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| Rosa 'Emily Louise' 23 July 2021 |
In this 21st century particularly in this 2021 I am ambivalent about it. But I do acknowledge that some things, indeed, are better than in the last century.
With my memory for names fading quickly, Google on my phone is a godsend. If one is curious, and I am curious, I don’t have to go to our public library to find esoteric words like comorbidity which I first saw in Spanish as comorbilidad on my on line Argentine newspaper La Nación.
In the 20th century printing a b+w negative in my darkroom was not only a pleasure but a snap. But with colour it was different, particularly with colour slides. The only method that really worked, which avoided the making of an internegative (lost sharpness in that process), was Cibachrome. Because this product added contrast on very shiny paper, shadow detail would disappear.
Now my 17-year-old Photoshop’s Shadow/Highlight tool draws out details from the shadows that were always, I repeat always, there from my negatives, slides and even when I scan my prints. This Photoshop is also very good at finding detail in the shadows of my Fuji X-E3 digital camera photographs.
In my plant scans I always use that shadow/highlight tool.
In my youth I loved the use of the school microscope. I even had a personal one given to me at one Christmas.
Today when I scanned this lovely patio rose (awful definition of this plant) Rosa ‘Emily Louise’ I enlarged it on my monitor to take out dust spots with Photoshop. In the centre I saw a little black speck. I was going to take it out when I became curious…
