Cibachrome's last days

[ChrisPlatt]

PBS NewHour short piece on large format landscape photographer Christopher Burkett:

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/landscape-photographer-races-to-finish-decades-of-work


Link to the photographer's website: http://www.christopherburkett.com/


Chris

 

[Dogman]

Good stuff!

 

[CMur12]

Wow! That was great.

Thanks.

- Murray

 

[farlymac]

Moving, and bittersweet. I will be sad to know the date he finally runs out of paper.

PF

 

[dfranklin]

A great interview, and a fascinating glimpse into Burkett's craft.

Thanks for posting!

 

[Freakscene]

Cibachrome/Ilfochrome is/was beautiful. But it was not a pleasant medium to work with. Just thinking about it gives me cold sweats about making colour contrast masks and calculating/correcting for reciprocity-related colour shifts. Both feasible, but neither fun.

It was also moderately unpleasant to work out how to safely dispose of large amounts of what was effectively dilute car paint when ditching used chemistry.

But well-done Ciba/Ilfochromes are still really beautiful.

Marty

 

[Steve M.]

Wow, talk about filling the frame! His prints are stunning. I decided early on to work solely w/ B&W in photography, but this reminds me of what I missed out on by restricting things to just that medium. The time, effort and skill it must have taken this guy to make his prints is hard to believe. Beautiful work.

 

[narsuitus]

Thanks!

Just saw it on PBS NewsHour WeekEnd.

 

[charjohncarter]

I don't think any of us will forget when we first saw a Cibachrome print. I saw my first in 1963, it was a wow moment. With all this digital expertise today it is too bad it can't be recreated.

 

[plummerl]

Around 1980 I picked up a Cibachrome 4x5 size print sampler kit out of curiosity. It had a very small processing tube and all the chemicals with a 4x5 paper pack. I'll never forget the first image that appeared and how astonished I was. I still have the prints and they are still as fresh as when I produced them.

 

[Bob Michaels]

Cibachrome/Ilfochrome is/was beautiful. But it was not a pleasant medium to work with. Just thinking about it gives me cold sweats about making colour contrast masks and calculating/correcting for reciprocity-related colour shifts. Both feasible, but neither fun...................

Yes, beautiful at times. But frustrating as hell to work with because of the extreme contrast. Apparently I never had the darkroom talents to print many of my slides with Cibachrome. My memories were of too many, too expensive, too time consuming darkroom experiments before finally giving up.

 

[sepiareverb]

Thanks for that link. A wonderful piece.

My memories were of too many, too expensive, too time consuming darkroom experiments before finally giving up.

Me too.

 

[rybolt]

Cibachrome was sometimes frustrating but when you got dialed in it was a wonderful product. Back in the mid-70's I did demos for Ilford in SoCal. Over the years I think I made every possible mistake that you could make which led to tweaks that made the printing easier. I discarded their developer and used Dektol 1:2 or 1:3 depending on the contrast of the subject. I also found that their Exposure Monitor was great for exposure as long as you read off the correct area.

 

[Chuffed Cheese]

a beautiful human being

 

[michaelwj]

Moving, and bittersweet. I will be sad to know the date he finally runs out of paper.

PF

The fixed end game struck me, knowing that every print, successful or not, gets you closer to the end, to hanging up your camera. Beautiful pictures but so sad.

 

[Brian Atherton]

Magnificent and poignant… and the end, heart-rending. Thank you so much for posting, Chris.

 

[bayernfan]

that was beyond fantastic. cibachrome really is something to behold in person.