MONOCHROME MAGIC

Monochrom Bride THE VERY FIRST ARTICLE I WROTE FOR THE (THEN) Society Photographer was on the subject of monochrome. That was more than 2 ½ years ago and a lot of water has passed under the bridge since then. Sadly not all has been good and as the article was in preparation the descent of Ilford into administration was the hot news topic. Wet chemistry based monochrome has been under pressure from digital methods for some time but the artistic merits of single colour images remain as true as ever. The words of Craig McMaster in his recently published Elements eloquently sum it up:

"The removal of colour from a familiar scene instantly introduces and abstract quality to the image - if forces us to use our imagination"

So how have things moved since that first article 30 months ago? Well judging by our competition entries, monochrome has lost none of its appeal and it also features regularly in compiled wedding albums that we see around. The technology has moved on, as ever, and we include in this feature both digital and wet chemistry products, which are new.

The Technology

Photographers have always striven to create images that are marked out as different. At one end of the scale monochrome looks different amongst a sea of full colour. At the other end of the scale artists and image makers have set fire to their work during preparation, torn it, toned it, bleached it and painted on top of it all in the search for something different. All the while there has been a hardcore who have chased technical perfection through the use of large format cameras, slow film and painstaking processing, followed by archival printing and toning. It is to this latter level of achievement that digital monochrome is frequently compared. Currently we KNOW that wet monochrome prints can last for close on 150 years, for inkjet prints we are at best projecting lived from accelerated life testing. However, by most objective measures, inkjet prints can approach the technical quality of wet print and with more creative expression available because of more powerful dodge and burn facilities in Photoshop. Furthermore, for the limited edition print maker, there can be a higher level of consistency in digital printmaking - anybody wishing to challenge that should try and make two identical lith prints!

The Wet Route Film

We are frequently challenged about our leaning towards digital so we start with the latest non-digital technology - chromogenic film. Kodak Professional BW400CN is a nominally ISO 400 emulsion designed to be printed on standard C41 colour printers onto colour paper. For photographers wishing to match their mono and colour work within an album this is a boon as the surfaces and textures will exactly match. We had Loxley Colour send our negatives through their system. The results from the lab were impressive, as neutral as the most carefully bespoke profiled inkjet system. The neutral tone Lab co-ordinates were -0.06: -2.3 which mapped to within 1/10th of a point to the base white! The metamerism index was also incredibly low under all light conditions including fluorescent. It only rose above 1 for the real cheap and nasty fluorescent lights. For all practical purposes it could be considered nonexistent. In addition Loxley also provide a contact thumbnail and a CD with 18MB scans. This opens the possibility of using the scan to build montaged pages with any other digitised shots. We tested the film under bright overhead sunlight and the contrast was a little on the high side, in old-fashioned terms we would have used a ½ paper grade softer (not an option with a C41 process). Our thanks to Chris Kay of Loxley Colour who piloted this experimental film through their system; Loxley may be visited at www.loxleycolour.net.

Options for Digital Monochrome

For digital, the process of creating the image falls into two categories, preparing the computer file and then making the print. A mixture of technologies is not precluded, Craig McMaster shoots large format film, scans and then outputs to Lyson papers using Epson Ultrachrome inks.

Image preparation

Whether you shoot digital or scan emulsions, the first tip is to use the highest bit depth that you have available to preclude problems with banding and posterisation downstream in the workflow. For digital shooting go for RAW files so that you can bring out a 16 bit colour image for conversion to mono. Converting to a different mode always loses digital information so take care when doing so - certainly beware of going back and forth from one mode to another unless you have to! Starting from a colour RGB image there are a number of routes to a mono image.You will find many ways of converting and different experts will favour different methods. Suffice to say that the best method is the one which achieves the result you prefer at the speed you need. If you only require modest control simple hit the Desaturate button. If you want full control follow the Channel Mixer or double HSB route described here. Within all of the methods you have the option of obtaining or writing an action or droplet to automatically process large numbers of images.

Toning

Mono Wet monochrome printers have always toned their prints for colour, longevity, increased Dmax or combinations of all three. There are a number of ways of achieving a tone to an image. Bear in mind that applying a single overriding tone to an image can enhance it but in addition may also mask any deficiencies in your printer profiles and grey linearistion.

The main methods are as follows:
Adjust using Hue Saturation and Brightness
Adjust using large values in the Colour Balance
Convert the RGB image to Grayscale and then Duo
Tone it
Sepia tone using default Photoshop action
Sepia tone in the printer driver
Sepia tone in camera

If you want to match a print to a specific tone then using duo tones is a good way of achieving this as you can pick a specific Pantone as your toning colourant.To some extent you can also choose the hue value that you colourise to in the HSB Dialogue.

Infra Red Landsacep

Infrared films are sensitive deep into that end of the electromagnetic spectrum and have been used for scientific imaging and medical research for years. As ever with creative people, it did not take long for somebody to try it out away from the laboratory and to start producing images with a very different look to them. Most good books on Photoshop and most magazines routinely set out how to achieve an infrared look to an image. Remember that a digital detector of a camera is more sensitive to infrared and you can often utilise this quirk in creating an infrared image. The additional sensitivity is sometimes filtered out by a special filter in the camera so you have to experiment. However the image by Tony Galic which heads this feature is a classic example and was made using a Nikon Coolpix 990 with a red filter taped over the lens - a triumph of creative thinking over expansive technology the image has been taken into the permanent collection of the PPA, won the Best Wedding Portrait, was a major award winner for this year's Professional Photographers of Canada print competition and was picked as a monthly award winner by our own Terry Hansen. We let Tony describe its creation in his own words

"Andree's Day was taken two weeks prior to the Wedding Day. It's what I call a Pre-Bridal photo session. A week or two before the wedding I offer the brides a couple hours of my time to photograph them before their wedding day. This way it gives them more options for their wedding album, also it guarantees me great shots of the bride without all the stress from the actual wedding day. For wedding and portrait photography I usually use my Fuji FinePix S2 Pro but I always carry my Nikon Coolpix 990 equipped with a red filter for infra red effect for specialty shots just like this one. The camera was set on black & white and fine mode on the Program setting. The bride was standing on a big rock overlooking the water. The sky was overcast with perfect cloud formation. The setting was perfect for the subject."

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