Evolution of a Photograph

[Mike Farley]

The Online Photographer (TOP) has just concluded its most recent print sale, a shot taken on film (remember that?) of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington DC. What is of interest is the long gestation of the image and the way it has been processed. Poorly exposed in 1975, the negative was more or less unprintable in the darkroom except possibly by an elite few with the most finely honed techniques. Digital processing eventually came to the rescue and the photographer describes the steps he took, in conjunction with an experienced printer called Ctein*, to produce the shot he originally envisaged more than 40 years earlier.

I suspect that most people undertake very little manipulation of their photos and others rarely describe their own working, which makes this a rare insight. Amazingly, the photographer and Ctein spent a day and a half on the image back in 2007 and then tweaked it again for the print sale. Amongst other changes, they felt that it needed lightening when being printed at a smaller size than originally. This might be TL;DR for those with a short attention span (you know who you are ), but worth at least a scan to get the basics.

http://theonlinephotographer.typepad.co ... cture.html

In the comments, some people stated that they preferred the original uncropped image, which lead to a further debate at TOP about photographers' inetentions when creating an image.

http://theonlinephotographer.typepad.co ... grity.html

* His full legal name, pronounced "kuh-tein". Probably not the name he was born with.