The Collected Snapshot - Part 1

Growing up with family photo albums and family slide shows gave me an early appreciation for photography. Years later I came to collected other people's albums and photographs at thrift shops and swap meets.   Call them snapshots, I'm fine with the slight which this may imply. I have found at the heart of a "snapshot" the untrained eye seeking a fact, with enthusiasm,  often producing an awkward beauty and truth. The informed art photographer must work very hard to get to the naivete of an actual snapshot, in their own work.

This short stack of snapshots are almost all anonymous and silent.  Silent owing to a lack of description; no names on the front of  back of the print. They are moments in time adrift. They are caught in this web for a brief spell.

Jim Staub - September 28, 2015

Taking the train... and the camera. Pasadena to Los Angeles and back. July 2015

Photoshop and the 1977, 4x5" Black and White Negative

From 1975 to 1979 I took my two view cameras  (4x5" 5x7")  and an old flash out into the night to photograph scenes in Southern California. I had been using a 4x5" Crown Graphic camera since my time in college a few year before this project.

I'm focusing on one image taken 38 years ago,  which I recently scanned as an illustration of a photo applied to one aspect of Photoshop, the "Gradient Map".  I printed a number of these negatives over the years in darkrooms, most as standard full tone silver prints. On some of the night images I attempting to achieve a split-tone effect with selenium and blue toners.  It was hit and miss. When it worked I was quite happy with the results.

I recently discovered in Photoshop's gradient maps, an array of simulated photo chemical single tones, and split tones - very much what I was after years ago in the darkroom.

Here is the photo, "Freeway Underpass" as an unvarnished straight scan.

The photo with Sepia Midtones.

The photo with Sepia/Selenium tone.

The photo with Blue/Selenium tone.

The photo with Blue/Sepia tone.

The photo with Gold/Sepia tone.

This is the short selection of toner gradient maps available. Each gives the image its own flavor.  After playing with these gradient maps, as fun and curious as they are, I find myself going back to the original scanned image as the best, for its factual representational document of that flash going off under the freeway underpass 38 years ago with my old Crown Graphic waiting to catch the light.  I'm keeping my options open with the gradient maps nevertheless. Jim Staub - March 20, 2015