The Tugboat On The Monongahela image to which I pointed in my last post was a Van Dyke print was made from the original slide, that I am showing here. In the past I had to work around the face that the transparency had a small defect, which of course manifested itself in the sky. When printing it I normally had to crop down about 20% to work around it, which did not spoil the image, but I felt made it less effective. Digital technology today makes correcting that problem a five second task, so I am not able to print the image the way it was actually obtained.
For me, this is the greatest advantage digital technology offers – to be able to correct for the deficiencies. For instance, I worked on a Bromoil that I eventually titled Afternoon Stroll. I loved the image, but the problem was that the little girl trailing the rest of the family was rather faint. The original negative was Kodak Infrared, which created some wonderful problems, most which worked in my favor, but the faintness of the little girl did not. Including her was essential, and as I tried again and again to make her prominent enough to be noticed, I failed at each attempt. I tossed about half a dozen attempts into my scrap pile and almost gave up. However, I had missed the obvious solution, which finally remedied the situation. I scanned the negative into Photoshop, brought out the little girl, then made a digital negative and created the print through that. Making the Bromoil, I got it the way I had wanted on my initial attempt.
So although I do enjoy the way out capabilities that are offered digitally, I actually see things rather normally and like to then interpret the scene from that vantage point.
Meanderings, at best 