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| Bronwen Marsden |
I am 72 years old. Until the
bottom fell in journalism and magazines I was a most prosperous and busy
photographer with a very nice studio in downtown Vancouver. I am now
retired (not exactly by choice) but I feel that I am taking some of the
best photographs of my life. I shoot and shoot. For three years I have
had a Fuji X-E1 which was and is my first digital camera. I find that
shooting for fun, for oneself is nice indeed.
I
have an efficient darkroom in the basement of my house where I process
my b+w film and print them on my venerable Beseler enlarger with
Dichroic color head (very good for dealing with variable contrast b+w
papers).
This means that I
can shoot with my 3 Nikon FM-2 cameras. My film of choice for many years
was Kodak Plus-X but for the shot here I used Kodak Tr-X. I was
teaching a class called the Contemporary Portrait Nude. My students were
using mono-light equipped with a softbox. So as not to intrude I banged
off some snaps exposed for the modeling lights of the flash unit.
Since
then I have discovered that for optimum skin the film to use is Kodak
T-Max 400 which I process in T-Max Developer. I no longer use Kodak
HC-110 which I first started using when I was 20.
The
colour of this picture is easy to do. I scan my b+w negative with my
Epson Perfection V700 Photo. I scan it as an RGB negative. Once scanned I
play with the yellow and the red to achieve something like what you see
here.
Draped to kill
Draped to kill