Colour and Tritone versions of that image...

[compilerbitch]

Click here for the full resolution colour version, or here for the tritone -- they are both huge files, so be warned!


Traditionally, duotones, tritones and quadtones are created by overprinting the same monochrome image with different colured inks, typically each having different levels of contrast. You can get some very subtle effects, or go in for false colour lunacy if you prefer. I went for something that looks a bit like a platinum print -- I was going for an 'Ansel Adams' kind of extended contrast, plate camera look. The highlights are overprinted in silver, and the shadows in a dark brown. I'd love to get an A3 or larger print made -- the huge resolution is too much for A4 really. I like the look.

For completeness, I thought I'd upload the original colour version too

Comments

[lethargic-man.livejournal.com]

Gosh, it's astonishing how much difference colour makes to the feel of it -- feel as in enheartening versus dark and gritty.

[andrewwyld.livejournal.com]

Those are beautiful.

[compilerbitch.livejournal.com]

Amazing, isn't it?

I've been hooked on black & white photography since I was about 12 years old. I just love the way that the 'mess' of excess information just gets abstracted away, leaving only form and texture behind. Still, it is definitely much easier to create moody results than happybouncy images -- for the latter, colour still wins!

I longed, back then, for something like photoshop and modern digital photography. I used to spend hours painstakingly printing my own photos in the darkroom, selecting the right grade of paper, dodging and burning, then spending yet more time hand retouching the final prints with a scalpel and a very fine paintbrush. Now, all the things I dreamed of being able to do are relatively straightforward. I can now do something in 15 minutes that would have originally taken me a whole weekend. Yeeha!

[compilerbitch.livejournal.com]

Wow -- thank you!

[lethargic-man.livejournal.com]

I could never do that; my manual coordination is waaay too poor. (That's part of the reason I gave up biochemistry - none of my experiments ever worked.)

What do dodging and burning mean, exactly?

[compilerbitch.livejournal.com]

Dodging makes areas of a print lighter, and burning makes them darker. Dodging is typically done with a circle of card attached to the end of a piece of wire. While you're exposing the photographic paper under the enlarger, you basically just waggle it around, casting a shadow over the area you want to lighten. Conversely, burning is done with a piece of card with a hole in it, where you block off most or all of the light except for the area you want to give more time to and thereby make darker (the paper produces a negative image). It's quite tricky and takes a lot of practice. The dodge & burn tools in Photoshop are *much* easier to use!

[trurl.livejournal.com]

I'd be curious to see what the component images look like, because it is a pretty convincing image.

[hairyears.livejournal.com]

Architectural photography in B&W. I'd almost forgotten... Anyone fancy going somewhere with really quirky, detailed buidings (like The Park in Nottingham) and coming back with exposures that look sinister, striking, disturbing, breathtaking or Just Plain Weird?

Actually, the Square Mile on a Sunday morning would do.

Must get that correcting lens (prevents fish-eye distortion when you're taking really wide angles) that I've been promising myself for years.

[chard.livejournal.com]

So are you using a Photoshop mixer layer?