S+ART

A Re-Introduction to Watercolor

Instructor Daniels (Right) discusses student work. Photograph by Jen Schiller.

Instructor David Daniels of the Smithsonian Associates' Introduction to Watercolor class proves art is a never ending learning process. His mastery of watercolor allows students to gain new insight from each class section and build upon their knowledge. Daniels started the class with a review of student work from the previous week, making suggestions and commentary. Students approached their assignments differently; some displayed skill in photorealistic reproductions of their original photographs while others transformed landscapes into abstract, surreal interpretations.

Student Jonathon Paul creates photorealism with watercolor. Photograph by Jen Schiller.

 

 I never fail to learn something when I sit in on one of Daniels’ studio sessions. For instance, he advises students to steer clear of fugitive, or non-lightfast, hues. Students may find that these pigments disappear from their paintings in anywhere from 50-70 years thanks to UV damage. How can one circumvent this dilemma? By using glass or varnish with UV protection (however these can get expensive). The cheaper alternative: avoid red or pink, the most common victims.

 

Another tricky thing about watercolor is value, and that’s not how much your painting is worth – it’s the amount of light or dark in a particular pigment. Understanding value can improve the intensity and composition of your paintings. How can you affect value? To lighten a pigment you add water (allowing more light to pass through), and to darken it you can add a neutral tint, a compliment, or black. Color theory holds that neutral color contains no color, so adding more of it takes away the white paper’s ability to shine through, hence, darkening value.

 

-Jen Schiller

Related articles

Review: Introduction to Watercolor

Review: Drawing on the Right Side of Your Brain

A Smithsonian Studio Arts Course

Blind Leading the Blind, 2005. Oil on canvas. 48"x60" (150cm x120cm). Shahin Shikhaliyev.

Artists and scientists alike are interested in studying the process of drawing. What makes one person a better artist than another? How can one practice to become a better artist? We often hear about how the right side of the brain is responsible for understanding spatial relationships, symbols, and putting bits of information together to form a whole – all essential skills for drawing. Unlike myself, left-hemisphere dominant “lefties” are gifted with linear and logical understanding, but they may lack the creative and spatial command of “righties”, which hinders their drawing ability. Logical individuals seek a concrete explanation of what is going on in the brain so that they may practice and improve upon their skill. That’s where Shahin Shikhaliyev's course, Drawing on the Right Side of Your Brain, comes in. Students walk away from Shikhaliyev's  class with not only a new drawing skill but a new vision of the world.

Friday’s session focused on negative space. The concept is vital in the perceptual understanding of shapes and spatial relationships; for logical lefties, it is akin to learning a new language. Shikhaliyev placed a stool in the center of the room and asked his students to sketch the “space around the stool, not the stool”. In the instructor’s demonstration, a seemingly random collection of shapes magically emerged into a stool. As he drew, he clearly verbalized his process: “I am not thinking about the object. I am just enjoying the line, how it develops, its relation to this line as compared to that line.”

 When it comes to becoming an artist, says Shikhaliyev: “You have to create a new view of the world. You are converting the 3-dimensional into the 2-dimensional. Drawing is a very active process; even though the object exists out there, it is your vision. You are creating it.”

-Jen Schiller

Cameras & Cold Weather

Snow. Photograph by Angela Kleis.

Last week while on vacation in New England and Canada, I was inadvertently reminded how cold weather affects cameras and film, specifically instant film.  While it wasn't actually winter-level cold (I think it only dropped into the 40s at night), the temperature difference was enough to ruin some film. 

 

I was on a road trip, staying at a different place each night, and usually arriving pretty late.  Rather than hauling all of my bags to the room at night, the bag containing the film stayed in the trunk of the car.  The problem showed up when shooting instant film in the Polaroid the following day; the film simply didn't want to develop and the pictures were all light, faded, and, well, underdeveloped.  Even though I timed them according to the air temperature, I didn't realize that the film had been affected by the cold nightime temperatures and needed longer to fully develop until I forgot that I was counting and several minutes passed.  When I peeled apart the picture, I was certain it would be dark, though it turned out perfectly.  That's when I realized what had happened and altered my developing time accordingly.

 

Even though it's only early October, I wanted to offer some suggestions for protecting your camera gear and film from the cold temperatures to come:

 

Batteries:  Cold temperatures drain batteries, so don't leave them in a cold car. Even a cold day of shooting will drain batteries, so carry extras in your coat pockets or close to your body, if possible, to help shield them from the low temps (and, store dead batteries there, too). When recharging batteries, be sure to get a full charge.  Those fancy DSLRs have a large power draw, so turning off unnecessary features and even turning off the camera when not in use will help conserve battery power, as well.  When not in use, remove the battery altogether and keep in a moderately warm place.

 

Condensation:  Just like with hot summer temps, cold weather brings this major annoyance to camera lenses everywhere.  The problem not only affects lenses but sensitive camera electronic components, as well.  When possible, allow the camera time to adjust to the temperature change slowly to minimize or prevent condensation from forming.  Follow the same tips for preventing summer condensation.  If condensation does form, remove the battery and allow the gear to dry out before using or taking back out into cold temps, as the condensation could freeze with disastrous results.

 

Wet Weather:  Snow, sleet, and freezing rain can all damage camera gear.  Use a clean, soft cloth to wipe away moisture as often as possible before it penetrates seals or has a chance to freeze. 

 

I hope these help!  If you have additional suggestions or tips for protecting gear from winter weather, please let us know in the comments.

 

Angela

My Daguerreotype Boyfriend

Daguerreotype of Civil War Soldier. Source: http://mydaguerreotypeboyfriend.tumblr.com

My father has a room in our house that serves the exclusive purpose of housing his antique collection. Recently I was meandering through the room on a visit home, absorbing the familiar musty smell and grainy wood surfaces, when I came across a small piece of glass framed by delicate gold inside a paper envelope. At a certain angle the glass reflected a portrait of a man and a woman. The image was eerie, translucent, and intricately lifelike, as if the two were ghosts that might blink. The object was a daguerreotype, the first photograph. My inner Sherlock Holmes kicked into gear, and unearthed some surprising modern takes on this old technology.

My Daguerreotype Boyfriend is a blog featuring Victorian hunks, offering both eye candy and an intriguing look into photography’s history. Just as I came across the object by accident so did its inventor Louis Daguerre, a French painter. He discovered the development process when he noticed an image in his storage cabinet had developed when exposed to mercury vapors from a broken thermometer. He improved upon the process, using a sheet of copper plated with a thin coat of silver that was polished until mirror-like, then sensitized with iodine, then transferred to the camera in a lightproof box. The plate was then exposed to light, developed over hot mercury, and fixed with a salt solution. Because the image rubbed off easily it was protected by a sheet of glass and stored in an envelope or box. This process was time-consuming, yet the outcome was worthwhile. 

There is a lot of literature and discussion on the daguerreotype out there, which I found interesting because I assumed the process was forgotten in today’s digitized world. But the popularity of photo “destroying” apps like Instagram shows that retro is in. Daguerreotypes attract bidding wars on eBay, and invite discussions across the Blogosphere. This discovery led me to believe that the original spirit and aura of photography is still alive. While photography’s use has certainly evolved (cat videos, anyone?) the core purpose of self-expression and recordkeeping still resounds. Since the first cave paintings, humans have desired to record their histories in order to pass down wisdom and preserve their legacies. With the invention of photography, everyone could record their family histories with the accuracy and permanency that only the wealthy could previously afford to do. We nostalgically keep the daguerreotype alive because it reminds us of photography’s original sacred value - a process that gave the magic of lifelike representation, of preserving our precious moments – to everyone. The swoons are just an added bonus.

Check out the Archives of American Art’s awesome daguerreotype portrait collection.

Experience 3-D Stereo view photographs and daguerreotypes at the Smithsonian Castle’s Experience Civil War Photography exhibit.

-Jen Schiller

Exposure Stops

Concepts and terms are often used without really understanding their meaning, and photography is no different.  My knowledge and understanding of photography have come through experience and practice, not necessarily by studying or research, though that has increased since I began writing these posts three years ago.  One term I have used a lot in the past two posts is one that, if asked to explain it before a couple of weeks ago, I probably couldn't. 

 

A "stop" is a standard measurement of exposure and refers to the doubling or halving of light.  The camera's shutter speed and aperture diameter are both designed on this principle, as is film speed (ISO), which was discussed last week. 

 

Shutter speed is the amount of time, measured in seconds, that the the shutter remains open during a shot.  Doubling or halving the shutter speed results in an increase or decrease of 1 stop of exposure.  For example, changing the speed from 1/125 to 1/60 lets in twice as much light, increasing the exposure by one stop.  Going in the other direction from 1/30 to 1/60 cuts the amount of light by half, decreasing the exposureby one stop. 

 

Aperture, or f-stop, is a ratio that describes the diameter of the shutter when it opens.  The smaller the f-stop, the wider it opens, letting in more light (the phrase "wide open" usually refers to the lowest f-stop available, usually f/1.4 or f/1.2).  Understanding the f-stop scale involves a little math and is based on the powers of the square root of 2, which is 1.41, and a little rounding.  For example, going from f/1.4 to f/2 decreases by one stop because 1.4 x 1.41 = 1.9, which rounds to 2.  Going in the other direction, changing from f/16 to f/22 increases by one stop since 22 ÷ 1.41 = 15.6, which rounds to 16.  The rounding is there to help simplify the scale, and I appreciate that! 

 

With film speed and digital sensors, the ISO values represent the sensitivity of the substrate to light.  Higher ISO values are more light-sensitive and require less time for proper exposure while lower ISO values require much more time under the same conditions.  The numbers in this scale are conveniently simple with each doubling or halving equal to one stop.  ISO 200 is twice as sensitive than ISO 100 and half as sensitive as ISO 400. 

 

I hope this helps in your understanding of exposure stops.  In a few weeks, we'll take a look at how they all work together.

 

-Angela

Push and Pull Processing

Film can be flexible and forgiving in many situations, even when the camera is set to the wrong ISO and the film is not properly exposed.  Sometimes, a photographer will find themselves in a situation that requires a high-speed film for low-light events and all that's available is film best used on a sunny day.  Mistakes happen and there are ways to work around them by adjusting the time of development using two methods referred to as Push Processing and Pull Processing. 

 

Push Processing attempts to correct an underexposed roll of film by overdeveloping, either because the film was improperly exposed (the camera was set to the wrong ISO) or when a lower speed film was used in low lighting conditions (ISO 800 rather than ISO 1600, for example).  With mistakes, there's no going back, however when deliberately underexposing a roll of film, there are a factors to keep in mind.  Underexposing the film causes a loss of detail in the darker shadow areas of the image while preserving detail in the mid-tones and highlights, and overdeveloping increases the contrast and grain that can affect overall image quality.  Together, this can result in highly-contrasted images and grain, good in some causes but less than ideal in others.  To get around this, expose the film for the shadow areas.

 

Pull Processing helps correct overexposed film by underdeveloping it.  This option is generally used to correct for accidental overexposure (forgetting to set the camera's manual ISO setting), to reduce grain, or to compensate for high-contrast lighting to control shadow detail.  By contrast to push processing (pun intended), overexposing the film causes highlights to blow out and lose detail.  Underdeveloping adjusts for this by preserving detail in these lighter areas and decreasing the grain in the shadows and darker areas of the image. 

 

Since situations, film, developers, exposure, and photographers are all variable factors, push and pull processing guidelines are offered as starting points, only, and differ by film manufacturer and other published data tables.  A general guideline to establish a starting point is to underexpose by 1 stop and overdevelop by 1 stop.  Kodak recommends to increase the development time by 2 minutes for each stop of underexposure (pull processing) and to decrease the development time by 1 minute for each stop of overexposure (push processing).  Digital Truth offers factors by which the normal development time should be increased for each exposure stop. 

 

Before attempting push or pull processing, be sure to check with the film manufacturer for recommendations. And, remember that push or pull processing affects the entire roll of film even if some frames were exposed properly. 

 

-Angela

Film Techniques Behind the Instagram Filters

Original (left); Instagram Earlybird Filter Version (right). Photograph by Angela Kleis

 

I don't often use Instagram, but when I do, I often wonder about the filters - where do they come from?  What are they named after?  Which film effects are they mimicing? 

 

A few, like X-Pro II, Earlybird, and Lomo-Fi, are easy to guess since their names describe the processes (sort of).  Filters with names like Hefe, Brannan, and Poprocket aren't intuitive - they don't provide any information about the process or effects - and, I, behing the curious type, want to know.  And, I was set to write a whole post about it.

 

1000Memories blog created this chart and did all the work for me.  Each of the filters used by Instagram are inspired by specific camera and film combinations which are handily detailed in this chart, some of which I have discussed at various times over the past three years. 

 

Take a look through the chart to learn more about the filters and their actual process inspirations.  Next time someone asks how you acheived a specific effect, you'll be able to explain it in more detail.

-Angela

Developing Film

Last week I had the opportunity to lead a film developing demo at Artomatic, which has sadly now ended.  In preparation, I attempted to compile as much science behind the process that I could find, particularly with regard to the chemical reactions occurring in each step (I was a chem major for six semesters, afterall).  However, I felt that it was too nerdy and brain-hurty and scaled it down into more general terms (I'm more of a bio person, anyway).  I am still interested in how the image appears like magic on the film and how all the solutions work together, so here's an overview:

What’s film?

Photographic film is a strip plastic-type material coated with a light-sensitive material.

 

Traditional black & white film consists of 3 main layers:

Film Base – plastic or polymer such as nitrocellulose, cellulose acetate, or polyester (PET); back in the day it was glass

 

Emulsion – light-sensitive silver halide crystals in a semi-permeablegelatin that is layered on the film base

 

Anti-Halation Layer – coating that absorbs light & prevents it from reflecting back into the emulsion to cause halos/ghosting

 
_

 

How does it work?

 

When film is exposed to light, it starts a series of reactions with the silver halide crystals within the emulsion.  Each photon of light that hits a crystal separates the silver from the halide, which absorbs it and frees an electron.

Ag⁺Br^- (crystal) + hv (radiation) --> Ag⁺ + Br + e^-

The silver ion then combines (is reduced) with the election to yield a free silver atom (metallic silver):

Ag⁺ + e^{- -->} Ag⁰

 

(Ag⁰ = latent image)

 

The latent image is similar to “latent fingerprints” that are there waiting to be found or imaged. 

What does this look like on the negative?

Each crystal comprises the film grain and can contain many molecules of silver halide. The longer the exposure, the more free silver is produced on each grain, creating a darker area, or density variation. Dark areas of the negative have the highest density of opaque silver atoms (the greatest light exposure) and clear areas contain no silver (no light exposure).        

 

_

 Next week, we'll take a look at how the image is made visible on the film.

-Angela

Redscale Technique

Player, photo by Jennifer Wade

 

Another film technique-turned-filter is redscale, in which color (C-41) film is exposed backwards through the base of the film, not the emulsion. 

 

Color film consists of layers of light-sensitive emulsion applied to an acetate or polyester base, with each layer corresponding to a wavelength of visible light - blue, green, and red.  The blue layer, which has the shortest wavelength of the three (380–450 nm), is exposed first, followed by green (495–570 nm), and then red (620–750 nm).  Between the blue and green layers is a yellow filter, which removes the blue light to which all of the layers are sensitive (it's an aspect of silver-based emulsion). 

 

No Trespassing, photo by Jennifer Wade

 

When the film is placed in the camera and exposed "correctly", the red emulsion layer is the last to be hit by light.  When the film is wound backwards in a canister so that it is upside down when loaded in the camera, the red layer is the first to be exposed, followed by the green layer.  The yellow filter prevents the passage of the blue light, which leaves the blue layer unexposed and left out of the resulting image.  This causes a red-heavy color-shift that ranges from maroon to orange and yellow, depending on the film brand and type.  Blue is still visible in the image since the other emulsion layers are also slightly-sensitive to blue light.

 

Redscale is available commercially or may be made by rewinding a roll of color film backwards into a new canister.  When using the redscale technique, overexpose each shot by one or two stops for correct exposure and to achieve the color-effect that you desire. 

 

 

Faregates, photo by Jennifer Wade

 

 

 

Bike and Football, photo by Jennifer Wade

 

All photographs were taken by Jennifer Wade using redscale film.

  

-Angela

Cross-Processing

       
         Fuji Velvia,  ISO 100, cross-processed as C-41, Photo by Angela Kleis

 

I always like to keep a few rolls of color film, both negative and positive, in the refrigerator, just in case.  One thing I sometimes like to do when I shoot slides, particularly with certain cameras, is to have them cross-processed as negatives. 

 

Cross-processing, or X-pro, is a technique that involves processing (developing) one type of film in the wrong chemicals, most commonly developing E6 slide (positive) film in C-41 chemicals meant for color negative film.  Switching up the chemistry in this way results in color shifts with higher contrast and saturation, which are even more off-set by the presence of any light leaks in the image.  The results are unpredictable and vary based on the film brand and film type, as well as the camera used, the subject, and the exposure conditions.  Bright colors outdoors on sunny days have produced the most interesting results for me.  

 

 

 Fuji Velvia, ISO 100, cross-processed as C-41, Photo by Angela Kleis

  

 

Fuji Provia, ISO 400, cross-processed as C-41, Photo by Angela Kleis

 

The reverse can also be applied to color negative film processed in E6 chemicals, which generally yields flat, muddy images with little contrast resulting from the orange-colored base of color negative film.  Over-exposing the film by one to two stops and then pushing the film another one to two stops during processing can help to overcome the fog and increase contrast, if you're feeling experimental.  Be sure to explain your needs to the processing lab and be prepared to pay extra for both pushing and cross-processing. 

 

Next time you have an extra roll of color slide film and feel experimental, consider brighter, more colorful subjects and ask the lab to cross-process.  The service usually cost a few dollars more and the results are fun, unexpected, and a bit of a surprise - just like film, itself.

 

-Angela