, 2010
photo: Trees, 16×20 hand colored black and white photo, 2010