How to print this

[Lauffray]

I'm looking at some prints in two books, Far Cry by Paolo Nozolino and Kumogakure Onsen by Masakazu Murakami. Both prints have darkened skies (I'm pretty certain that's by printing and not a red filter while shooting) and Murakami's even have a sort of halo on the highlights, see the edge to the birds and the man's shirt (not sure if it's obvious from the picture)

How does one get this effect, just longer exposure on the sky ? unsharp mask to get those edges ?

 

[bence8810]

Hey Jerome,

Yes I am pretty sure it's just burning the sky in.
As for the birds they were burned themselves and a little over the edge so you get the darkened halo. Well - that's what I think anyways - could be wrong!

When are we to see some of your Japan images?
Ben

 

[filmdood]

You might be surprised what you can do in the darkroom. In those lovely pre-Photoslop daze there were some people who mastered rather arcane ways of doing things with a print. Looks like a lot of burning in. Some people made their own tools. HDR (using three negatives) was invented in 1840 or something like that. A LONG time ago.

 

[Ko.Fe.]

Lyth printing, I guess, for first two. #3 seems to have mask, or it is low light shot as it seems on #4. Or maybe both with mask.
Check with APUG as well.

 

[Hsg]

I'm looking at some prints in two books, Far Cry by Paolo Nozolino and Kumogakure Onsen by Masakazu Murakami. Both prints have darkened skies (I'm pretty certain that's by printing and not a red filter while shooting) and Murakami's even have a sort of halo on the highlights, see the edge to the birds and the man's shirt (not sure if it's obvious from the picture)

How does one get this effect, just longer exposure on the sky ? unsharp mask to get those edges ?

Contact Ned, the former member.

 

[sevo]

Lith prints. We did a lot of that when I was a student in the early eighties. Lith paper was used in bulk quantities for phototypesetter proofing, making it a full magnitude cheaper than regular photo paper. And it had a true paper texture, other than affordable RC paper. While it was as hard as possible (AGFA rated theirs Grad. 9), slightly overexposing grainy film (Agfapan 400, TX, HP5) onto it resulted in a dark half tone (not pretty, but matching the "no future" spirit of the era), with the grain doing duty as a half tone screen, much like in the 19th century heliogravure process.

 

[Dwig]

The "glow" around the birds can be done by processing the negs for rather high contrast and high density and then printing to darken the sky and doing something to create either lens flare or image bleed.

When printing a negative on "negative" paper to get a positive, lens flare in an printing lens cause shadows to "flare". The opposite of how a camera lens causes the highlights to flare.

Image bleed is not uncommon in printing papers as the paper is white and translucent. Adding a white sheet behind the print, instead of the easel's grey or "safe orange" color, can increase the effect. It rarely shows, but when the negative is very contrasty and you have to "overexpose" the print to get a grey sky, the black birds will be way overexposed and the effect can show.

Looking at the bird image, my guess is the dark glow is primarily, or totally, lens flare when printing.

 

[Lauffray]

Thanks guys !

When are we to see some of your Japan images?
Ben

As soon as I start developing them 😀