Critique Style Requested: Initial Reaction
Please share your immediate response to the image before reading the photographer’s intent (obscured text below) or other comments. The photographer seeks a genuinely unbiased first impression.
Questions to guide your feedback
Does the overall atmosphere of the image invite you to study the details?
Other Information
Please leave your feedback before viewing the blurred information below, once you have replied, click to reveal the text and see if your assessment aligns with the photographer. Remember, this if for their benefit to learn what your unbiased reaction is.
Image Description
This image is a revisit to a photo I made in 2009 doing a workshop in Platinum/Palladium in Santa Fe, NM. This is a variation of that process called a Ziatype.
Technical Details
I no longer have the EXIF data for the image. This is a hand applied emulsion on a Hahnemuhle Platinum Rag paper. Outside of a standard process, the only variation I made was to use a 2% gold chloride toner at 9 minutes.
Specific Feedback
I think I really want feedback as to the aesthetic qualities of the image.
Critique Template
Use of the template is optional, but it can help spark ideas.
- Vision and Purpose:
- Conceptual:
- Emotional Impact and Mood:
- Composition:
- Balance and Visual Weight:
- Depth and Dimension:
- Color:
- Lighting:
- Processing:
- Technical:
Not so much but it does make it you try to make associations to memories of the past. It’s a very evocative image. I think it’s excellent. This is definitely one that makes you look twice, and again, and again. I’m not sure about the the rose color caste. I probably would go with pure b&w.
Thanks, Igor. With a hand applied emulsion, even slight tweaks to the chemistry can and will give you tonal variations that you cannot control, and often cannot repeat. Such is this image. It is both the beauty and the curse of Ziatypes, which are very close cousins to Platinum prints only much less endowed.
I don’t know if the atmosphere makes me want to study the details any more than I normally would have (I do like to spend some time studying images) but it definitely doesn’t make me wanted to study it less – meaning that it’s not taking away from the image. In fact, I quite like the mood of this image. It’s calming but still has that feeling of mystery and when I look at this, I can almost hear a distant raven in an otherwise absolutely silent scene. That’s what I get out of the image anyway.
On another note, I’ve never experimented with Ziatypes but I love alternate process prints and am learning to make Kallitypes. In fact, I spent most of this past weekend experimenting with them. It’s still very challenging (for me) to the get the right contrast in the print and I need to get better at making better digital negatives so that’s what I’m going to focus on now.
Dana at Bostick & Sullivan is the go to guy for Kallitypes. I use him every time I do a major boo-boo to help me figure out how not to do it again. Best of all, though is they have all the LUT files for a free download and each one works for the process being used. I use the Salt, Cyanotype and Kallitype lut files to make my digital negatives. Make sure you are using Pictorico OHC film for your negs and for Kallitypes, I prefer Hahnemuhle Platinum Rag.
So you’ve had good luck with Bostick & Sullivan’s LUT files for Kallitypes? That’s what I’ve been using and while my blacks and whites look pretty good, my dark/shadow tones are way too black and I’d like them to be a bit lighter. I bought all of my chemistry from them and m using Pictorico for my negatives and Hahnemuhle Platinum Rag for my prints though I had a hard time coating it because I think my humidity was too low. I now humidify my paper to >50% and it seems to have helped. I’ve also read somewhere that Arches Platine paper is better, but I really don’t know.
When you’re making a Kallitype, do you apply the LUT to the positive before you invert it or to the already inverted image? I applied it to the positive image before I inverted it but I now see on their website that with their old method for making digital negatives , where you use a curve and not a LUT that for Kallitypes (only) you apply it to the negative inverted image. That has me thinking if maybe I should have done that with the LUT as well and that’s why my print is so dark.
I apply it to the inverted image. I do that with all the curves I use which are mostly cyano, salt, kallitype and ziatypes. If you will send me your email, I will send you all my old .acv curves and perhaps the old ways will do you better. B&S will provide you with these as well, but I also have .tiff files showing the actual curves and two different step tablets. I do not have one for kallitypes but I am sure Dana at B&S can provide.
Thanks Chris. I’ll send you my e-mail address through a DM. 
And just so I’m clear, you apply the new style LUT to the inverted image same as the old style curve?
Can you resend your info to chriscalohan@gmail.com
This forum will not allow the .acv extension
