SPECIAL EFFECTS... WITHOUT EVEN TRYING!!!
Ron Knowles. Area 11.
Featured on the from page of a "Special Effects" supplement given away with a recent copy of one of the weekly photographic magazines was a reproduction of a fairly ordinary shot of a sunset - though it must be admitted that the clouds and the glow of the setting sun behind a line of buildings are quite affective.
But what caught my eye was that on page two of this supplement was a second, though smaller, reproduction of the self-same shot? Why I thought, use two blocks of the same picture? The caption belonging to the smaller block didn`t explain the reason for the two reproductions but it did cause me to ponder over the reason given for using it in the first place.
Is it a filter effect? the caption asks. Infra red film? Well according to the photographer, a Gary Geoghan, it is purely and simply a processing fault caused by immersing the colour reversal film (or it may well have been a colour negative film for it is not clear) in the fixer before the developer, again the question of which developer - first or colour) is left in the air.
The "Unusual" effect referred to to is presumably the darkish orange/brown in the shadows and even on the edge of some clouds in the rather dramatic sky.
Now I have experienced exactly this identical result - but via a quite different processing fault! This was achieved during a series of tests with the much malined "Blix" - when the bleach side of this combined bleach and fixer solution failed to function.
Colour Reversal Club member Roy Johnson has also suffered the same - unwanted - effect by risking using stale baths... both D1 and D2. Roy tells me that he actually proved this as he had eight holiday films to process and put the first two through the stale solutions. All the frames suffered this orange/brown colour in the shadows. The remaining six films were then put through fresh baths and produced first class slides.
The caption in the supplement also foxed me with a further question: was it an effect of POSTERISATION? Posterisation? "So what does it mean" I ask. He wasn`t at all sure but thought it could be an alternative word for SOLARISATION "But the end result is quite different" I protested. "Solarisation gives a kind of edging around the subject matter" I pointed out. "It gives it a kind of edging around definite areas of the picture - almost a 3-D effect". He had to agree but couldn`t offer an alternative. Perhaps (almost certainly) some other member will!!
Incidentally, there is not another mention of either the word or its application. Almost every other means of achieving special effects is dealt with. Yet in a booklet dealing with the subject one could have reasonably expected to find some mention of an apparent procedure which, to say the least, is not TOO well covered and accompanied with many affective picture examples.
UP_Date... Roy Johnson it was who put me right regarding Posterisation. by providing proof that he HAD, indeed, heard of this obscure process, by unearthing "The Darkroom Book" edited by Jack Schofield and published by Spring Books. The term Posterisation is sub-headed Tone Separation in Colour and that is just what it is. Striking colour images are created by exposing colour paper to various combinations of high contrast B & W positives and negatives whilst placing coloured gelatine filters over the light source. It requires a set of separated positives and a complimentary set of seperate negatives to be produced from one original B&W negative. Seems highly complicated to me.but at least you have some, albeit, brief, explanation of what Posterisation is all about!.