New York City Noir

Customer Service at B&H Photo

Any photographer located in NYC -- or planning a visit -- should be aware of a potential problem while shopping in store at B&H. As far as I know, all items listed as "in stock" on the store's website are, in fact, in stock at the huge warehouse in the Brooklyn Navy Yard.  The problem is that many are not available at the store's 9th Avenue location.  To find out actual store availability, it's necessary to check back day after day and each time navigate one tedious multi-choice voice menu after another

This might not sound like such a big deal.  But photographers working in Manhattan have traditonally relied on a variety of immediate resources if supplies or replacements -- whether it be extra batteries or a new lens -- were needed during a shoot or shortly in advance. 

My own story was that I wanted a Nikon 50mm 1.4 prime lens which is often back ordered everywhere.  If I didn't buy it as soon as it became available,I'd be out of luck again.  On the other hand, I wanted to be able to go in a store and actually hold the lens in my hand before buying it.  Hey, I'm only a short subway ride away.  And there's no point paying shipping charges when I'm already on Manhattan's West Side.

B&H did email me as soon as the product became "available," but I had to call back two days running to find out if it was in the store.  It wasn't.  On the third day, I asked to speak to a manager.  The man didn't call me back until the next day, but he was a gentleman and told me on a voice mail that not only was the lens in stock at the store but also that he had reserved one in my name. I thought that, at least, was excellent customer service.

B&H is probably the most professionally run business I've ever encountered.  Everyone I've ever dealt with there has been honest, courteous and helpful.  I realize its web based business must be immensely profitable.  But I would suggest that B&H remember its in store customers at least to the extent of updating its website to show availability at Ninth Avenue as well as on the web.  I think we derserve that much.  I've shopped at B&H since the 1970's when they were still located on Worth Street downtown and have spent many thousands of dollars there over the years.

Nikon 50mm 1.4 lens

I picked up a prime lens -- a Nikon 50mm 1.4 -- at B&H last week.  Like many Nikon lenses, this one is only intermittently in stock at the store and I had to wait a couple of months for it to arrive. 

The main advantage to the lens is that it should be considerably sharper than the zoom lenses I have used almost exclusively for the past several years.  At least, I'm hoping that this will be the case.  In any event, the lens was comparatively cheap (about $300), and I should have fun experimenting with it when doing street photography.  The 1.4 aperture should also provide me with enough speed to shoot at night on 1600 ISO film without flash.

"Vintage Prints"

The concept of the "vintage print," as used in the sale of fine arts photography, is artificial; it's a gimmick, if you will, intended to boost the value of a photographer's oeuvre.  It was formulated by the galleries back in the 1970's when the sales of photographic artwork began to take off.  At the time, the problem getting high prices for photography was that printing was viewed as a mechanical process in which photos could be uniformly reproduced endlessly from any negative.  This in contrast to the one-of-a-kind painting, or even an engraving whose plates would begin to detoriate after the twentieth or so impression.

In response, the vintage print is defined as one printed by the photographer withing six months of the date he/she took the photograph.  That sounds great, but -- as any photographer will tell you -- it's too problematic to be really useful.  I, for one, recall George Tice telling a class at Parsons how long he had taken to realize that one of his most famous images was best printed by deeply burning in both the right and left sides of the vertical format.

In my own work, I've come back often to negatives I shot years ago and have seen in them new detail, or else realized a given photo would be much more dramatic if cropped more closely.

The artistry in b&w printing lies in the ability to extract from the negative sufficient information to form an image pleasing to the photographer's own aesthetic. 

Nevertheless, having said all that, I intend to begin selling vintage prints from my website.  These traditionally processed silver cholorbromide prints will be limited editions in the sense that, in most cases, only four or five have been printed within a six month period of the dates on which the images were created.  I feel that traditional b&w prints processed in a wet darkroom will only increase in value as the materials and supplies necessary to their production grow ever more scarce in a digital era.

Sepia Toning Forte VC Paper

This past weekend I tried toning twelve of the prints I had printed on Forte VC.  In the past, I have ignored the advice to print my work a half stop darker prior to sepia toning.  The rationale was that redevelopment in sepia after bleaching does not fully restore the print to its original density.  In practice, I had found that the difference was so negligible on the papers I used that it need not be taken into consideration.  With Forte VC, however, there is a substantial lightening of the print after it has been toned.  While the toned prints I made are satisfactory, in the future I will be printing darker prior to toning.

Forte VC Fibre Base Paper

I worked in the darkroom today making four prints each of three photos from the shoot I did with Rachael on February 9th.  I'll do the same again tomorrow with three different photos from the same shoot. 

I'm working with Forte VC paper.  It's extremely high quality with good tonal range on a semi-matte surface.  As for Forte itself, I don't know what its status is or whether or not the company itself has been discontinued.  At one point I heard it  had been taken over by Ilford, but a Google search shows nothing.

New Papers

My first attempt to print on the new papers, as described in my Febuary 18 post, was with the infrared negatives from the photographs I'd taken of Rachael.  Unfortunately, both papers I tried were too slow to be useful in printing the Konica negatives.  Expoure times ranged from 7 to 9 minutes at f4.  Granted that the negatives were somewhat dense, that's still a very long time.  In contrast, exposure times with Flexicon were 110 seconds at f4, a difference of at least two stops.  These results were unusual in that the Slavich Unibrom FB 160 was described by Freestyle as cold toned and the Fotokemika Emaks K-888 FB as neutral toned.  Normally, only warm toned papers require such long exposures.

I did like the look of these papers from what I saw of them and I intend to try working with them again.  But they both seem more suited for straightforward photojournalism and street photography than for fine arts work.  I still want to get prints of the infrared negatives and probably will try next working with liquid emulsion or else making enlarged negatives for platinum prints.

New Enlarging Papers Available at Freestyle

There are so few reasonably priced graded papers available in NYC that it has become a real problem for my photography work.  I've put in an order to Freestyle in Los Angeles to purchase 25-sheet packages (grade 2) of three new papers that they are offering.  All three are reasonably priced at $14.99 per package.

The first is called Slavich Unibrom FB 160, a matte double weight paper made in Russia.   The second is Slavich Bromoportrait 80, another double weight paper, but this one with a "glossy embossed (silk)" finish.  The third is Fotokemika Emaks K-888 FB, a double weight glossy-finish paper.  This one actually seems the most interesting because Freestyle notes that it is the "same as Nuance brand and Cachet Expo RF graded fiber-base photographic papers." 

I should be receiving the papers this week and hope to test them in the darkroom soon.  In the meantime, the links above go to Freestyle product pages where further links can be found to the spec sheets for each paper.  What's encouraging is that I note 100-sheet boxes of these papers have already sold out and are back ordered.

Photo Shoot with Rachael

The above photo was shot on a Nikon 18 - 200 vr lens on a D200 .

I did a fine arts nude shoot with a model from Craigslist named Rachael.  She was very professional and had prior experience as an art model, so the shoot went very quickly.  I thought Rachael's poses were fluid and expressive, and I got some really good b&w photos as well as a few digital.  I would definitely recommend Rachael to any serious photographer looking to do fine arts work.

For the b&w, I shot the discontinued Konica infrared at ISO 32.  I only shot one roll because my supply of the film will soon start running low.

Polaroid Film. Part 2

As a followup to my last post on the discontinuance of Polaroid films, here are two examples of the alternative uses to which those films can be put:

The picture above is an SX-70 manipulation in which the non-hardened emulsion was stressed with a sharp edge.

The above is an image transfer in which the dye from a not fully developed Polaroid negative has been transferred to a piece of moistened watercolor paper.

Polaroid Film to Be Discontinued

Stephen Shankland, on his Underexposed blog on C-Net News, reports that Polaroid film is being discontinued. 

While this might not seem much of a loss at first -- after all, what is digital if not instant photography? -- there were many creative uses to which Polaroid film could be put.  One such use was image transfer in which Polaroid negatives, not fully developed, are placed face down on watercolor paper so that the dyes in the negative can transfer to the paper to create a painterly image.  Another was SX-70 manipulation in which the non-hardened emulsion on this type of film is rubbed and scratched with steel blades and other tools to create an interesting image. 

Once again, there's a loss for photographers who seek to explore alternative film processes.