Borrowed Information.

On the way back from Black Mountain yesterday, I stopped at my favorite used book store, Mr. K's on Fairview Road in Asheville. Used book stores always have new items coming in, so I try to hit Mr. K's at least once a week. Yesterday, I found a book on digital photographic art that looked promising, but after leafing through it, I only found a couple processes that were of interest to me. It wasn't really worth adding to my already crowded shelves. One thing I wanted to try, a simulated bromoil printing process, was easy enough to memorize the steps. I "borrowed" this information, and put the book back on the shelf.

The bromoil process was popular with pictorialist photographers early in the 20th century. The method for a real bromoil is too complicated to describe here (click here and here if you're really interested), but it produces a softer, grainier photo that the pictorialists loved. I decided to try the much easier digital method on one of my photos from my Black Mountain trip, and I chose this photo of an old Mack truck as a suitable one for experimenting. You'll have to click on the photo to enlarge it to get a better idea of how the grainy effect looks. I think the process I found still needs some tweaking to look more like a real bromoil, but I thought my first attempt was promising. I immediately began to think of other photos I'd like to experiment on with this effect.

Old B-Series Mack Truck, Black Mountain, NC  -  2013

(Click on photo to enlarge.)

As an addendum to yesterday's rant about the weatherman, he turned out to be right yesterday, except he was about 18 hours EARLY on his prediction!