Commercial Photography – Page 5 – Oldest Denton Professional Photographer Working

How many working photographers do you know that have been in the field since it was all film and darkroom, and now gladly leaves that all behind – no second thoughts – for the world of digital printing to the highest archival standards?

For better-or-worse, I say for the better, I was the right age and in the right frame of mind when digital photography and digital output came on the scene in the first decade of the 21st. Century. Make no mistake though; it was, at first, a bleeding edge.

This week, we’ll take delivery of the latest generation of Epson large format photo and begin work on the Top Tier Archival Gallery Prints for the Ron Raffaelli Collection.

Working on images from the 1960’s and early ’70’s, images on film, and bringing them back alive on a digital printer is, to say the least, one supreme challenge. Personally, going from digital image capture to digital image output doesn’t come with a huge dose of interpretation. A digital print is what I print it to be – from super-real, to if I like, super-unreal. Control was my huge bonus for going digital, and it still is MY huge bonus.

It may be worth backtracking though, and reminding the latest generation of analog dabblers of just how bad the old ways were for the natural environment and their own health – if they do it long enough. Dektol. D-76. Stop Bath. Fixer. Plastic. Paper. How about selenium and bleach? Remember the gloves, the breathing masks and ventilation demands? The list goes on, and for the vast majority of dabblers working today: Where do those chemicals go?

Yes, I am joyous to get out of the darkroom, away from the chemicals and waste that goes into a single finished art print. Sure slides and negatives are sweet soft butter for the shooter’s soul, but the price at the end of the line, the price on the environment? It’s just too damn high.

There are actually more choices accompanying digital printing papers than at any one time in the history of classic printing. These choices change the intent and purpose of modern fine art printing radically.

To be continued …

Ron Raffaelli Project Gets Rocking and Rolling

For those of you watching from afar, you may remember me mentioning my motivation for this long and strange trip I have been on over the last thirty-some years. It was Rolling Stone Magazine that I fed on from the first, then evolved into a lot of other types of photography and photographic influences. I didn’t know at the time how all the rock-and-roll would manifest itself. The doors of magazines were slowly closing, and the money people had taken complete control of the artists – their image, their direction and they contained and controlled their essence. As young as I was, I recognized the Rolling Stone ship had sailed.

That didn’t mean I didn’t love Annie Lebowitz, the best of Vanity Fair, Rolling Stone, the best of Texan Mark Seliger’s work, Interview Magazine … the list goes on and on. But I am one of those people who constantly wondered, and still wonders: Why am I doing this? Why am I digging this? And – – – What is this rock-and-roll infatuation leading me to?

Maybe I finally have, so many decades later, found the reason. When I talk to the Ron Raffaelli heir, I know the names, the stories and the musicians she is talking about – not literally, as Ron Raffaelli did, but I know enough to carry on a conversation … about Jim Morrison, Jimi Hendrix, Grace Slick, Sonny & Cher, Liberace or Eric Clapton. Sure I am dropping names, but it’s all there — Ron Raffaelli may be the most famous forgotten photographer lost in the history of capital “R’s” Rock-and-Roll. My life’s timing may have been wrong to end up behind the camera, but maybe this is the reason.

Fortunately, I was able to wait out the previous owner of www.ronraffaelli.com, and now own that URL. I have more than 1TB of images to go through, and they are not exactly organized, but who cares! It’s a treasure chest and it is full of real treasure. Now the search continues for a good format for the website.

Category: Commercial Photography

Modern Marvels – Epson Printing vs. Old School

Call Me Conservator (because I can’t think of a better sounding title)