Thinking of black-and-white photographs always reminds me of the past. In those analogue years, we used film and paper to process the image in the darkroom. It reminds me of capturing the light with my camera in poor lighting conditions.
Looking at my photos now in this digital version evokes all kinds of memories.
The famous photographers Ralph Gibson and the late Jeanloup Sieff shot black and white negatives for 35 mm cameras with KODAK Tri-X ASA / ISO 400 film.Each had his special technique for film exposure, develop and printing.
The negatives are dense and contrasty, the way Ralph Gibson likes them and he said about that “I overexpose an overdevelop and, in the process, pick up grain and contrast. A dense negative offers a range of possibilities, when explored , yields greater content. It gives those big solid blacks. I’m interested in high acutance as well as strong contrast and therefore use a high-contrast paper. This also accentuates the grain, a textural concern, which is related to a spatial effect".
I used the same develop methode for film as Ralph Gibson did for Tri-X. Nowadays, I scan these negatives in the highest possible quality. For this purpose I have built a setup with a Nikon D810 camera and a macro lens. This installation is then connected to my Mac using advanced software. Major advantages are: better control over the quality and library content, and last but not least to get back to the old time again.
This portrait gallery shows some of my results.
