Carmel Morris, Author

It has been a while since I earned a living as a magazine and newspaper photographer with a healthy specialisation in editorial portraits.

 

That was back during the analog film era when I formed my monochrome photography style from a combination of Polaroid Type 55 20 ISO negative/positive film, Tri-X in 120 and 35mm formats, developing film with high-dilution Agfa Rodinal for sharpness and reasonably fine grain, printing on imported silver-rich baryta papers and split-toning using gold, selenium, sepia and sometimes copper and blue toners in conjunction with benzotriazole added to the paper developer to cool the high values.

 

The cameras I used then have no direct digital equivalents, at least none that I can afford nowadays. They included handheld Crown Graphic and tripod-mounted Zone VI Studios 4"x5" sheet film view cameras, 120 format rangefinder cameras and 120 multiformat magazines, Rolleiflex twin lens reflexes and Leica M-series rangefinders. I almost never used SLR cameras and only then as loaners from employers when freelancing and I needed extra wide or long lenses for a specific assignment.

 

When I shot in colour for the glossy magazines and newspaper colour supplements, I chose Fujifilm or Kodak colour reversal films for their rich colour renditions but heavily filtered the camera lens and used Rosco gels over my kit of portable Broncolor flash units and light shapers for expression and emotion.

 

I am about to seriously take up portrait photography again and must find a way to create a new style or styles that will effectively convey emotions but with today's hardware and software. I need to find a way of seeing and creating that is mine. With so little variation between cameras, lenses, sensors and processing software nowadays, it is all too easy for everyone's work to look the same.

 

There are clues in the ongoing convergence of movies with stills. My Panasonic Lumix GH4 has a fully articulated monitor that can be flipped over and act like a ground glass. A firmware update last year added the ability to export high quality still frames from movie footage shot in 4K Photo mode.

 

Ultra-fast lenses are available that can radically limit depth of focus when shooting with Micro Four Thirds sensors. Raw processing and photography editing software can shift, swing and tilt not unlike view cameras.

 

Plug-ins can render the tones and colours of analog films with uncanny accuracy. Fuzzy golf-ball grain is now a thing of the past, unless we wish to dial it in to taste. And we have ISOs beyond our wildest dreams.

 

I made this portrait to remind myself of where my way of seeing and printing some monochrome photographs comes from. Now I need to find new ways of seeing and post-processing just as expressive as the ways I did it all during the time of analog.

 

Shot with Panasonic Lumix GH4 and Olympus M.Zuiko 12-40mm f/2.8 Pro lens, processed with DxO OpticsPro 10 then processed in AlienSkin Exposure 7 and resized in Adobe Photoshop CC 2014.

 

Thanks to Apple Australia, Adobe Australia, AlienSkin, DxO, Olympus Australia and Panasonic Australia.

Done