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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Tag Archives: nature
Ferns
Walking around in the woods this evening.
photo: Ferns, digital black and white, 2010
Hand coloring problem solved, I think
I’m figuring out, at last, how to use digital black and white carbon prints for hand coloring.
Turns out the carbon pigment is well bound to the paper — mostly. So what you need to do is remove the loose particles.
About 30 seconds under cool running water and an all-over scouring with a paintbrush seems to do the trick without noticeably affecting the quality of the print. Most of the ink is tightly attached to the watercolor paper. You can see a trickle of loose ink flow off the page, though.
I then dry the print and give it a spray of workable fixative before painting. That’s a step I would like to skip, if I can perfect the scrubbing; I hate the smell of fixative.
But the scrubbing works.
Painting on the watercolor paper is very different from painting on the smooth, non-absorbent surface of a traditional silver-gelatin print. It will take me a while to get used to the new process.
photo: Twilight in the garden, digital black and white, 2010
And even more twilight BW
I haven’t been able to figure out exactly what is going on here — obviously it’s some kind of digital artifact — but I do love the look. This is taken at ISO 3200 in the garden at twilight, shot into the sky.
And good news on the printing front: MIS sent a new ink system, having concluded that the directions I was given with the last one were incorrect, thus explaining the pale, washed out prints I was getting. Putting the right ink in the right slot, oddly enough, nailed it. The new prints, at least so far, are dead on and gorgeous (and even match what I see on the computer monitor). And a side benefit: No profiles to deal with.
photo: Grape leaves by twilight, digital black and white, 2010
More twilight fun with digital black and white
photo: Garden leaves, digital black and white, 2010
Here’s a shot I don’t quite understand….
… But I really like it.
I was out this evening at twilight shooting pictures in the garden when I began to get this odd edge effect around the grape leaves. The photo is shot into the evening sky, matrix meter +2 stops, at 3200 ISO. The leaves have a wonderful outline that must result from the blown sky, but I really don’t know. The out of focus areas are beautiful and other-worldly, too.
All the other photos in the series share this look, so long as they were shot into the sky.
I need to play with this some more.
It makes quite a beautiful black and white print, as well.
Photo: Grape leaves by twilight, digital black and white, 2010