Wednesday, November 3, 2010

COLOR!!!

I don't know why I'm just so exited about printing in color. It probably has something to do with my high school darkroom days. I can remember being told that processing and printing (particularly processing) is a pretty toxic process that involves a lot of toxic bleach. Plus, printing requires a machine that automatically takes care of presenting you with a color print without ever having to touch a drop of bleach.
I have learned from my one day in the color darkroom at CSUN that, you need to rethink how you look at a color image and how to balance it. From what I understand so far, you need to think about colors in terms of a color wheel and the complimentary relationships that colors share. Therefore, if you have way too much blue/cyan/green, you need to in fact reduce the amount of magenta. Why? Because, magenta is the complimentary color of green. In some ways, if you want to bring out the magenta in your print, you need to reduce the amount of magenta the enlarger is exposing onto one's photo paper.
All this color stuff is still something I'm trying to wrap my head around... still, I had so much fun today. I'd recently shot a lovely ballet dancer who happens to be a CSUN kinesiology grad student :) I shot quite a few rolls but the two color rolls I shot, I decided to cross process the slide film roll.
When I looked at the proof sheet of the x-processed roll, I decided that I couldn't wait any longer. I was going to make my first visit to the color room.. dramatic music*
This is what I've had the chance to make so far: