Scanning B&W negatives

At long last, I am able to begin scanning my B&W negatives from the 1980s. I just rescued my negatives from cold storage, and my first scans were of Bob Kaufman at the Black Bart poetry reading in San Francisco, May, 1983. Pat Nolan and Alastair Johnston of Poltroon Press in Berkeley, plan to scan all the old Black Bart Life of Crime newsletters and turn it into a book. Which led me to the negative resurrection thing. 

I honestly thought I wouldn't be able to find the Black Bart contact sheet and negatives, as most of my poet negatives had a slight mishap at a really good party (people wanted to see my photos so I brought my binder with contact sheets and negs—mistake). Later on in the evening, my negative binders met up with an overturned carton of half and half—which led to late night washing of thousands of negatives and separation from their contact sheets. A logistic nightmare.

Migod do I ever have photos of dead poets....Brodsky, cold fish that he was, was right on top of the pile. And all the kazillions of Poetry International poets I documented over the years. Hugo Klaus, Bert Schierrbeck. All the late great Dutch & Belgish poets. Bert's funeral was a veritable who's who of the poetry world. The UK Adrians of Yellow Submarine fame....so easy to get distracted.

But scanning on a borrowed Nikon Coolpix L1000 has its' crankies. For starters, it's SCSI. That means I have to use a G4 and boot in OS 9 as there hasn't been any SCSI support for 15 years.

Most of the time the scanner won't show up for work. Restarting the Mac usually doesn't resolve the problem, But it's my only hope. My last and best hope. Oh, how I do love that three chord Mac cresendo: BOOOOONNNNG. Over and over and over again until I wish for the solitude of Zyzzyx Road in the Mojave Desert. So when I do get the scanner up and working, it's an all day and into the night marathon....

The first photos I posted to this blog were of Padraigín MacGuillicuddy (see Nov-Dec 2008). I was wanting photos of her as I'd posted a first draft of my story on her... Maybe someday, I'll find the final version of her story among clippings. (Another waiting in the wings project. Where, exactly, does the time go?)

Her daughter found my blog and wrote to me.. .she was going to send photos as was Sean Folsom, but nada. I'm glad to say that if you'd like to see that classy lady, the photos are up. I didn't realize how drop-dead gorgeous she was...very Maureen O'Hara.

I may post a few of the Black Bart photos here as well as a sneak preview—just because I can (besides, I suspect that the photos will be printed old school—read tamizdat—so very Cold War)... and Bobby Kaufman, the father of all Beatniks (tho Herb Caen is credited with coining the word Beatnik, a dirty word in both the USA and the USSR, Herb heard it first from Bobby's lips before immortalizing it in print.) I'm so jazzed. Can you dig it, baby?

(Editor Alastair Johnstone added a footnote: the term "'beatnik' was coined by Mrs. Getchoff a Russian immigrant who ran an art gallery on Grant Avenue, though Herb Caen took the credit. this according to a letter to the Chronicle in the '70s from Bruce Conner, that I saved.")

(Tamizdat—no slight intended—is not a typo but a second generation offspring of Samizdat. Tamizdat is what the Soviets called our limited edition small press printed books—not State approved or financed. Not massive offset runs printed on government presses.

Unlike the underground Samizdat, which was made from carbon paper copies printed on a manual typewriter, which meant there were only a few copies available for each "edition," Tamizdat publications were made on mimeograph machines—hundreds copies per print run were possible.

I did several issues of Open Hand at Sonoma State University on the purpleyblue mimeograph with the redolant brain-dissolving fumes. Then came the Rapidiograph, or Rizograph—suddenly we could print in black and white. Copy machines were still far too primitive (and unstable) on that strange smelly coated photo paper stock. But anything printed on a copy machine was considered tamizdat as well.

When photocopy machines came to the USSR in the late 1980s—I remember the first Kinko's opening in Moscow—we made a pilgrimage to it and I demonstrated how it worked to Soviet writers. There were many "oh's" and "ah's" but even copying was out of their realm as the machines only took valuta—hard currency. A quarter a pop, to be exact. Practically a day's wages, back then. And it was illegal for Soviets to own hard currency or coin.)

Black Bart and the tamizdat style printed "Life of Crime" deserves a blogeen of its own but the film scanner hums. Maybe today it will work? Suffice to say, Charles Boulton, the man slighted by Wells Fargo, donned a mask, called himself Black Bart, and penned poseys for every stagecoach he robbed, signing himself, the Gentleman Po8.

Most of my comments below are a work in progress—notes for the benefit of Alastair and Pat who are editing the Black Bart book. I am constantly swapping out photos as I get better copies. Most of this techno-blather will disappear as I get closer to creating acceptable prints in this new to me format. Then I will begin to migrate pix to Flickr (Pat's suggestion) as I'm not sure if posting poet pix here is what I want to do. This is a maiden voyage. And the blog is already out of control. But I must admit, I do like having a photo here & there to alleviate the tedium of print.

Bob Kaufman & Pat Nolan (I love the rich depth of the scan)

Bob Kaufman & Pat Nolan

Pat Nolan (This is not from a negative but from a print. Though the print was dormant in a film archive box for over 20 years, emulsion cracked over time!) Luckily the glossy Ilford paper I used has depth and scans well—even if the clean up is a bitch. At first I was smudging and dodging the flaws out; I even resorted to airbrushing. It wasn't an exact art and most copies were so obvious I had to toss them and start over—until I discovered cloning. With the right manipulation, I can erase the dirt and water spots—really minerals and fine silt from the Russian River hard water that embedded itself in the soft jelly-like emulsion on the back of the negative. No way to remove it.)

Steve Abbott & Mimi Mimeaux (revised)

Lynn Wildly & ?? ANYONE KNOW WHO THIS IS?

Jerry Rosen (startled deer in the headlights)

this version's better but I need to tone down the sepia and not loose the face...I tried lightening it and he really looked startled!

David Moe

HD David Moe

Cole Swensen & David Benedetti

Rod Iverson & Pat Nolan

Steve LaVoie, Gail KIng, Bill Hawley & wife, Susan, Cotouri bros.

Bobbie Louise Hawkins & Pat Nolan (seems too flat)

Bobbie Louise Hawkins & Pat Nolan (seems too flat)

Gail King & Bobbie Louise Hawkins

(The tough decision of grayscale: I like contrasty images; but those images will blow out in reproduction, or worse, if they're too monotone; turn all dark. This one needs to be a bit lighter but I will need to be careful not to lose detail.)

Bobbie Louise Hawkins

Lee Perron looking a little insane between sets

Lee Perron

David Benedetti

Alastair Johnston

Alastair Johnston (the problem with these pix was that I had to choose between focusing on the wall projection or the poet. Couldn't get both in focus. Nor could I get an aperture to work for either one. I shot the wall, or the poet—never dreaming that 26 years later I'd have to figure out a way to develop them on a computer. The Mac hadn't yet been invented! Developing a print is a nightmare too as the wall is at least 3 times darker than the illuminated poet. There was almost no detail on the face. A lot of layers were involved. I'll probably redo Alastair's as I'm just now getting the hang of the layers and I just discovered the power of erasing.)

Joanne Kyger (When Blogger moved my pix to Picasa, these were lost. I was able to find several but not Joanne—yet.)

(These pix of JoAnne are with the new layered sandwich technique. I just discovered that I can erase everything but the head and get a little more detail in. I also rescanned all the performance photos on a darker setting, using curves to control the light. Definitely more info when I scan in color but I get strange artifacts when the color haloes in curves. I then make them greyscale in Photoshop, clean them up, do the layers, then in iPhoto, I enhance and sepiatone them...there a lot of steps but the results are much better. If I vary the order at all, the results are different.)

Pat Nolan & Steve LaVoie

There are lots more photos to process of the reading, etc., coming soon to a blog near you.

Scanned in PhotoShop 6 with a very retro Nikon CoolPix L1000 on an old even more retro PPC G4 Mac with a SCSI card and booted in OS9. No other way to get SCSI card to work, as Mac abandoned SCSI and OS 9 back in 1995. Scanned in full color, dirt and hard water marks cleaned up, layers made to correct exposure and huge Tri-X grain, and then image is converted to B&W; in iPhoto, then converted back again to a light level (color) sepiatone to deepen depth of field and saturation for rich blacks. Computer B&W is too cold and flat.

Why scan a black and white negative in color? I've scanned them in B&W too, easier to clean up and contrast is better but images aren't quite as saturated. There's three times the pixels when scanned in color (RGB) vs. grayscale. Color scanning generated large 28MB files vs 8 MB files. Do the math. Images were shot in Tri-X pushed to 800 ASA, with a Pentax K-1000, and Vivitar lenses.I don't think I had my 28-80 lens yet in '83, so no zoom lenses.

Note to myself: next time convert to 600 dpi, 4x6" send as med resolution!

© 1983 & 2009 Maureen Hurley Photo. Photos may not be used without express permission from me. That's the fine print.