Catherine
Catherine is another of my friends. She is married to Michael.
There are a couple of firsts in this set.
One of the firsts is that this was the first time that I used a make-up artist. The make-up for these photo was done by Harriet Clay, whose email address I will add as soon as I get it from her (assuming that she has one). The photos are all headshots because the main purpose of the shoot was to photograph the result of Harriet's efforts.
The second first is that these are the first color photos that I've printed myself. I like to make large quantities of prints, but I'm rarely happy with machine prints, and having more than a few hand prints done at Joe's is prohibitively expensive, so the only real option was to make them myself. I purchased a Nova Clubmate slot processor, which set me back a few hundred quid, but since it reduces the cost of a single 8x10 from about £13 to about £2 (and reduces the cost of reprints to the cost of the paper, about 40p), it will probably pay for itself very quickly.
Color printing is really only slightly more complicated than black and white printing. The processing temperature need to be higher and also needs to be very consistent, but the Nova takes care of that for me. The only other difficult part is navigating around the darkroom in total darkness! I bought a strip of glow-in-the-dark tape (made by Kaiser) and stuck little squares of it to the corners and walls that I felt most likely to run into in the dark. A square also went on either edge of the enlarging easel, and beside the first slot on the Nova processor. I've had no problems so far!
As usual, click the thumbnails to see enlargements.
Three of the color photos. The second print is full frame.
These were the first three color prints that I'd ever made myself, and agonized over each one. I threw away 36 8x10 prints in the process of making these three. The green cast on the right side of the first photo was subject of much speculation among the people who responded to my Usenet queries. I did a lot of tests, and I've determined that it's not on the negative (thank God--having a darkroom problem is preferable to having a single light with a green cast!), but I haven't quite figured out where it is coming from. I'm afraid that it might not be a green cast but actually a magenta cast on the left, coming from the green glow-tape. I haven't investigated that possibility yet. Many thanks to everyone who helped!
The first black and white photo. The black and white shots simply don't have much contrast for reasons
that I don't quite understand, so in order to prevent them from looking flat, I printed them at grade 4 1/2.
Outtakes
The sometimes odd colors on these outtakes are due to the flash from my Yashica T4 Super setting off the mains flash, resulting in massively overexposed negs. These are all minilab prints.
Cath with her specs.
Catherine and husband Michael look through Kevyn Aucoin's book The Art of Makeup.
L to R: Michael, Catherine, Harriet.
Last updated November 19, 2001