All the images of the “I demoni” series are shot with a catadioptric objective, a lens gifted with a particular bokeh, that gives a particular out-of-focus. In fact, even if the out-of-focus is intense, the objects have an important spatial structure, as it was a superimposition of the different images. The sign of the catadioptric objective is occasionally visible in those little rings superimposed to the image, partial or complete, which are the luminous marks of points deformed by the ring diaphragm of the objective.

Pictures are voluntarily out-of-focus to exploit this category of mirrored objectives and are voluntarily under-exposed to obtain a dark and gloomy atmosphere.
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Read the rest of The photographs “Demons”, technical notes (1,141 words)

© fabusdr for Camera Obscura, 2007.
Category: Carbon print, Paper, Negatives, Pigments | Post tags: 100 per 100 cotone, Acquarelli, Catadiottrico, Fabriano, Grigio di Payne, Negativi digitali, Nerofumo

Gypsy Madonna. Original file used to study the influence of black generation curve on color separation in VDB and pigmented print.

Damiano told me about an unknown and fascinating world, the one of the typographic print before computers came into our lives, when there was a precise professional figure whose task was to prepare different channels negatives, someone who only did that job, someone with the adequate knowledge to work, and all of that using only analogue materials. Therefore I was convinced by the importance of black generating curve, once it was exposed.

Color theory says that mixing equal amounts of cyan, magenta and yellow creates the perfect black. Actually though, because of pigments impurity, in the real world those three colors creates an unpleasant brown. This inconvenience is obviated, when printing in quadri-chromic, adding a fourth layer of black pigments that neutralizes shadows and gives deepness and prominence to the print.

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Read the rest of Influence of the black generation curve influence on color separation (1,870 words)

© fabusdr for Camera Obscura, 2007.
Category: Van Dyke Brown, Light room, Pigments | Post tags: CMYK, Curve, Dominante, Generazione del nero, RGB, Separazione colore

A couple of years ago I printed some VDB on pigmented prints. It is a color print, obtained overlapping a ferric salts black and white print on a cyan-magenta-yellow inkjet print.

I think that one of the first photographer who used this technique has been Dan Burkholder, whom website contains wonderful platinum tirages with delicate pencil color. Ron Reeder proposes wonderful and similar images on his website too, where a detailed manual explains how to obtain those kinds of prints. These two authors prints on platinum instead of silver, but the technique is exactly the same.

The result I obtained in 2005 was nice, but far from Burkholder and Reeder’s. Colors vaguely remembered old handmade postcards spread in the first half of the 20th century, but their problem was brilliant pinks and pale greens in highlights, surely too saturated and luminous for me.

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Read the rest of K-channel or grey scale in pigmented Van Dyke Brown prints (2,222 words)

© fabusdr for Camera Obscura, 2007.
Category: Van Dyke Brown, Light room, Pigments | Post tags: CMYK, Curve, Dominante, Generazione del nero, RGB, Separazione colore