MATE RIAL S
A ND
PR O C E S S E S :
T HE
AGGR E G AT E
IM A G E
that are the exact color and density that you want them to
indicate that color correction under daylight-balanced
be under your studio lighting, you might be shocked when
lighting is ideal; in this way, you know that your images
you see your work in a gallery setting under diff erent light-
look the way you want them to look under a standardized
ing conditions. This is caused by metameric failure. Briefly
quantity of light.
explained, this phenomenon is the same one that causes your chosen paint swatch in the hardware store to look
CHAPTER EXERCISES
different when it is mixed as pigment, and different again
This chapter’s exercises are designed to get you to con-
when you put it on your walls at home. Essentially, the same
sider carefully the materials and processes you use to make
color can (and usually does) look different under various
your photographs and to determine if those materials and
lighting conditions. Unless you can control the range of
processes help you to create images that communicate the
lighting conditions under which your work will be viewed,
way you want them to. Try a variety of capture and output
one recommendation is that you evaluate your prints under
methods, and consider the ways in which the materials and
color-corrected D50 viewing lights. These lights are bal-
processes you use imprint themselves on your images.
anced to 5500 K temperature, which is equivalent to daylight. If you are working in the digital darkroom, you can
Exercise No. 1: Color or Black and White
calibrate your monitor to the same temperature, so that the
Most photography practitioners tend to make images either
image on your screen more accurately reflects the image as
in color or in black and white. For this exercise, make both
it will appear under the viewing lights. While most galleries
grayscale and color prints of a section of your images. Once
use tungsten spotlights balanced to 3500 K or warmer, it is
complete, consider and discuss with others which set of
impractical to color balance prints to gallery viewing condi-
images seems to work best with your chosen subject and
tions, since they vary widely and are often mixed with win-
content, and your approach to them.
dow light or fluorescent lighting. Ideally, the prints will not
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exist in the gallery permanently, as they will find a home in
Exercise No. 2: Changing Texture
a personal or corporate collection, and you cannot predict
For this exercise, if you tend toward materials and processes
the lighting that will exist there. Therefore, best practices
that render the finest detail and smoothest images (using