SMILE!

Yeah, i know, we have an absolute idiot for a president, it seems the world is going to hell in a bucket.Try and look at the up-side - smile! It will do ya good. This is another one that digital color just can't do justice to. The reds/orange on the face are 'false' but strike a deeper chord than simple photography.

I have found countless displays on the beach.

They are always provocative which is why i take 'em into the darkroom and improvise with them a bit more. And many get colored .. creatively, not so realistic.

If you like what you see here, and want to take in more:

http://www.bobbennettphoto.net

I've been self publishing my own books thanks to Blurb.

Previews of all at:

http://www.bobbennettphoto.net/BB_Books/index.html

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After many years of making darkroom photomontage (since the late 80's), and not being able to get arrested for it except for a few appearances in competitive group shows, and some assignment illustrations in various magazines ....I am designing & publishing books I make at Blurb with 'Bookify' - two of them are on Amazon, one is at Blurb.

'California Beach Trip':

On Amazon:

www.amazon.com/dp/1364579138

'Desert Trip'

On Amazon:

http://www.amazon.com/dp/1367900190

'Seeking the Vibe'

On Blurb:

http://www.blurb.com/b/6834807-seeking-the-vibe

Previews of all at:

http://www.bobbennettphoto.net/BB_Books/index.html

Check 'em out - i think you'll be glad you did.

Cotton Balls Vs. a rodent....

The rodent is of course a mouse ;-)

So far, i haven't found anyway to replicate what i can do with Q-tips and cotton balls with anything i can do digitally. Here's an image i call 'moonrise', darkroom montage and oil colors.

I could have colored this with 'day light' colors, instead i used warm reds and yellows on the hilites, as in 'sunset colors'.

Here's a few of 'in progress' images, colored digitally. 

Drive in Movie

Here's the layer palette for 'Drive-In':

I say 'in progress' because i got to this point and then realized that it would take hours to do what i could do manually in less than 20 minutes.

I guess i just don't have the patience for it. Perhaps some do. I started as a paste-up artist in an ad agency in 1976, it was mat board, galley sheets, typositor (?sic) strips, wax and rubber cement.

What can be done now is nothing short of revolutionary, if you'd told me back then, we'd be able to do things like this, i'd have responded something along the lines of "Really?? what have you been smokin', and where can i get some?"

I subscribe to half a dozen magazines, and get a sunday New York Times - the design and graphics are awesome, must take someone many hours to build this art.

But i can't get the same effect from digital as cotton balls.

You just can' t get............... colors like sienna, raw sienna, viridian, umber, raw umber, cadmium red and yellow, ultramarine, cerulean... you get the idea.

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https://www.dickblick.com/products/marshalls-photo-oil-sets/

And if you do digital work read this:

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/11/smarter-living/backing-up-your-photos.html

If you aren't already backing up your work once, or perhaps 2 or 3 times, get hip to this kindly tip.

Do it. Storage space ( external HD, be they the spinning kind or solid state) is cheap.

Stop back in again in a month - plenty of imagery for your edification and/or enjoyment, 

which ever is the case.

"Smile"

Do that often, it makes life much nicer.

Fortune wheel - One cent, no springs!

This one went thru quite a metamorphosis, it started out as a digital sketch:

Made w/ this neg: 

and a Nevada landscape.

I printed this (as a sandwich), scanned it, and then went to work on it digitally:

Then i did an about-face, and combined the fortune wheel w/ another neg., a cactus close-up:

Once again, a darkroom sandwich. It's got a mysterious shimmering quality to it, the viewer is focused on two things simultaneously, each struggle to command our attention.

Yes, i did some detail coloring before i went full tilt into digital color overall.

Here's where you can go to see the screen shot larger, and download a small PSD file, this one is not complicated at all:

http://www.bobbennettphoto.net/HCblog/FortuneWheel/index.html

Why do i like the fortune wheel?

..... i like thinking about the questions on the wheel, and the answers to them.

"What is my main talent?

What will my wife be like?

How will I get rich?

Will I be happy in marriage?

Will I have a family??"

And contrasted against a vast barren desert landscape?

Life is a blank slate, it can be harsh and unforgiving... or it can be rich, varied, and sometimes hard to decipher, as the second cactus sandwich image is - 'now you see it, now you don't'...

Are you ready for 'more than a few words on the difference between digital coloring and good ol' cotton balls and Q'tips?'

There now, i have already tipped my hand, haven't I?

I have found plenty of images that work... well... pretty well digitally.

And there's the balance that just don't/wouldn't.

Digital is just pixels, 'information' delivered as RGB (red green blue) channels.

Seems to me like the old stuff has a much more subtle palette.

I can't get anything like umber, sienna, ochre, alizarin crimson... out of RGB.

But that won't stop me from tryin' :-)

And every once in a while, I'll search thru the stacks of prints i have, and choose a few to hit with Q-tips and cotton balls.

After many years of making darkroom photomontage (since the late 80's), and not being able to get arrested for it except for a few appearances in competitive group shows, and some assignment illustrations in various magazines ....I am designing & publishing books I make at Blurb with 'Bookify' - two of them are on Amazon, one is at Blurb.

'California Beach Trip':

On Amazon:

www.amazon.com/dp/1364579138

'Desert Trip'

On Amazon:

http://www.amazon.com/dp/1367900190

'Seeking the Vibe'

On Blurb:

http://www.blurb.com/b/6834807-seeking-the-vibe

Previews of all at:

http://www.bobbennettphoto.net/BB_Books/index.html

Phoenix - A knock-out!

Can't believe i haven't posted this one yet - it's one of the best of the last five or so years, not just the darkroom print, but the hand-coloring too.

Yes, ladies and gents, this is darkroom, not digital.

I did a scan, and went after that in P'shop, it didn't take long to see how much potential this one had.

 

So i did some detail coloring w/ watercolors,

 

.........and then went full tilt w/ oils. Fortunately this was on Ilford's fiber based matte paper, which takes color very, very well. It speaks for itself, and the much richer result that comes from analog / real colors on real paper, cotton balls and Q-tips. The blending is much subtler. I've spent plenty of time doing digital colorizing, and folks, it just ain't the same. I can't get the same sky blue out of P'shop that i can out of a tube.

The final 'Phoenix' - though perhaps that's a contradiction in terms. 

A phoenix isn't final, it's a new beginning.

Window to soul

Note to readers:

I've been doing this blog w/ wordpress for years:

https://handcoloring.wordpress.com 

.... but now they have changed their code and i can no longer use them w/ my old Mac Mini, OS 10.4, pre-intel chips, browsers that i can only update to a certain point.

Soooo... Blogspot to the rescue! I plan on 'keepin' on keepin on'!!

This was another one that went thru quite a metamorphosis from beginning to end.

It's a sandwich, two negs together in the enlarger neg holder, exposed at the same time.

Or it's equivalent done w/ photoshop, i did both.

The P'shop sketch looked pretty interesting, however the darkroom print just got too muddy.

No problemo, P'shop to the rescue :-)

Here's the sequence, first the negs.

The Cloud:

The Window:

The Photoshop 'sketch' of the sandwich:

Now the darkroom print:

Then the digital color variations:

The screen shot, w/ the layers/color:

From Btm up:

(K=Black)

SC4 - K/+K

HueSat - window clouds, + blue

SC 1 - K/-Y

SC2 - deals w/ warm brown orange hi-lites on the wall.

SC3 - just window, better blue, +M

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I particularly like this one in spite of the fact that the darkroom print needed some serious recusitation.

How it gets handcolored?... 'artist's choice' = do what ever you want.