repleo wrote:
If you are a photographer presumably you enjoy going out with your camera and taking pictures. Maybe you enjoy processing them and presenting them to a client or showing them to friends or entering them in a competition. You may even enjoy posting your best shots here on UHH or on one of the web sharing sites and basking in the compliments from fellow photographers or friends. If you are a professional you almost certainly enjoy collecting your check and depositing it in the bank.
Is that it?
Do you ever go back and look at your creations just for the pleasure of seeing them? Do you have a batch of favorites that you 'visit' because you are proud of them and they make you feel good or just to re-live old memories? How do you display them - framed on the wall? slide show on your computer? album or photo book? Facebook?
If you are a photographer presumably you enjoy goi... (
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I generally don't post online, although I'm about to put some of my work on a couple of pay sites where folks can order products.
Most of my work is for proprietary usage, so can't be posted on the Internet. It's on various corporate Intranets and servers, DVDs, and other storage systems.
I print a few things now and then, mainly to give to friends and family. I have a LOT of prints in boxes and albums.
The worst part about prints, negative film, and slides is that they are physical items. They have to be scanned or copied to be shared on social media, or emailed, or shown on the big screen in the living room.
The second worst thing about color negative film, chromogenic black-and-white film, and (Ektachrome) slides is that they fade. Kodachrome lasts for decades, but a slide is still a physical or atomic image, that has to be scanned or copied to be shared.
I have a tendency to scan through my old photos from time to time, and enjoy them. But I haven't turned on my top of the line Ektagraphic III AT slide projector in over 20 years!
So, I'm about to spend some time copying my black-and-white negatives from my youth, along with my slides (mostly Kodachrome) from the '70s and '80s, to raw digital files. The raw files let me use all the power of Lightroom and Photoshop to turn my best images into better media than the best prints I ever made in a darkroom.
I built a home-brew copier that uses a Lumix GH4 camera with 30mm macro lens, a horizontal sliding rail to enlarge and reduce image size, a negative carrier from my old enlarger, and a slide holder I fashioned from shirt cardboard and popsicle sticks! The negative carrier and slide holder attach to the system with magnets, so I can swap them out quickly and adjust alignment easily. The rails they attach to are the slot covers left over from putting SCSI and USB cards into old Macs...
The backlight is a 5500K photo grade fluorescent lamp, diffused by three sheets of translucent art paper. I made the light fixture out of a 100' 35mm film can left over from the 1970s, and a ceramic sign socket. The frame is made of particle board left over from a ping-pong table shipping carton.
The only thing I bought was $5.38 worth of translucent art paper. I had all the other stuff just sitting around in my shed or garage.
Here's a sample of what it can do. This is from a 35mm HP5+ negative made in May, 1986. Exposed in raw, inverted and processed in ACR and other Photoshop tools.