The tools of photography

The tools used by photographers are cameras, light, colour, computers, film stock, aperture, composition, depth of field, exposure, focus, processing and printing.

Each of these tools has an impact on the quality and look of the final photograph. Photographers therefore pick each tool carefully for its ability to influence the images they create. Every one of the photographers in this book controls and combines the tools in a different way; that’s what makes their work both unique and memorable.

Making sense of the numbers

Photography can seem as though it’s been developed for mathematicians rather than as a creative medium. At first sight the numbers involved seem bewildering, some look like sums: 10x8, 6x7 and 21⁄4 squared. There are the ‘f’ numbers such as f16, f64 and f2.8, and there are all the measurements such as 35mm, 50mm and 500mm. Then there are also processing numbers such as +1⁄2, +1, +2 and the ISO numbers that become bigger and bigger. Digital photography seems to revel in really huge numbers of pixels and bytes.

All these numbers will be explained in this chapter and again, for quick reference, in the later Bible section.

Consistency, universality and standardization

For photography to work successfully consistency and standardization are essential. You need to be sure that your camera’s settings precisely match those of any light meter or flash gun made by another manufacturer, that your digital camera speaks the same language as your computer and that any colour film you buy can be processed correctly by any lab.

To meet this need, scientists, engineers and manufacturers have created standardized settings and universal systems that allow consistent picture-taking, transfer and processing, no matter what brand of camera, lens, film or computer you use. For example, whichever lens you use on any format camera, the same aperture will give you the same level of brightness.

There are universal systems that classify the sensitivity of film to light, the qualities of lenses and the intensity and the colour of light. Digital photography likewise has standardized ways to indicate the image quality that a camera can give, its memory power and the relative sizes of pictures, together with universally used systems to transfer pictures to computers and from one computer to another. These matters are described in this chapter.

The camera

The camera is a tool of the photographer. Having an expensive or fancy camera is no guarantee of taking great pictures and there are no rules about how pictures should be taken.

‘I can use anything from a 10x8-inch camera to a photo booth. The most important thing is to get my message across.’

Nick Knight, interviewed in Vogue, 2003.

All cameras are fundamentally the same. Each is simply a box with a hole in one end and a surface sensitive to light at the other. The hole allows the light to enter and the sensitized area records the image. The differences between cameras consist in how, how well and how easily they do this.

Manufacturers delight in trying to convince us that the camera we own is out of date and redundant. Despite their efforts, we treasure cameras and are very reluctant to throw them away even when they’re beyond repair, probably because they have helped us save our personal memories.

The look and anatomy of cameras

Cameras have always been wonderful objects. Their designs reflect the times in which they were created. Old wooden cameras are like beautiful bits of furniture. The Lomo camera even has the look and smell of Soviet Russia. Increasingly small digital cameras and phone cameras are sold as fashion items with ultra-modern or retro styling, designed to be neat, stylish and pocket-friendly, or to be worn like jewellery.

The more you know about the camera and how and why it works, the more you can control the photographs you take. Despite this, camera manufacturers seem obsessed with wanting to take control away from photographers by making picture-taking more and more automatic. Cameras increasingly offer inbuilt pre-set values calculated to produce results for average conditions rather than letting you control the focus, framing, exposure, whether to freeze or blur action or use flash. By learning to use a camera manually, you can learn how to control these features and use them creatively.

A camera needs a lens to project the light from the subject, and a focusing mechanism to move the lens backwards and forwards in order to focus on near and far objects. It also needs a shutter to keep out the light until the moment arrives to take a picture, and an adjustable hole to control the amount of light falling onto the sensitive surface that will record the image. It needs a viewing system to let the user aim the camera accurately, and if the camera takes film there should also be a system for moving on the exposed film.

We regularly throw away bits of outdated technology but are curiously reluctant to dispose of cameras.

What’s the difference between a camera that uses film and a digital camera?

Cameras that use film focus the image seen through the lens onto light-sensitive film, which then has to be processed to reveal the image. They are mechanical devices with some electronic parts such as the light meter and the motordrive.

Digital cameras are totally electronic. In a digital camera the sensitive surface onto which the light falls is a computer chip known as a CCD (charged coupled device). It records the photograph’s light, colour and intensity onto a memory card which stores the images until they can be transferred to a computer or a printer.

Working with digital cameras

Most digital cameras don’t look like film-based cameras. They show the view of the camera on a small LCD on the camera’s back. Once a picture has been taken you can immediately see the results of each shot on the LCD screen and pictures can be erased if you don’t like the look of them.

With a film-based camera, once pictures have been taken they have to be processed and printed in the darkroom or lab. With a digital camera you can immediately transfer pictures to a computer to look at them enlarged, alter their quality, print them or send them by email or publish them on websites. To transfer pictures from a digital camera to a computer you simply take the camera’s memory card out and slot it into a card reader attached to a computer. Images can also be transferred directly from the camera by using a cable known as a USB.

Once images are transferred they can be saved on the computer and the pictures erased from the memory card so that the latter can be reused; this is known as reformatting and is one of the benefits of digital photography. Instead of buying many rolls of film you can reuse the same memory card again and again.

Another great benefit of digital cameras is that they allow you to change the camera’s sensitivity to the brightness of light frame by frame, meaning that you can take one frame in very bright sunlight, the next in deep shade. With a film-based camera you would need to change rolls of film to get optimum results in such contrasting lighting situations. You can also alter the digital camera’s sensitivity to different types of light from frame to frame. For example, at the press of a button you can change the camera from correctly exposing pictures in fluorescent light to correctly exposing in tungsten light. A film-based photographer in the same circumstances would have to change film or use filters to avoid getting an unwanted colour cast on the film.

Digital cameras react to light in different ways from film stock. Images transferred directly from the camera can often appear quite ‘flat’, lacking in contrast and impact, though with manipulation on the computer the character of film can be echoed.

Which camera?

‘I am a photographer who uses various professional cameras and film formats to express the way I see and explore reality. Cameras become an extension of my vision and I need to love the thing. Each tool has its purpose and it is up to me to choose one to use for a particular photographic project.’

Bruce Davidson, photographer.

The vast variety of cameras on the market offer a massive choice of picture size, quality and image resolution. As well as conventional film and digital cameras, there are many others offering further creative possibilities. There are panoramic cameras, action-trackers, underwater cameras, disposable cameras and Polaroid cameras that produce instant prints. It’s easy to make your own pinhole or multi-pinhole camera. Choose the camera for the picture you want to create. Before even picking a camera, consider the type of pictures you want to take and how they are to be seen – as small, medium-sized or huge prints, on screen or reproduced in books, magazines or newspapers. In order to make sure that the camera can do what you want it to do, read the manual, and talk to people who use and know the camera. Learn from their experience to discover its character and faults – every camera has some.

Your choice of camera affects how people react to you

‘Using a twin-lens camera for photographing strangers is a much less aggressive way of taking pictures. You’re looking down into a camera rather than directly in their eyes.’

Alan Latchley, photographer.

Some cameras look like pieces of serious scientific equipment. The steely monorail Sinar 5x4 camera would look at home in a physics lab or a dentist’s surgery. The Gandolfi10x8, with its polished wooden body, brasswork and ‘old-fashioned’ look, appears to belong in a comfortable Victorian parlour.

Your choice of camera affects how people react to you. The Gandolfi can appear cosily welcoming whereas the Sinar is a frightening, cold, shiny mechanical tool. Photographer Johnnie Shand Kydd photographed Naples with a battered fifty-year-old Mamiya – not because it was his only camera but because he thought it looked worthless and no one would try to steal it. In the three months he spent on the Neapolitan streets no one did.

‘By choosing a digital camera you can instantly show people the picture you have taken in the LCD. By showing what you are trying to achieve, you can quickly involve people.’

Adam West, photographer.

Selecting a digital camera

What digital camera you choose will depend on many factors. The first consideration may be cost and, fortunately, digital cameras have become less expensive. As with most purchases, the old adage ‘you get what you pay for’ rings true. A camera can be a fashion accessory, but it is important to consider what you hope to do with it. Do you want to look good with a camera over your shoulder, or are you aiming to produce great images? Before you select a digital camera think about what type of photographs you want to take and how they will be shown. Do you intend to create pictures that will be displayed very large in a gallery or take pictures that you wish to manipulate greatly? Do you want to output the images as small prints, display them on screen or use a camera like a notebook to make a record of things you come across?

Megapixels and resolution

The quality of a digital image is governed by a variety of factors, and the size of the sensor is only one of the complex things that affects the image quality. The number of pixels that capture the image is a major indicator of image quality. The size of the sensor and the number of pixels it can record is measured in megapixels (one-million pixels are known as a megapixel). Each pixel in a digital picture is a solid block of colour, so the more blocks of colour used to create an image, the greater the detail and the quality. By counting the maximum number of pixels a camera can use to record an image, you determine the best quality it can achieve.

Another major factor is the resolution of the optics, the lens that is fixed or attached to the camera. This is often overlooked when considering a camera, but a small good-quality sensor with the best-quality lens can outperform cameras that have high megapixels and a poorer quality lens.

As technology has improved, it is true that most cameras produce reasonable results, so it is increasingly important to select the camera for the purpose it is best suited to.

Compact and phone cameras, up to 8meg

Compact digital cameras feature integral lenses with an optical zoom and generally offer adjustable shutter speed, aperture and focus and various shooting modes. The sensors on these capture devices are small but can have over 8 megapixels, which can produce good-quality medium-sized prints. The great advantage of compacts is their portability and ease of use. Even professionals may use these small discreet cameras when larger cameras may not be employed. The LCD viewing sensor allows the image to be assessed, and some top models offer manual controls that enable these cameras to be very effective image-makers, rivaling the quality of digital single lens reflex cameras (DSLRs).

Phone cameras tend to be simpler than digital cameras and have a fixed-focus lens and no physical shutter. To take a closer shot of the subject, camera phones use a digital zoom function whereby the camera enlarges the pixels in an image to around double their size to increase the image’s magnification. This gives an inferior quality compared to an optical zoom, in which a lens adjusts its glass elements to give a closer view. Camera phones often have a delay between pressing the shutter and the moment when the camera takes the image, known as ‘shutter lag’. Shutter lag can mean you miss the moment, making phone cameras a poor choice for spontaneous photography. Phone cameras can now shoot 2D and 3D images and some top-quality smartphones offer a touch screen that enables the user to direct the camera to focus on a particular object in the field of view, giving even an inexperienced user a higher degree of focus control.

Digital single lens reflex cameras (DSLRs)

Digital SLR cameras have become the standard model for the more serious photographer. They feature interchangeable lenses, a variety of shooting modes and the ability to shoot movies of high technical quality. DSLR cameras use sensors over 10 megapixels. The sensor size is usually smaller than that of a 35mm film camera, so the lenses have to be of a shorter focal length to cover the same subject. DSLRs increase in price in proportion to the number of megapixels they can record.

There are many size variations and many different software programs that manufacturers build into the DSLR camera. Careful selection is needed because having to change cameras later may require a complete change of accessories and lenses as well. All major manufacturers produce good DSLRs and you can create great images with all cameras. Remember that it is not the camera that takes the picture, it is the person holding the camera.

A new generation of mirrorless interchangeable-lens cameras (MILC) produces high-quality results and is an alternative to the DSLR.

Stills and video

With new digital technology, photography and video has converged and high-definition (HD) video can be produced on many digital cameras. Some photographers choose the camera on the basis of its video capabilities.

Medium-format cameras

Many professionals use cameras that are produced for the general market, however, there are specialist professional cameras that evolved from the medium-format film cameras. Hasselblad and Mamiya are probably the most well-known models. These systems use digital backs such as Phase One and Leaf, which offer a higher megapixel quality. The digital backs attach to the bodies and lenses and have large sensors close to the 4.5x6-cm film size, producing images of exceptional quality. It is possible to attach very high megapixel backs to large-format cameras, producing data files of over eighty megapixels.

Specialist digital cameras

There are other specialist digital cameras, including field cameras, that allow movement. Examples are the Linhof Techno and the SpheroCam HDR (high dynamic range) cameras that capture 360-degree images in order to create 3D renderings for CGI applications. These specialist cameras are used in the creation of environments for the automotive and specialist industries.

Memory – recording data

The images from digital cameras are recorded on memory cards that are slotted into the camera or, in the case of professional cameras, downloaded to a computer directly using a tethered cable or wireless connection.

Camera manufacturers may use different types of card, and it is important to be aware that there are many variations, not all of which are compatible with every camera. A card that can store a great deal of information is said to have a greater ‘memory’ than one that can only store a small amount. The maximum quantity of digital information that each card is capable of storing is expressed in megabytes (MB) or gigabytes (GB – one thousand megabytes), and cards are available in sizes from under 1GB to over 128GB.

Cards come in different formats and specifications. Some can record data very fast, a valuable asset if you are taking pictures in quick succession. Memory cards are quite inexpensive to buy, but it is important to invest in good-quality cards from reputable manufacturers as there are many reports in the technical press of poor quality or pirate products that fail and lose precious data.

As pictures can be stored at different levels of quality, the number of pictures that can be recorded on any card varies according to the different quality settings at which the pictures have been taken. Pictures shot at maximum quality quickly take up lots of a card’s memory space. Today, memory cards have much larger capacity to handle video recording.

Storage and archiving

After being downloaded on to a computer, images usually require additional storage methods, such as on a computer hard drive. With recent developments in file management, it is now possible to upload images to a cloud application, where files are stored securely on servers at a remote location. It is very important that you back up and archive images in a way that protects your image files and ensures that priceless images are not lost through a sudden computer failure.

Once the images are downloaded and secured, preferably in at least two separate places, then the memory card can be re-formatted and used again. Formatting is the way a camera prepares the card to receive data. If you have more than one camera it is important that you dedicate memory cards to each camera unless they are the same specification as formatting is done for the firmware (operating system) for each camera model.

RAW or JPEGs – formats to take pictures

JPEG and RAW are the two main types of file used for storing images created in digital photography. Cameras at the cheaper end of the market may only offer one way to record images, usually in the JPEG format.

Most cameras with a reasonable specification offer a choice of image file quality, from low resolution (basic quality) to large JPEGs and RAW format. JPEGs are readable on almost all computers without the need for a special software program. A RAW file is the ‘raw’ data from the camera’s sensor. It is uncompressed by the camera and awaiting processing by a computer. JPEGs compress the images to make them smaller for storage, but these files are not stable and with repeated opening and re-saving, the files eventually become corrupt and show artefacts that degrade the image.

If you are serious about photography, the RAW format allows you to produce images of the highest quality; it is the optimum way that the maximum amount of data can be recorded. RAW files need to be converted to formats that can be read on all computers using software that the manufacturer supplies or by using processing programs such as Lightroom, Aperture or Capture One. RAW data could be considered as the equivalent of the negative that film cameras produce: you can go back to it and print or output many variations, but it does not affect the original RAW file.

To view on screen or to send to a printer, JPEGs are preferable as the files are opened up once and not re-saved. But, ideally, images should be captured as RAW files, processed and saved as TIFF, PSD (Photoshop file) or another stable format, so that the maximum data can be used.

The future

Now that 3D-capable cameras are becoming more widely available, there are very exciting technological advances to look forward to. Manufacturers continue to compete to create smaller camera bodies with a greater number of pixels that are better than the last generation. However, it is the image that is the most important element in photography. A great camera cannot take a great photograph by itself, but a good photographer can take a great photograph using the variety of devices at his or her disposal.

Try these cameras

The Leica

When launched in 1925, Leicas were known as miniature film cameras. Framing is through a viewing system mounted on top of the camera and known as a rangefinder. The camera’s rapid action, lightness and near-silent shutter click had a radical effect on how and when pictures could be taken. It was especially significant in the evolution of photojournalism as used by Henri Cartier-Bresson and Martin Munkácsi. (See Fashion, p. 74, and Telling a story with photos, p. 82.)

The Minox

The Minox is the film camera that the spies use in old James Bond films. It gives 8x11mm pictures. Built with the precision of a watch and with a good lens, it takes surprisingly fine pictures for such a tiny camera.

The Lomo – shots from the hip

The Lomo Compact is a robust, inexpensive, lightweight, pocket-friendly, Russian-made camera manufactured in St Petersburg. It uses 35mm film. Loved by many photographers for its easy-to-use controls and fully automatic command of exposure, the Lomo gives accurate long exposures even in the lowest light. Unlike most compact cameras its shutter can remain open for many seconds or even minutes to give a correct exposure.

The Lomo’s lens is designed to enhance colour and has a tunnelled effect which darkens and blurs the edges of each picture, so creating a unique Lomo look. The camera has a passionate and devoted following of Lomographers who organize regular exhibitions and publish books of Lomo photographs.

‘If you use a camera in a conventional way you can anticipate what you are going to get back. With the Lomo, when you shoot, shoot, shoot, it can bring fantastic, joyous accidental results. Lomography is about not being precious with your photography.’

Fabian Monheim, Lomo ambassador to Great Britain.

There is now a Lomo World Archive, an ambitious attempt to photograph the whole planet. When Lomo announced it was to cease production of the Compact camera, Lomographers lobbied the manufacturer and Russian politicians including Vladimir Putin, whom they made an honorary Lomographer. Other Lomo-type cameras include the Colorsplash, which features a dial offering bright colour filters to your exposures.

A picture taken with a Colorsplash camera (above).

Guy Patterson’s unique pinhole postcards (above) are printed with sunlight.

Pinhole photography – make your own camera

Every photographer should try making a pinhole camera. You can make one from a matchbox, a shoe box, a film canister or even a plastic dustbin. Manufactured versions are available, but the DIY approach is more fun. The length of exposure necessary to make successful images depends on the size of the pinhole and the area of the light-sensitive material onto which you are exposing. Many pinhole photographers simply use photographic paper in their pinhole cameras. When developed, this forms a negative, which is then contact-printed to form a positive print.

Paula Indrontino’s triple pinhole camera has a curved surface on which the image forms. Also shown here is her homemade loading jacket used in order to change the paper negatives on location.

You can also convert any conventional camera – film or digital – to work as a pinhole one: simply remove the lens and replace it with a piece of black card taped over the lens mount with a pinhole pierced in it.

‘The pinhole camera is the bare bones of photography. It’s got all you need. The magic black box. You go out and look with your eyes. You can’t see through the pinhole camera, so you have to place it where you think it looks great. I’d go out into the Piazza in Covent Garden [in London] with my biscuit-tin pinhole to take pictures and people would say, “What are you doing? Are you going to produce a rabbit out of the tin?” When I said I was taking photographs they’d peer into the pinhole, asking if there was a camera inside. I’d say no, it is the camera.’

Neil Onslow, photographer and teacher.

Pinhole photography offers huge creative possibilities. Photographer Steven Pippin created pinhole cameras using old washing machines, placing the paper to be exposed inside the drum and adapting the wash cycle to use photographic chemicals. Further adventures can be had by having many pinholes in the same camera and by bending the paper inside the camera.

Artist Guy Paterson creates beautiful and unique pinhole-camera postcards to send to his friends when he is on holiday. Using an old coffee tin, lith film and cyanotype printing, he carries all the chemicals needed with him on his travels, printing the final images using sunlight.

The Diana

The Diana is a medium-format plastic camera made in Hong Kong by the Great Wall Plastic Company. It uses 120-format film. The Diana’s design means that you sometimes get a surprise when you finally see your prints. Light leaks on the film and the viewfinder doesn’t accurately show you the lens view. The camera also produces pictures that are clear in the centre and blurred at the edges. The shutter can be opened again and again to create multiple exposures, offering exciting creative opportunities. No two Diana cameras seem to work in quite the same way. The Great Wall Plastic Company manufactured many variations of the Diana, mostly with extravagant names including the Debonair, the Harrow Delux and the Leader.

Polaroid cameras

The Polaroid revives the principle of the daguerreotype in producing a unique object. It was invented by Edwin Land in the 1940s after his three-year-old daughter had asked why she couldn’t see the pictures he’d taken of her at once. His brilliant design uses film packs containing pods of developing chemicals which burst and process the film when it is pulled through the camera – producing a positive image in about a minute.

Polaroid cameras and film became popular in the early 1970s with the launch of the SX70. Artist Lucas Samaras pioneered the manipulation of the Polaroid print’s coloured dyes in the short time before they set.

British photographer David Bailey took the SX70, then the most advanced camera in the world, to the tribes people of Papua New Guinea, the people who lived the simplest life in the world. They apparently thought that a Polaroid photograph was like ‘a useless mirror, they looked at it and turned it round, and found it didn’t change’.

Legend has it that the giant 20x24 Polaroid was created when an old process camera, supported on a barber’s chair, was rigged with a Polaroid back to take an anniversary portrait of Howie Rogers, the inventor of Polaroid Polacolor film. Edwin Land liked the result so much that his company manufactured the five cameras in use around the world today: they stand 5 feet high and weigh 235 pounds. Mary Ellen Mark used the behemoth 20x24 Polaroid for her Twins series. It has also been used by Andy Warhol and Arnold Newman.

Be a mini-Muybridge with the Action Sampler camera.

Polaroid film for some of the older models is difficult to get, however, Polaroid still produces photographic products using ZINC (zero ink technology). Other companies have taken on the manufacture of certain Polaroid films, so it is still possible to create instant one-off photographs. Fujifilm offers a similar product to Polaroid and continues to produce cameras and a variety of instant film that can be used on certain medium- and large-format cameras with adapter backs. Try using these processes to discover real pictures that are unique and special.

The Holga, the Lubitel and multi-lens cameras

The Holga is a medium-format, lightweight, plastic film camera with a plastic lens and one shutter speed. It is easy to convert for use in pinhole photography. The Lubitel is a medium-format camera, manufactured by the Lomo company. Other cameras to try include the Action Sampler; the wonderfully lo-tech Super Sampler featuring a ripcord mechanism to reset its lenses; the eight-lens Oktomat; the golden-cased, plastic Pop 9; and the Action Shot 16. These cameras all shoot wonderfully unpredictable sequences of pictures on 35mm film.

Camera phones and iphoneography

The smartphone, led by Apple’s iPhone, has become a major player in the creation of images. People who do not carry a camera around have their phone. The phone camera’s increase in image quality and its ability to transmit images has made it the dominant camera of choice for many. Smartphones produce many of the news images or video footage on the web. Apps allow the user to create styles and effects that were previously only available in the domain of professional software, and a whole culture is growing around this phenomenon.

‘It will become like a language. At some point people will start using it like text-messaging, using images like words.’

Photographer Tom Hunter, interviewed in the Guardian , 2004.

1. Photographer Fabian Monheim using an Action Shot 16. 2. A colour pinhole camera with multiple pinholes, made by photographer and teacher Tim Marshall from a cine-film can. He takes many exposures onto single sheets of circular cut colour photographic paper, making each exposure by briefly removing the gaffer tape that covers each pinhole. 3. The Gameboy camera made by Nintendo. 4. The Snap camera, which plugs straight into the computer’s USB port. 5. The portrait studio – a new spin on the photo booth.

Single-use cameras

Single-use cameras offer the chance to take pictures in ways you can’t take pictures with conventional cameras and in places where you might not want to take your other cameras. There are single-use panorama cameras, underwater cameras and ones with built-in flash. Once called disposable cameras, they were renamed single-use cameras to reflect the fact that some parts can be recycled by manufacturers.

The infamous news photo of English footballer Paul Gascoigne eating a kebab on the eve of the World Cup was taken with a disposable camera. A journalist spotted Gascoigne in London’s Soho and, knowing the tabloid value of a photo, bought a camera in a corner shop for a few pounds. The picture made him many thousands of pounds.

The photo booth – behind the magic curtain

From 1914 all American passports were required to include a photo as proof of identity. The coin-operated photo-booth machine was designed to provide the public with a cheap alternative to making the trip to a photographer’s studio. The first photo booths were located in bus stations and train stations, and they produced eight images in eight minutes. In 1926 artist André Breton used the first photo-booth camera in Paris to create ‘surreal’ pictures of himself and his friends, including Salvador Dalí, who poses as if entranced. (See The Ideal Sitter, p. 34.)

Artist Dick Jewell created a ‘Passport Approved Photo Album’, named after the ‘Passport Approved’ sign on the photo-booth machine that guaranteed that the sets of photos it produced were of suitable size and quality for official use. Jewell challenged the booth’s conventional use by creating thousands of sets of pictures, none of which could ever be used in a passport. He found that he could adjust the lighting by masking out some of the booth’s flash lights and so create side lighting. By masking out all the lights he could even use his own lighting, such as candles and torches. He explored the time interval between the shots, creating sequences in which events seemed to occur in the pictures that would have been impossible in the seconds between flashes. He used props and mirrors, creating elaborate Busby Berkeley-inspired portraits, classical still lifes, and a photo-booth portrait of Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa. He even explored candid-style portraits in which the people in the booth looked as if they were unaware that they were being photographed.

The photo booth was also used by Andy Warhol, who loved the idea that he could produce totally machine-made images. He used the pictures as a source for screenprints. Artist Babbette Hines has made a collection of thousands of photo-booth pictures taken over the last eighty years, while movie director Brett Ratner installed a third-hand photo booth in his Hollywood home which was used by his movie- and pop-star guests.

Tokyo officeworkers using a Print Club camera – a contemporary take on the photo booth that produces instant photo-stickers.

Stereoscopic cameras

Stereo photographs give the incredible and dynamic illusion of a three-dimensional view. They are created using two cameras set apart at about the same distance as our eyes. The cameras shoot twin views of a scene. Images appear three-dimensional when looked at through a binocular magnifier called a stereoscope.

The first stereo photographs were produced in the 1850s. Beautiful and ornamental stereoscopic viewers were sold with adjustable stands and carved legs designed to blend in with other solid pieces of drawing-room furniture. It was the TV set of its day. Stereoscopic photography was also used by the prolific Jacques-Henri Lartigue.

Photographic partnership Gary Welch and Doug Southall creates amazing stereoscopic pictures today. ‘People’s reactions to stereo pictures are really rewarding, everyone is always wowed by them. They look at the whole scene and into every corner. Your eyes wander off into the background, it’s just more real than a flat photo’, say the artists. ‘They make galleries redundant. You can get an intense experience anywhere.’

The photocopier and scanner as cameras

Dick Jewell describes his experiments: ‘I started to try out the colour and black-and-white photocopier for portraiture, trying to see if it could convert the space under the photocopy mat into a photo studio by putting things on the glass. I was commissioned to do some posters for a band and was phoned at short notice to do the pictures. I didn’t happen to have a camera with me so I just stuck their heads under the photocopier.’

The photocopier is a cheap and wonderful tool. You can copy images onto acetate and tracing paper in order to make contact prints, and experiment by moving images during the scan. The computer scanner, medical scanner and security scanner all offer fantastic creative possibilities. The raw, gritty quality of the security-camera image has been used for fashion shoots, portraits and advertising. The whole body scanner can even give a 360-degree image of the inside of the human body.

The photocopier can act as an instant photo studio.

Thermal-imaging and night-vision cameras

Infrared thermal-imaging and night-vision cameras created for medical, security, military and fire-safety use offer amazing creative possibilities when appropriated for portraits, landscapes, still lifes and fashion shots. The night-vision control on the camcorder was used highly creatively in the film The Blair Witch Project.

Panoramic cameras

The word ‘panorama’ comes from the Greek word pan meaning ‘all’ and horama meaning ‘view’. In panoramas we see the whole of a scene from a single viewpoint. The first panoramic camera was built by Friedrich von Martens in Paris in 1844. He created amazing pictures of the views from the roof of the Louvre using a special rotating camera he called a Megaskop, which used long, thin, pliable daguerreotype plates. Further photographic adventures can be had with security cameras, time-lapse photography, CAT scans, MRI scans, underwater cameras, synchroballistic cameras, satellite and sonar imaging, and the cine camera set to shoot single frames.

The controls of the camera

If a group of photographers was asked to take pictures of the same scene simultaneously, the resulting images would all be very different. The photographers would all see different things and control their cameras differently. Picking the instant to release the shutter is not the only factor that would make each photographer’s work unique. Photographers select lenses for the view they offer, and carefully control focus, aperture and shutter speed. These things offer a great range of choices and in combination have a huge effect on the images taken.

Lenses

The lens is the eye of the camera. When light falls on an object, it bounces back from its surface. Both the human eye and the camera see the object when this light, travelling in straight lines, converges through a lens to form an image of it. In the case of our eyes, this image is sent to the brain to allow us to see it; in the case of the camera, it lands on the film or digital chip and creates a photograph. The range of our vision is fixed but the camera, with its interchangeable and zoom lenses, gives us the ability to see in many different ways. Lenses can let us see closer, wider and further than the naked eye.

Photographic lenses are made of layers of curved glass held in a barrel, and shaped and positioned to eliminate optical faults and distortion. The curvature of a lens affects the view we see through it. Most photographic lenses are convex, which means they are thicker in the middle than at the edges. A lens that is very thick in the middle and therefore very curved causes light from an object to converge in a much shorter distance than one that is thinner and less curved. Measuring the distance in millimetres from the lens to the point at which it causes light to converge is used as a way of indicating the degree to which a lens can magnify or widen the view. This distance is called the lens’s focal length and is marked on the barrel or rim of the lens. Lenses are classified as being of short, medium or long focal length. Lenses of different focal lengths can produce radically different pictures of the same scene. It’s your choice as to which one you use.

Short focal length/wide-angle lenses

A lens which causes light to converge in a short distance is said to have a short focal length. Such lenses have a wide angle of view. The light is gathered widely by the large curve of the lens. Wide-angle lenses in common use for the 35mm camera have focal lengths of 24mm and 28mm.

The wide angle was the preserve of the landscape photographer until creative photographers such as Bill Brandt (www.billbrandt.com) began to explore its potential. William Klein took the wide-angle lens camera into the streets in the 1950s. Commissioned to photograph New York, he approached the assignment like a ‘fake anthropologist’ with ‘a technique of no taboos’.

Bill Brandt, Belgravia, 1951

Bill Brandt used the wide angle to take a radical series of nudes in the late 1940s and 1950s. Inspired by Orson Welles’ film Citizen Kane and its use of room sets, Brandt positioned his models for maximum distortion.

He thrust his camera into people’s faces, provoking reactions from joy to aggression and creating a dynamic chaos. The city seems to be fighting its way into his camera.

Normal focal length/the standard lens

When using a 35mm camera, a lens that sees approximately the view that our eye sees is the 50mm lens. This lens is known as the standard lens and is called a normal or medium focal-length lens, as its view is one between that of a wide-angle and a long lens.

Henri Cartier-Bresson used the standard lens for its proximity to human vision. He is said to have taken nearly a million photographs without resorting to a wide-angle lens. This was part of his philosophy of photography – to photograph the scene he viewed without distortion. He also felt that the photographer should pass quietly and unnoticed, never interfering or altering the scene, the very opposite of William Klein’s approach.

Long focal length/telephoto lenses

Lenses with a shallow curve that cause the light from an object to meet far from the lens are called long focal length lenses. They give a narrow and magnified view and are also known as telephoto lenses. Long lenses that are commonly used for the 35mm camera are the 135mm, 300mm and 500mm lenses. Long lenses were originally developed to get the photographer closer to the action in situations in which proximity was dangerous or prohibited. Again, the maverick William Klein made more creative and original use of them by using telephoto lenses for fashion pictures. While working for Vogue, he was asked to photograph some bold striped dresses. Instructing his models to stride up and down a zebra crossing in the middle of Rome in the rush hour, he stood 500 metres away and took pictures as they struggled through the crowds. The choice of the telephoto lens created very strong and graphic pictures. ‘Nothing like Klein had happened before. He went to extremes’, said the legendary Vogue art director Alexander Liberman. ‘He pioneered the telephoto and wide-angle lens, giving us a new perspective.’ (See Elegance and elephants, p. 78, and A tabloid gone berserk, p. 102.)

Zoom lenses

A zoom lens has a variable focal length. Its construction allows it to be changed between a short, medium and long focal length by turning a ring on the lens or moving the barrel in and out. This allows you to gain a closer or wider view without moving position. Its ability to ‘zoom’ in and out on subjects gives it its name. With a zoom lens there is no need to refocus as you zoom: the image enlarges or decreases while remaining focused.

The macro (close-up) lens

The closest distance at which the human eye can focus is about eight inches. The focusing range of a photographic lens has no lower limit, and as a result photography can see things the eye cannot. Macro lenses – also known as ‘close-up’ lenses – allow subjects to be photographed larger than lifesize.

This can also be achieved using extension tubes, which fit between the camera body and the lens, or by using a special lens known as a proxar which fits in front of a lens. Some zoom lenses come with a macro feature.

The fish-eye lens

A large, highly curved lens with a protruding front element – which earned it the name ‘fish-eye’ – gives a very wide-angled and exaggerated view. It produces a circular image in which objects close to the top of the lens are greatly enlarged, while those further away become tiny.

Experimentation with the lens was very popular in the 1960s when the lens was first developed. Photographer David McCabe used the fish-eye extensively to photograph Andy Warhol during a year he spent at the Factory, its distortion perfectly suiting Warhol’s extraordinary studio and entourage.

Focus – to infinity and beyond

The human eye is always in focus. On the other hand the photographer can choose whether to have some, all or no parts of a photograph in focus.

Most lenses are focused by turning the larger control ring of the lens while looking through the viewfinder. The viewfinder shows you the views through the lens reflected onto a ground-glass focusing screen. Some camera viewfinders show very slightly less than will be recorded on the film or CCD. By moving the focus ring you move the glass elements that make up the lens backwards and forwards. This varies the point at which the light rays come together inside the camera and causes the image to go in and out of focus. The indicator on the top of the lens shows how it is set. It is usually marked in metres.

When you look through the camera and rotate the focus ring clockwise you will see distant objects come into focus. When you move the ring as far as it will go in this direction, the lens is then described as being set to ‘infinity’. This means the lens is set to the most distant point at which it can focus. This is indicated on the lens by a mark that looks like a figure eight lying on its side. By twisting it all the way in the other direction you can find the closest distance at which the lens will focus.

Norman Parkinson, Portrait after Kees Van Dongen (Adele Collins in an Otto Lucas toque), Vogue, 1959

Parkinson chooses to focus on the background rather than the model in this shot.

Aperture – the iris of the camera’s eye

Our eyes react instinctively to how bright the light is. In very low light, for example at night, the iris in our eye becomes very large, giving us wide pupils to allow as much light as possible into our eyes. In very bright sunlight our pupils are reduced to tiny black dots as the iris contracts in response to the light’s intensity.

The aperture of the camera lens allows the photographer to control the light entering the camera. By varying the diameter of the aperture, you can alter the brightness of a picture or control the amount of light found in different situations.

Early photographic lenses were supplied with a set of metal plates with different-sized holes drilled in them. These could be slotted behind the lens after being selected according to the intensity of the light. Aperture is controlled in today’s lenses by a diaphragm made from a set of thin metal blades. You adjust the aperture by rotating the ring of the lens that clicks, with each click altering the size of the diaphragm.

f numbers and f stops

The aperture ring is calibrated in ‘f numbers’. Lenses for the 35mm camera usually have f numbers 22, 16, 11, 8, 5.6, 4 and 2.8. The higher the f number, the smaller the aperture opening; f22 is the smallest hole, f2.8 the largest. The difference between any f number and its immediate neighbour is known as one stop. This phrase comes from those early drilled plates that stopped the light. The different apertures are often referred to as f stops.

The ‘f’ in ‘f stop’ is for ‘factor’. The number given to each stop represents the number of times that that width of aperture can be multiplied to equal that lens’s focal length. The f number is its factor of multiplication.

Stopping down and opening up

When you click the lens ring towards the higher f stops and decrease the size of the aperture, this is called stopping down the lens. When you click the aperture the other way and let in more light, this is logically called opening up the lens. These possibilities can be clearly seen by taking a lens off a camera body and looking through it while clicking the aperture ring.

What you see in the viewfinder compared to the picture you get on your film

When you look through the viewfinder of the camera and alter the aperture by stopping down or opening up the lens, you witness no effect on what you see. This is because once a lens is on the camera body it always shows the view through it at its widest aperture. A lens on a camera won’t stop down to any smaller aperture you have selected until the moment you press the shutter to take the photograph. Even if you’ve set the lens to its smallest aperture of f22, the view through the lens remains that with it opened up at f2.8.

Try clicking through the different stops of a lens that has been taken off its camera body to see how the aperture changes according to its setting.

Shutter speed – all in the timing

You use the shutter as well as using the aperture to control light entering the camera. Before shutters were invented photographers controlled the amount of time that a camera’s lens remained open by removing the lens cap, counting and then replacing it. Not until Eadweard Muybridge had made his discoveries did shutter times become short enough to freeze action. (See The weird world of Eadweard Muybridge, p. 103.)

The speeds at which a camera’s shutter can open are marked on a dial on top of the camera, in the viewfinder or on the data display. Most cameras have shutter speeds of 1, 2, 4, 8, 15, 30, 60, 125, 250, 500 and 1,000: 1 indicates 1 second, the slowest shutter speed; 2 indicates half a second; 4 a quarter of a second, 8 an eighth, and so on up to 1,000, which indicates the quickest speed of one-thousandth of a second.

To take a picture you press the shutter release button on the camera. Shutter speeds share exactly the same doubling and halving relationship between adjacent settings as the aperture ring. Each shutter speed lets in twice as much light as the next-fastest speed and half that of the nextslowest speed.

‘B’ is also marked on the shutter dial. When the shutter is set to B it remains open for as long as the shutter release is pressed. This is used for making very long exposures such as at night or when multiple flash exposures are shot in a blacked-out studio.

Shutter speeds and movement

Shutter speeds affect the sharpness of moving objects in a picture. A fast shutter speed can freeze movement and a slow shutter speed can blur moving objects. The slower the shutter speed, the greater the blur. It is your choice whether to freeze a moving object, to blur it slightly or blur it a great deal. On a slow shutter speed you can also choose to ‘pan’ the camera – that is, to move the camera during the exposure to follow a moving object. This adds to the movement of the background of the picture. Movement and blur can bring feelings of joy, menace, vitality or immediacy to a photograph.

There is always enough light

It seems strange that shutter speeds of half a second and one second are always described as being ‘long’, as they only represent tiny moments in our lives. Pictures can also be taken with shutter speeds of many seconds, even many hours, to give radically different effects.

By controlling the shutter speed, it is possible to take pictures even when there appears to be no light – there is always enough to take pictures, no matter how dark it seems, you just have to keep the shutter open for long enough. If you want a sharp picture, you just have to keep the camera still. (See The camera – the time machine, p. 161.)

Exposure times

Exposure – bringing together aperture, shutter speed and focus

The aperture controls the amount of light entering the camera, and the shutter controls how long the light comes in for. Together they control exposure. Exposure is the amount of light a photographer allows to fall on the CCD or film. To get the correct exposure you have to allow exactly the right amount of light to fall on the CCD or film so that the whole range of a picture’s tones are recorded, from the shadows to the brightest areas. This will not happen if you allow in too much or too little light. Over-exposure means you have allowed too much light into the camera via the shutter and aperture, burning out highlight details and diluting colour. Under-exposure means you have not allowed enough light into the camera via the shutter and aperture, so causing the resulting images to appear too dark.

To ensure you have the correct exposure, you need to set the camera’s ISO control for the film stock you are using or the level of sensitivity to light at which you want to take digital images. Since 1974, the ASA and DIN film-speed standards have been combined into the ISO standard. The current International Standard for measuring the speed of colour negative film is ISO 5800:2001. Digital cameras also use ISO settings to indicate varying levels of sensitivity to light at which images can be recorded.

Measuring the correct exposure

To measure the correct exposure you need a light meter. Most cameras have built-in light meters. A light meter contains a sensor that measures the amount of light falling on a scene, recording the range of brightness from light to dark and converting this information into an average reading.

Correct exposures are indicated with a light or needle in the camera’s viewfinder or on the camera’s data panel. This reading gives the photographer the starting point for many exciting creative choices.

Setting the correct exposure

To find the correct exposure for a scene you adjust the camera’s aperture ring and the shutter dial. As we have seen, the aperture control and the shutter-speed dial share the same doubling and halving relationship between adjacent settings. This creates a link between aperture and shutter, which means they can be adjusted in combination to give you choices with regard to how correct exposures can be set. For example, the same amount of light can fall on the CCD or film from having a small aperture coupled with a long shutter speed, as will fall from a wide aperture coupled with a very short shutter speed.

Correct exposures, different effects

Once you have taken a meter reading you can set the correct exposure in many different ways, with different combinations of aperture and shutter speed that together create equivalent exposures. All these combinations give identical exposures, but each setting gives a very different photograph.

The different ways of setting the correct exposure offer the photographer the creative opportunity to use the character of different apertures and shutter speeds in different ways. You can select the aperture first and then alter the shutter speed to gain a correct exposure. This allows you to control what is called the ‘depth of field’. Or you can select the shutter speed first and then adjust the aperture. This allows you to control the movement seen in a photograph.

Controlling depth of field

Photographs taken with smaller apertures – such as f22 and f16 – have a large depth of field, that is, the vast majority of the image will be in sharp focus. Those taken with a wide aperture – such as f2.8 – have a small (or shallow) depth of field, that is, only the small part of the picture that has been focused upon will be sharply defined.

Depth of field can be controlled with great creativity. When a photographer chooses to take pictures with a shallow depth of field – say, at f2.8 – only the object in a scene that is focused on will be sharp, with everything else out of focus. This can be very effective: focusing on a near object causes the rest of the scene to melt out of focus. A shallow depth of field can be used to emphasize and isolate an object in a crowded scene.

Thomas Hoepker, World Heavyweight Champion Muhammad Ali Shows Offhis Right Fist, Chicago, Illinois, 1966

Hoepker accentuates Ali’s fist by using a very wide aperture to give a very shallow depth of field. As a result only Ali’s massive right hand is sharp.

Controlling movement

By choosing the shutter speed first and then adjusting the aperture to gain the correct exposure, you can control the movement in a picture. Action can be stopped with a fast shutter, moving and still objects can be mixed with a long shutter speed with a camera steadied on a tripod, or the camera can be moved during a long exposure to accentuate mood or create drama.

Weegee, Crowd at Coney Island, Temperature 89 Degrees… They Came Early, and Stayed Late, July 22nd 1940

Weegee’s picture has a great depth of field. It was created using a small lens aperture that made the photo sharply focused from the very front right into the far distance. You can see the detail in the lady in the black swimsuit’s straw hat at the front, the man looking through the rubber ring in the middle of the crowd, all the way to the Cyclone sign a quarter of a mile way.

Composition – order or disorder

Composition is the photographer’s way of ordering or reordering the world. The composition of a picture is how you choose to place things within the frame of the viewfinder. Some pictures are composed at great speed, some after much deliberation. Some photographers choose to work with the square-format camera, preferring its shape for composition. Others like the flexibility of the 35mm camera that can be used to take portrait or landscape pictures. Experiment with as many cameras as you can.

Composition can give stability to a photograph, with the elements arranged in a parallel or unified manner. The tripod can be a great aid in composing a picture, particularly when you are trying to create harmony in the viewfinder. On the other hand, a photographer can create pictures that are deliberately unstable and unsettling. Although our brains like order, harmony and symmetry, great impact can be gained from disharmony and disorder.

Picture editing

Editing is the process of choosing the best picture or pictures from all those you have taken, the pictures that are the closest to, or better than, the ones you imagined in your mind’s eye when using the camera. Editing involves also finding pictures that you thought had failed when you took them, but suddenly afterwards appear to work because of some chance or unexpected element. Find the pictures that show your way of picturing the world.

Cropping

Cropping can add to the intensity of an image. Cropping can improve, concentrate and sometimes transform a picture. Some purists, like Henri Cartier-Bresson, printed the full frame of their images including the negative’s border to show they were uncropped in printing, and that the composition was created in the viewfinder of the camera, not later in the darkroom. Cartier-Bresson saw cropping as somehow ‘cheating’. Diane Arbus also printed full-frame, with an uneven black border at the edges of the prints caused by her filed-out negative carrier; she sometimes left all the faults of processing visible on the prints. Richard Avedon chose to print the whole sheet of his large-format negative uncropped, including black borders that seem to cage his sitters.

This is a portrait format

This is a landscape format

Garry Winogrand, Los Angeles, California, 1964

Some photographers pre-compose a shot and wait for the elements to fall into place. This image, on the other hand, is a ‘grab’ – an amazing, malevolent picture in which things have collided for a split-second and the photographer has had the instinct and speed to react.

Black-and-white photography

Why still bother with black-and-white photography?

The vast majority of today’s photographs are taken in colour. Why then should we still bother with black-and-white photography?

As we see the world in colour, black-and-white pictures immediately seem different. They offer clarity and purity; there are no distractions from the strength of a black-and-white composition, whereas colour can diffuse tension and drama.

Hiroshi Sugimoto photographs in black and white because the results are ‘more beautiful than the real world’. Lois Greenfield prefers black and white as it offers ‘not a replica of a scene, but a new creation’.

Black and white invests a picture with importance, realism and authenticity. Black-and-white pictures can have more weight and power, as well as more of a sense of history, than colour pictures. Great skill can go into creating a black-and-white print, as the photographer accentuates different areas and increases or reduces the contrast of each part of an image. This can make black-and-white photos seem more crafted than colour ones.

Black-and-white film

Today’s black-and-white film and paper still use silver as a key ingredient, over 150 years after its sensitivity to light was first used to create permanent images. Black-and-white film is made by coating clear sheets of thin plastic with a mixture of silver salts and gelatine. This mixture is called an emulsion. The gelatine bonds the light-sensitive silver salts to the plastic film base. The film is then sliced into different film formats and the manufacturer’s name and frame numbers are exposed onto its edges. All this takes place in total darkness. When you look at any film the matt side of the film is the emulsion, the shiny side is the clear plastic film base. It is the emulsion side that is loaded into the camera towards the lens. When the emulsion is exposed to light through the lens, changes on the film are invisible to the eye until it has been developed. The film has of course to stay in the dark until it has been developed to prevent further exposure. Light affects the emulsion in negative by turning the highlights of the image black and the shadows white. To make a print, the image is projected onto paper whose emulsion has been made in a similar way, thereby creating a positive.

Choosing a black-and-white film

Photographers carefully choose film stock for its ability to influence their pictures. They select film for its graininess or lack of grain, or for the contrast it renders. Every film has its own character – try as many films as possible in many different situations to discover their qualities. Store film away from heat; protect it from moisture; load and unload it away from strong light.

ISO and black-and-white film

ISO is a system for classifying the sensitivity of film to light. Films that are relatively insensitive to light are given low numbers such as 100 or 200 and are called ‘slow films’. Films that are very sensitive to light and can therefore be used in low-light situations are described as being ‘fast’ and are given high numbers such as 1600 or 3200. The terms ‘fast’ and ‘slow’ have led to a film’s sensitivity being referred to as its ‘speed’.

Digital cameras also use ISO settings to indicate how the camera is set to the sensitivity of light. The higher the setting, the greater the visibility of pixels. This effect is known as ‘digital noise’.

Black-and-white grain

The tiny specks or clumps visible on film after development that together create a photographic image are known as ‘grain’. When they are enlarged, our eyes merge them into continuous tones to form a believable image. The size of the grain of a film negative controls the clarity of the detail when a print is made. Higher ISO films have coarser grain than lower ISO films, which have finer grain.

Alison Jackson makes use of the large grain of high ISO film in her mock-paparazzi pictures of celebrity lookalikes caught in wickedly funny predicaments, while Portuguese photographer José Luís Neto made massive enlargements from old negatives he’d tracked down in the Lisbon city archives documenting the treatment of prisoners in jail in around 1900. He made a sequence of super-large prints of tiny details from pictures of groups of hooded inmates and corresponding series once their hoods had been removed, enlarging the part of the negative showing each man’s face from that of the size of a match head to actual human scale. The grain is as big as paint splashes but each individual tortured face is clearly visible in the mass of black marks, the images echoing the recent pictures showing the treatment of prisoners in Iraq.

The origin of black-and-white prints

Photography only came to be seen as black and white after half-tone printing started to be used to reproduce pictures. Previously, images had always had a chemical tint; for example, Julia Margaret Cameron’s prints are a beautiful rich aubergine-brown colour.

All prints from negatives were made by contact printing until the invention of the enlarger in the 1850s. Contact prints are the initial form in which a photographer sees a film negative in positive form and are made by placing a negative in contact with sensitized material before then passing light through it to create a print the same size as the negative. For every degree of enlargement in printing there is some loss of quality. Some photographers dislike any loss of quality and prefer only to create work as contact prints made from large-format negatives.

Black-and-white printing

Black-and-white printing in a darkroom is not difficult to learn. Many photographers refuse to let anyone else print their pictures as the darkroom offers an infinite number of possibilities in interpreting each negative and they want to control exactly how their final images appear.

Every negative can be interpreted in a multitude of ways – in contrast and tone and by accentuating different areas through ‘dodging’ and ‘burning in’ different areas. ‘Dodging’ is lightening an area of a print by shading it during exposure. ‘Burning in’ means darkening a chosen area of a print by additional exposure. There is no right way to print a negative. Bill Brandt described a negative as ‘only the starting point’. Hand prints can possess a completely different, unique character from the negatives from which they are made.

Digital black-and-white images can be printed in as many different ways as traditional darkroom prints. Digital printers offer archival inks that create prints that should last as long as those created in the darkroom.

Great printers pay huge attention to detail. Go and look at a photographer’s prints, not on screen or in books, as those are just reproductions. Search out the real thing – the prints the photographers have created themselves – in exhibitions and galleries.

Multigrade printing

Most black-and-white printing is done using the multigrade system. A series of filters are used in the enlarger that affect the emulsion in multigrade photographic paper in different ways. The filters are graded from 0 to 5. Low-grade filters create images with the least contrast, 3 has medium contrast while 5 gives the greatest contrast.

Selenium printing, platinum printing, copper toning, ‘flashing’ prints, albumen printing, photo-etching and gum-bichromate printing are some of the fantastic further adventures to be explored in the darkroom.

‘I like the backlash against the digital image, with many photographers now seeking out and rediscovering processes like tintypes and gum bichromate.’

Eric Daley, photographer.

Weegee, Lovers at the Palace Theatre, 1943

Weegee took a series of pictures of lovers in the cinema and on the beach at night. By using infrared film and infrared-emitting flash bulbs whose flash is invisible to the human eye he was able to take pictures in which the subjects had no idea that they were being photographed.

Contrast

The contrast of an image is the difference between the light and dark tones. Images in which there is a great difference are said to be ‘high contrast’; these are images of almost pure black and pure white. Those in which the tones are closely related are said to be ‘low contrast’. Although it is the convention to print images at medium contrast, with a full range of tones from black to white, altering the contrast of a black-and-white image can be very effective. Photographers who have created brilliant high-contrast images include Bill Brandt, John Deakin and Daido Moriyama.

X-rays

Wilhelm Röntgen discovered X-rays in 1895, winning a Nobel Prize for his work. An X-ray tube produces wavelengths of light that can penetrate most substances to form a black-and-white shadow image on film. X-rays have been used creatively by many photographers including Helmut Newton.

Helmut Newton, High-Heel X-Ray and Cartier Bracelet, Paris, 1994 © The Helmut Newton Estate.

Newton had the great idea of using X-rays for a fashion shoot

Colour photography

Some photographs simply do not work without colour. Martin Parr’s and David LaChapelle’s pictures throb with colours brighter and more intense than those found in real life. Vivid colour is critical to the impact of these photographers’ work. Wolfgang Tillmans and Juergen Teller use a totally different, flat and muted colour palette to convey ordinariness and casualness in their snapshot approach to photography.

Colour is a tool of the photographer. You can control colour by your choice of film stock, lighting and computer manipulation.

Digital cameras record colour differently at each ISO setting. Lower ISO settings render both finer-quality images and stronger colour rendition. Pictures shot at higher ISO settings on digital cameras have flat colour and digital noise.

Some pictures wouldn’t work in black and white

Photographers can control colour by their choice of film stock. In this case, in order to photograph the walk through the Colourscape sculpture created by artists Peter Jones and Lynne Dickens, a slow ISO film was selected for its intense colour rendition.

Colour film

Painters have known for centuries that you can create just about any colour by mixing a few basic hues – red, green and blue. Colour film uses three layers of emulsion, each one sensitive to either red, green or blue. In development, different combinations of these three layers recreate the many colours seen through the camera. (See How does film-based photography work? – colour, p. 12.)

No two colour films work in the same way. Each manufacturer uses different dyes which give each colour film its own unique character. Some films offer soft colour, others offer brighter colours; some are ‘warmer’ or ‘colder’ in colour than others or offer more contrast. Try films from different manufacturers to discover the qualities of each.

The origins of colour film

In the 1840s portrait studios began to offer hand-coloured daguerreotype portraits; colour was added with a brush straight onto the mirrored surface. In 1861 physicist James Clerk Maxwell photographed a tartan ribbon through red, green and blue filters and then superimposed the transparencies to create a colour picture. This use of red, green and blue is the basis of all colour photography. It was nearly another fifty years before the first practical method of creating colour photographs was launched. Created by the French brothers Auguste and Louis Lumière, the Autochrome process dominated colour work for the first quarter of the twentieth century.

Autochrome used sensitized glass plates coated with millions of grains of orange, green and violet potato starch. These created unique, large glass transparencies that could either be projected by magic lantern or looked at against the light or on light boxes. The network of starch grains in Autochromes means the images always look grainy, like Pointilliste paintings. Photographers using Autochrome included Jacques-Henri Lartigue and Léon Gimpel.

Many alternative colour processes were marketed using similar principles, including the Vivex system that was used to brilliant effect by Madame Yevonde in the early 1930s. She posed her wealthy clients – mostly duchesses – in mock-classical attitudes and used the rich and sumptuous Vivex colours to accentuate their beauty. (See The studio portrait, p. 30.) Vivex was similar to the vibrant colour cinefilm process Technicolor, also launched in the 1930s. See the films Gone with the Wind (1939) and Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937).

Kodachrome slide film was launched in 1936 and became the preferred choice of many professional photographers for its rich saturated colour and long-lasting colour dyes. Colour print film was introduced in the late 1940s along with further slide films.

ISO and the colour balance of film

Colour slide and negative films are classified by their sensitivity to light exactly like black-and-white film. Films that are relatively insensitive to light have lower numbers and are called ‘slow films’. Those that are very sensitive to light are described as ‘fast’ and are given higher numbers. Slower colour films are sharper and offer stronger colour rendition. Films of the same speed made by different manufacturers can have very different characters.

Most colour slide and colour negative films are ‘balanced for daylight’, which means that they are designed to be used outdoors in natural light, indoors with flash or a mixture of natural light and flash.

More precisely, they have been manufactured to give colour accuracy in the colour ‘temperature’ known as daylight. The colour of a light source can be measured exactly using a colour meter, which gives a reading for its warmth or coldness, expressed on a colour temperature scale. Readings are given in Kelvins or K. For example, the colour meter reading for candlelight is very different from that for a fluorescent lighting tube because the candle gives a warm, yellow light and the fluorescent tube a cold, blue-green light. The colour of ‘daylight’ is fixed at a colour temperature of 5500K. A light source exactly matching this would give colour accuracy on ‘daylight-balanced’ film. Midday sun has a reading of 5500K, though at other times of the day it is slightly colder or warmer.

All professional light boxes are balanced for daylight, as are studio flash heads and camera flashes. One advantage of taking colour pictures with digital cameras is that most offer in-camera controls for correcting colour balance. You can also alter settings from frame to frame should you move from one dominant light source to another.

Colour slide film

Colour slide film, also known as ‘transparency film’ and ‘colour reversal film’, produces unique, direct positive images. The vast majority of professional photography was once undertaken on slide film. If you were taking pictures for publication in a magazine, book or brochure, you had no choice but to shoot on slide film as all the technology for colour reproduction was set up to work from slides. Today digital photography has totally changed this practice. Colour slide film is processed using chemicals called E6. Low ISO slide film offers beautiful colour and a very fine grain. Slide film offers near-permanent images that if correctly stored will not fade.

There are also disadvantages to colour slide film. Colour slide is totally unforgiving of any mistakes. Any over- or under-exposure is clearly visible. Any variation in colour balance will also be visible. Unless used in bright sunlight, slide film can lack contrast and higher ISO slide films give flat and grainy images. You may like this effect, though.

As each slide is a unique image, once you have handed it over to a client there is a risk that it is gone forever and will never be returned to you.

Colour negative film

Colour negative film produces an image whose colours are opposite to the scene photographed. Images are printed onto colour negative paper to make a positive. Colour negative film is processed using chemicals called C41.

Colour negative has great latitude. Images that are under- or over-exposed can be printed with acceptable results, though the best ones are obtained from correctly exposed negatives. Colour negative film gives good-quality colour images even with higher ISOs.

It is debatable whether a print from a colour negative can match the intensity, detail and colour of a beautifully exposed colour slide. Colour prints may also lack the permanence of colour slides.

Clipping your film

Clipping ensures correct exposure when processing a slide or negative film in a professional lab. One or more frames are ‘clipped’ from an exposed roll of film with scissors, in total darkness. This ‘clip’ is then processed and viewed by the photographer. If it is unsatisfactory the ‘balance’ of the film can be given extended or reduced development.

Film can be given more or less development to slightly brighten or darken it. This is usually done in units of time that increase or reduce the exposure of the film by an amount equivalent to the effect of half an aperture stop. For example, if you judge your film to be the equivalent of half a stop too light, you would ask the lab to process the balance of your film at –1⁄2 stop, reducing its brightness. If your film is too dark you can process the balance +1⁄2 stop or more. The most you can adjust your film before the effects become very noticeable is 11⁄2 or 2 stops.

Uprating

Uprating means you deliberately expose a film at a higher ISO setting than its manufactured speed – for example, if you expose a 400ISO film at 1600ISO. Once the film has been exposed you need to extend the processing time since the images have been under-exposed. The effects of uprating are to increase grain and contrast. You choose to uprate if you need to handhold a camera in low light or if you simply like the effect that uprating has on your images. 400ISO film rated at 800ISO is said to be uprated one stop. 400ISO film rated at 1600ISO is said to be uprated two stops. You can uprate both colour and black-and-white film. You can also downrate your film – shooting it at a lower ISO and processing accordingly.

Tungsten and infrared film

Tungsten film is balanced for use in tungsten light rather than for daylight. When tungsten film is used in daylight it creates a blue cast on the pictures since daylight has a colder temperature than tungsten bulbs.

Infrared colour film is sensitive to both visible light and infrared radiation waves that are invisible to our eyes. It reveals intense and surprising colour.

Cross-processing

Cross-processing is when you process a colour slide film through the chemicals normally used for processing colour negatives. You can do this with any slide film. Many labs were initially reluctant to do this since it was thought to mess up the C41 chemicals. The slide film becomes a dense, high-contrast colour negative in cross-processing. When printed, crossprocessed film can produce striking colour prints. Each different type of slide film produces a different result. You can also process a colour negative film through E6 chemicals, which are normally used to process colour slides.

Know your lab

Most high-street labs now use digital processing machines, even when printing from negatives or slides. Images are converted into digital data, and a wide range of correction measures can be used to improve contrast and sharpness, as well as to minimize problems of exposure, backlighting and flash. Negatives with surface dust and scratches can be automatically detected and corrected. As with all machines, the skill and experience of the operator are the most important factors in getting the best results.

Get to know your local lab; find out about all the processes they offer, how each works and how each can be experimented with.

Colour printing

Colour prints from colour negatives are known as C type prints, C prints and Type C prints. Like black-and-white printing, colour darkroom printing from negatives is not difficult to learn. The colour darkroom offers fantastic creative possibilities. The colour negative is just the start. Many effects can be achieved in printing, including enhancing colour and contrast, removing unwanted colour casts or creatively adding colour. Further adventures can be had creating dye-transfer prints and colour photograms.

Colour and digital images

The partnership between digital images, computers and printers gives photographers fantastic creative possibilities. Images can be greatly altered and manipulated on the computer to increase or decrease colour, contrast and brightness. Digital images can be printed on many surfaces. Some printers offer a wider range of colours than others, together with finer graduation of colour and sharpness. Some use dyes rather than inks, so offering a much greater degree of permanence.

‘You never have creative accidents with a computer – only disasters. In the darkroom interesting things often happen by mistake that you can take advantage of. This never happens on the computer screen.’

Kjell Ekhorn, photographer.

An example of cross-processing: this strongly coloured picture was created by shooting using slide film. This was then processed as a negative, from which a print was made.

‘Cross-processing gives an exciting unpredictability to the results. Sometimes an image goes totally red, or totally green. It adds another layer of chance to picture-taking.’

Fabian Monheim, photographer.

Daniel Alexander, Screaming Heads, 2004

Alexander’s images are made through creative use of the colour and black-and-white darkroom. ‘I’m fascinated by newspapers – especially tabloids. They’re such a strange mix of sex and really terrible things happening. I found this picture of a woman screaming at a police van containing someone accused of murder. I had the idea to use the head twice so that it looked as if it were screaming at itself. I wanted the head on the right to look like a brain scan – if you could look inside the woman’s head this is what it would look like – full of all this information. I wanted to express the idea that the way the tabloids pack all this information inside our heads makes us angry enough to scream, which then feeds back into being another story in the same paper. ‘I took the image and a lot of the text about the case and blew them up to make a collage on acetate which I then used to make photograms in colour and black and white in the darkroom.’

Photography and light

You need light for photography. Many different light sources can be harnessed to create photographs. Each can be controlled in different ways to create radically different effects on a subject and how it appears. Photographers choose a light source for the quality and character it brings to their work. Every photographer uses light in a different way. Some photographers love working with daylight, some love direct flashlight, while others will take a truck full of lights to every assignment. They will alter their position to make the best of the sunlight or position and reposition their lights until they have the effect they wish.

Sunlight and available light

Some photographers choose to work only with the light that is present when a picture is to be taken. They use the light from the sun, street lighting or the lighting that happens to be inside the building in which they’re photographing. This is known as using the ‘ambient light’ or the ‘available light’. Great photographers who only work with available light include Henri Cartier-Bresson and Tony Ray-Jones.

Using available light is an unobtrusive way of working; you can blend into a scene and take pictures when the moment is right. You can travel light, unencumbered by tripods and stands, and work quickly and with freedom. Pictures taken in available light can appear more natural in mood and more atmospheric than those illuminated by flash or tungsten. The angle and colour of sunlight changes a lot throughout each day as the sun travels through the sky, giving you many choices of how to photograph a location.

The disadvantage of using available light is that it can be excessively bright, dim, uneven, or overly contrasted. Very bright and direct sunlight can be very unflattering, though photographing in the shade on very bright days can give great results, as can photographing a subject against the light.

Light indoors can be of a very low level, forcing photographers to move their subject to where there is more light – for example, next to a window – or to work with fast lenses and fast film stock or a high ISO setting on a digital camera. This can create results with poor colour, large grain or pixellation, and a very narrow depth of field, though you might like this.

Artificial light

If a photographer takes lights with them to take pictures, or uses lights in a photo studio, this is known as using ‘artificial light’; the light source is man-made, rather than the natural light from the sun. Artificial light frees photography from the whim of the sun, while mirroring its look. (See The plain-background portrait, p. 30.) The great brightness given by artificial light sources – such as flash light and tungsten light – guarantees that a photographer will be able to use slower, more intense and finer-grained film stock or digital ISO settings and smaller apertures.

Flash light power

In the 1860s lighted magnesium ribbons were first used as a light source for photography. Their intense white light was used to take pictures in mines, caves and Egyptian tombs. ‘Flash light’ powder was made in the 1880s by crushing magnesium. When a photographer was ready to take a picture, he or she ignited the powder with sparks from a flint wheel, producing a brilliant burst of light. Danish photographer Jacob Riis used this method of creating artificial light to photograph the territory of the gangs of New York in 1890. (See Opening the eyes of the world, p. 90.)

Flash light powder was difficult to use. Its explosiveness made it very dangerous, and photographers had difficulty regulating the burst of light so that it was hard to gain good exposures. These problems were solved with the invention of the single-use flash bulb in the 1920s. The design of a glass ‘bulb’ shape, filled with oxygen and containing a very thin strip of magnesium or aluminium, gave a brief, controlled burst of light when electronically ignited.

Dr Flash – quicker than a wink

Modern flash was invented by Dr Harold Edgerton. In 1929 Edgerton needed to study the rotors of an electric motor while they were spinning, and reasoned that this could be possible by synchronizing bursts of light to the speed at which the motor was turning. Realizing that single-use flash bulbs would be of no use, he designed and built a high-speed electric flash light, a tube filled with gas that could repetitively emit a brief, brilliant burst of light when subjected to a surge of electricity.

Edgerton’s creation of flash tubes that could be quickly fired again and again gave photographers and scientists a brilliant tool. As he refined his experiments he found he could create flashes as short as 1/100,000 of a second, and control very rapid sequences of flashes – known as ‘stroboscopic’ lighting – so that he could view the rotors.

Edgerton was able to bring time to a standstill in his flash-lit photographs. He stopped the movement of bullets, drops of liquid and, in Wester Fesler Kicks a Football, showed the incredible distortion of a ball at the moment of a boot’s impact. Using sequences of flashes, Edgerton was able to photograph the swing of a golfer and the movement of a tennis serve. His work with flash light earned him the nickname ‘Dr Flash’ and won him an Oscar for his film Quicker than a Wink, which was made using stroboscopic flashes. (See What makes a great photographer?, p. 146, and The camera – the time machine, p. 161.)

Direct flash – raw lighting

Some photographers like the light emitted by a camera-mounted flash aimed directly at a subject. It gives a flat, two-dimensional effect that shows every detail of the subject with a brutal, merciless blast of light. In direct flash pictures the foreground is brighter than the background as the light quickly becomes dimmer. If the subject is close to a wall or backdrop, a black, harsh shadow is created. Photographers who used flash for these effects include Diane Arbus and Roger Ballen.

Garry Winogrand also used raw, direct flash for impact, its light reflecting back into the camera from windows, shiny surfaces, even from his subject’s glasses. William Klein described his choice of flash in his book Close Up: ‘I go from table to table ordering, “Don’t move!” Then, “Terrific”, and unleash the flash. In those days, the photographic word was “Available Light” and the flash, shades of Weegee reserved for Associated Press and weddings. But its raw lightning could generate an inimitable schlock document.’

Camera-mounted flash light can be ‘bounced’ from a ceiling or wall onto the subject to give a much softer and more even lighting than direct flash light. Many camera-mounted flash lights have heads that tilt to make this easy. It can also be softened using a diffuser or tracing paper.

Flash to stop the action

As flash is a quick burst of light, it stops movement. This can be very useful and effective in news photography, photojournalism and sports photography. Harold Edgerton’s pictures of stopped movement inspired numerous photographers, including Albanian-born Gjon Mili. He used flash to freeze the movement of dancers in mid-air, including the amazing Willa Mae Ricker and Leon James Demonstrating the Lindy. His pictures were to inspire later photographers, including Lois Greenfield. (See The body in motion – dance, p. 72.)

Series of flashes can reveal the rhythm of a movement and show events unfolding. Mili created pictures using sequences of flashes, photographing Gene Kelly dancing across a stage in six flashes. Ralph Morse photographed an entire sixty-yard sprint race at New York’s Madison Square Garden on one frame of film, by using a sequence of three flashes during its 6.2 seconds. Photographing from a position in which the whole track runs towards the base of his camera, he placed flashes near the start, middle and end of the race, their bursts of light freezing the action at each point, revealing who was leading at each stage.

Although the results can look similar, using sequences of flashes and multiple exposures are different ways of taking photographs. Sequences of flashes are made in a blacked-out studio or dark area while the camera’s shutter has been left open. Multiple exposures are made by taking one picture, then resetting the camera’s shutter to take another on top of the first, then resetting the shutter to take another on top of that, and so on. Both methods work best against dark backgrounds.

Mixing flash in available light

Flash can be used with great subtlety or drama and theatricality when mixed with available light. The balance between the power of the flash and that of the available light can be varied greatly according to the preference of the photographer. Flash can provide an additional light source that can be used in bright sunlight to brighten shadows and reduce strong contrast. This is known as using ‘fill-in flash’. It can also be used as a more creative tool.

Bruce Gilden used flash on bright days to photograph New Yorkers rushing to work. People are crammed into each frame. The flash adds menace to the pictures, a blast of light that catches the people grimly determined to get to their destinations.

Flash can be used in daylight to intensify the mood of a photograph. Many photographers use it to separate their subjects from the background in which they are positioned. Rineke Dijkstra used this method in her series of photographs of adolescent girls on the beach. (See The plain-background portrait, p. 30.) Others who work in this way include Annie Leibovitz.

The use of flash in daylight can be exaggerated and used very theatrically by positioning subjects against dramatic skies and choosing to use the flash as a main light source. Backgrounds can be further darkened by increasing shutter speed. When taken to extremes the background is not exposed at all while the subject is still lit by the flash.

Flash mixed with long exposures

Shutter dials indicate the highest speed at which a flash can synchronize with the camera’s shutter – generally 1⁄125 or 1⁄250 of a second. There is no lower limit of shutter speed at which a flash can synchronize. A flash can be set to fire and the shutter can be left open for 1⁄4, 1⁄2, 1 second or even much longer. This can be used to mix flash with low levels of available light. For example, in order to photograph someone standing in front of a city skyline at night, the person is lit by flash light and the shutter left open for many seconds to expose the lights behind. In order to have a successful picture, the camera must be kept still on a tripod and the subject not move too much during the long exposure.

Flash and blur

Long exposures mixed with flash can also create ‘flash and blur’, in which most of a subject is frozen by the flash but its continued movement, or the photographer’s movement of the camera, continues to be recorded by the open shutter. Flash and blur, also known as ‘open flash’, was used by William Klein to photograph the backstage chaos of the Paris fashion shows.

Gjon Mili, Picasso at the Madoura Pottery Workshop, Vallauris, France, 1949

Inspired by the work of Harold Edgerton, Mili experimented with light. Here he mixes two light sources – a flash and a light pen – during one exposure, as Picasso draws a centaur in the air.

Mixing flash with other light sources

Gjon Mili created a brilliant picture of Picasso in the darkness of his pottery workshop in Vallauris. Posing Picasso among his work, he lit him from the side with a burst of flash lasting a fraction of a second, then left the camera’s shutter open for many seconds while the artist drew a huge centaur in the air with a light pen. Mili mixed the two light sources wonderfully, his camera held steady on a tripod to record the fineness of the drawing.

Ring-flash

Ring-flash light comes from a circular flash tube which is fitted around the lens of the camera. The circular flash tube gives a soft, even, frontal light and an even shadow all around the subject. Ring-flash has been used creatively in fashion photography by Helmut Newton and Nick Knight, and in documentary photography by Martin Parr.

‘Red-eye’ can occur with ring-flash and other flashes mounted close to the camera lens. It is caused by flash light being reflected back into the camera from the retina at the back of the subject’s eye. Photographer Paul Graham used red-eye creatively in a series of close-up pictures of young clubbers – their glowing red retinas giving them a predatory look.

The pros and cons of flash light

Flash can be an important creative force in how you create your own pictures. In a situation where you have to work fast, flash is a great means of immediately increasing light. The flash’s big burst of light means you can use low ISO settings on digital cameras and slower-speed ISO films, together with small apertures giving a large depth of field assuring sharpness. Flash light gives natural colour since it is ‘balanced for daylight’.

However, flash can totally spoil the mood or atmosphere of a photograph. Unless you are using a digital camera, you will be unsure of the results until your film is processed since the effect of flash light does not match that seen through the camera’s viewfinder.

Tungsten light

Tungsten lights emit a bright, constant light source. They are called ‘tungsten’ as they produce light from an electronically heated filament made of tungsten wire. Tungsten lights generally use either very large bulbs that look like oversized versions of household bulbs, or very small bulbs in which you can see the coiled filaments when the bulbs are turned off. Tungsten lights have a light temperature of 3200 Kelvins. To our eyes they appear to produce a very warm or yellow light source. Natural colours are achieved by using tungstenbalanced film with tungsten light. Tungsten light can be used directly, reflected, focused, diffused or bounced, exactly like flash light.

Using tungsten light with daylight film

If tungsten light is used with daylight-balanced film, the results are very yellow. This can be ‘corrected’ by using a blue ‘correction filter’ over the lens or by using the light to ‘cool’ the tungsten colour temperature to that of daylight, 5500 Kelvins. Using film stock in light that is different from that for which it was designed can create great results. Get to know your film stock and light sources and the colours they emit.

The pros and cons of tungsten light

Tungsten light is easy to mix with daylight, particularly if filtered to match its colour. The view through the camera viewfinder will approximate the one recorded. Basic tungsten lights are inexpensive, portable and can be used in numerous ways – direct, directed with a snoot or barn doors, bounced, reflected and diffused.

However, tungsten bulbs get very hot and can make the place in which you are photographing very warm and uncomfortable. Tungsten lights can burn you and the subjects you are photographing. They only have a limited life, much shorter than that of a flash.

Larger tungsten lights such as ‘redheads’ or ‘blondes’ are designed to be used in studios with powerful electricity supplies. They can ‘trip’ the electricity or blow the fuses if plugged into a normal household socket, as they draw so much power.

Kim von Coels and Ken Chung, Face, 2004

This was the result of a collaboration between photographer von Coels and illustrator Chung. ‘We did a series of experiments with torches and long exposures’, explains von Coels. ‘Ken wore dark clothes and painted in the air with a small torch covered with a red gel. I kept the shutter open for about ten seconds until the drawing was complete. It was taken with a Hasselblad medium-format camera on a tripod in a blacked-out studio.’

Studio lighting

Studio lighting offers the photographer maximum creativity and total control over a photo. The disadvantage of using studio lighting is that it can lead to a tendency to ‘over-light’ shots, thereby killing the mood.

Further adventures with light

Bill Brandt loved to photograph by moonlight; his pictures of London by moonlight were taken with exposures lasting half an hour. Brandt also published pictures entitled The Magic Lantern of a Car’s Headlights, which included ghostly pictures of a graveyard lit solely by his car’s headlamps. Torch light has been used creatively by Kim von Coels and Paolo Roversi. (See Lust, camp and colour, p. 80.) Infrared flash light was used by Weegee to take pictures unobserved by the audience in a cinema and to photograph at night on the beach (see p. 206). Light boxes, candle light, neon light, fluorescent light and ultraviolet light can also be used to take photographs. Remember, there’s always enough light to take a photo. You just have to leave the shutter open for long enough.

George Logan, Loch Scridain, 2007

George Logan created this image by first shooting the landscape on the Isle of Mull and then photographing the silverback gorilla in Cameroon. Logan intended the image to appear real and it is a testament to his photographic skill and excellent retouching using Photoshop that Logan has been asked ‘How did you get the gorilla to Scotland?’. This image is the cover of Translocation, a book that supports The Born Free Foundation.

Photoshop

Photoshop is the computer program adopted by many photographers as the standard tool to manipulate, alter and retouch photographs. It offers an almost infinite number of possibilities for changing images, and can be used to create images impossible by any other means.

Photoshop – digital postproduction.

Photoshop has become a generic term for ‘making perfect’. The software from Adobe has become increasingly more powerful as each new version is released. New tools and processes have been developed and Photoshop has become the industry standard for the post-production of photographs.

There are many ‘plug-in’ applications and, as part of the digital workflow, Photoshop may only play a small part, for example, in cleaning an image, or it may be the tool that is used to create an image that defies reality, with infinite possibilities of execution. The only limitation is the imagination and skill of the operator. Whatever the origin of the image, be it shot on film or digitally captured, it is Photoshop that creates a digital image that can be used and archived. Today’s photographers need as many skills as possible, but a good understanding of and an ability to use Photoshop is essential in the digital world.

The program allows the operator to perform simple tasks like retouching an image, but also to produce multipart composites and to prepare images for web use or for a massive ambient poster site.

The photographic studio – Narnia

A photographic studio is like C.S. Lewis’s Narnia – a magical place where wonderful and unexpected things occur. A studio offers a photographer the chance to be incredibly creative. Anything is possible in one. It frees photographers from the problems of sunlight, which can spoil a photo by being too bright, too dim, in the wrong place or non-existent. In the studio photographers can place the light exactly where they want, or use multiple light sources to achieve exactly the mood they desire. The studio frees them from the problems of having to work with the elements found on location; in the studio they can control everything in a picture.

Artists have for centuries had studios with huge windows positioned in such a way as to give strong light by which to paint. Some photographers like to use daylight in their work too, enjoying the way it illuminates their subjects. When good daylight is not available, studio lighting can be used to echo the look of daylight.

A studio is an empty room. The bigger, higher, longer and wider it is, the better. Size and height maximize options of viewpoint and the choice of lenses that can be used, and they offer the opportunity to build larger sets and lighting set-ups.

Studios have white walls with grey or black floors. Any coloured walls can cause huge problems by reflecting back unwanted colour onto a photographer’s work. Studios can be blacked out so that no unwanted light enters to spoil long exposures.

Equipment can be used in a great variety of ways. Many lights can be used, synchronized together with ‘magic eyes’. Multiple exposures or multi-flash pictures can be taken and light sources subtly mixed. Amazingly creative studio work has been done by photographers such as David LaChapelle, Nick Knight and William Klein using fantastic sets, oversized props and false-perspective sets, and controlling and mixing lighting. Some studios are fitted with coves, sometimes called infinity coves. These are curved white backgrounds which, when lit, give the impression of an infinite space behind the subjects being photographed.

Studios are expensive to hire by the day or half-day. Some studio owners charge not only for the use of the space but for every metre of backdrop paper and every centimetre of gaffer tape you use, as well as imposing expensive overtime rates. Plan your shoot very carefully to maximize the use of a hire studio.

Pictures without a camera

Photograms and chemograms

A camera isn’t necessary to create photographs. There are numerous ways to create pictures without one. For example, photograms are photographic prints made without a camera. Photograms may have been named in the 1920s by the Bauhaus teacher and photographer László Moholy-Nagy, who experimented widely with the technique. The name – photography meets telegram – expresses a sense of urgency. However, the first photograms were probably created in the late 1830s by W.H. Fox Talbot, who placed flowers on sensitized paper and called the process ‘photogenic drawing’. Photograms are also known as Schadographs after German artist Christian Schad who experimented with the process in the 1920s, placing scraps of paper and text on photographic paper.

Photograms are created in the dark by placing flat, 3D or opaque objects directly onto a sheet of photographic paper or other sensitized surface before making an exposure using an enlarger or a household light bulb. Those parts of the paper not covered by objects turn black. The areas covered stay white as they are left unexposed. Grey areas also form, caused by refraction of light or partial exposure. Objects can be introduced and withdrawn from the image during the exposure, and photograms can be combined with conventional printing and cliché-verre (see p. 226).

That wizard of invention Man Ray placed objects onto paper and exposed them again and again, often using a moving light source to create the image. He called his photogram experiments ‘Rayograms’. Photographer Nigel Henderson created photograms that look like what you see through a microscope, or from an aeroplane. He called his ‘Hendograms’.

Chemograms are made by painting developer and fix onto absorbent materials, which are then pressed onto photographic paper before processing. The developer and fix can be thickened with wallpaper paste to prevent the mixture from running.

The photo stencil

‘As soon as I cut my first stencil, I could feel the power there.’

Banksy, quoted in the book Stencil Graffiti.

Photo stencil images possess great potency. They can look like messages that could start revolutions and stop wars. Great examples have been created by Bristol-born artist Banksy, an outlaw with a spray can whose real name is unknown (there are warrants out for his arrest). Banksy’s wonderful stencil graffiti work has pushed urban street decoration to new heights with its skill, wit and humour. His work can be seen in London, Paris and Barcelona. See www.banksy.co.uk.

A student sketchbook of photogram experiments.

Cliché-verre

In this process, marks are scratched into a thin coating of black paint applied to a sheet of glass. The sheet is then used as a photographic negative and contact-printed onto photographic paper. Light passing through the scratched areas creates an image on the paper. Images can be dynamically combined with photographic images by contact-printing onto paper previously exposed with images from negatives.

Cliché-verre was experimented with as a drawing tool by nineteenth-century painters including Jean-François Millet and Camille Corot

Further adventures

Further photographic adventures can be had by painting directly on photo paper with chemicals, drawing on film, placing items directly on a computer scanner, placing them inside an enlarger, with photo-batik and photosilkscreen, and with Lazertran, a special photocopy film onto which you can colour-copy images which can then be soaked off and transferred onto wood, canvas, ceramics or fabric.