After my films have been developed and dried, I usually put the negative through the Hassleblad scanner, so that for starters I can access the images digitally. It is also a good method for me to figure out which frames I am going to use to make darkroom prints out of. Almost like a digital contact sheet. You might add, what is the point in doing that, either stick to one or the other. For me, I find it practical to do so.
Throughout this current project I have planned to make the prints myself and frame them myself, so the digital images you saw before of Monika Sur, were just scans of the negative.
Reasons for doing this is for exhibition purposes. I want a certain aesthetic to come through with the images when they are displayed.
So, I have been working on making prints of the three images of Monika. The film I used for the shoot was a Fujichrome film which was cross processed. It was also around two months out of date.
Most times the colours on these films do tend to go a little bit off, but not that drastic considering the time.
As the portraits were shot in the studio the whole light set up was artificial, however, what has made the printing process even more difficult is how off the colours was. There also was a line of Magenta which appeared on the arm of Monika that would deem the print a fail.
Through quite a bit of time I managed to get somewhere with it through the method of selective colour correction. Selective colour is something that can be altered in photoshop in about 5 minutes - this process took me days to accomplish (correctly).
I have plans to get these framed at the sizes they are. I want to create the frames myself, and I have been thinking about it on and off now, almost subconscious; just how I want to display the photographs.
I would like to cover the frames in ivy vines. I wasn’t sure this idea could be possible but I have been assured it is doable. The reason for this is because I am currently working with the title for this piece of work, and though at the moment I have entitled it Walls, that is subject to change. It is to do with the barriers that relationships produce, so therefore I would like something to represent that. The title, the images, and even the way the images are displayed. I would like them to all come together as one WHOLE piece.
