TRAVEL 67 : Chris Willson Photography

Fantastic historical dive sites on the BBC website

One of my photos from the Yonaguni Monuments was on the BBC website a couple of days ago. Groovy baby.

Adam reels in the big one.

No longer will The Old Man and the Sea be thought of as the quintessential story of a fisherman’s struggle. From this day forth, let it be said that Adam’s 17 day, 9 hour battle with this ferocious king crab is the pinnacle of human endeavor.

Studio Shoot – Desiree (outtake)

Here’s a happy outtake from a recent shoot that was done for a hair magazine. The model was Desiree, makeup by Summer Johnson and the hair styling was by Aiasha Orick-Fleurantin. Can’t post any of the finished images until they’ve been in print, but it’s always good to see someone with a big smile on their face.

Raiders of the Lost Archive

Having selected the images for my Matsuri exhibition, I am now in the process of making prints. Images from the 645D camera were relatively easy, find the files in Lightroom, make the necessary adjustments including sharpening, and then print. The older images from the Pentax 67 film camera are a little more tricky. This is because although I had already scanned all the film, some of the scans were only saved as 8bit jpegs rather than 16bit tiff files. This was done to save space on the hard disk, and clients usually only wanted to receive the smaller more manageable files.

For the best possible prints however, I need to use the much larger 16 bit tiff files. Several of the images therefore need to be rescanned from the original transparency. For each image I have to find the file name, then locate the transparency in it’s folder in the humidity controlled cabinet.

67Kamakura30 safely tucked away inside a sleeve,  in a cardboard matt,  in a matt holder sheet

The next job is to remove the transparency from the sleeve with tweezers and place on the scanner. For this I use an Epson Perfection V750-M, which does a great job, but I’ve had film drum scanned for clients in the past. The resulting digital file again needs to be have adjustments and sharpening, but also requires the tedious job of dust removal. Microscopic dust particles on the film appear as all too visible black dots on the digital image, it’s similar to dust on a sensor, and it means you’re going to have to spend a fair bit of time with the cloning or healing tools in Photoshop.

Eventually the image is cleaned, color corrected, sharpened and ready for printing. I managed to get through the first two in about 4 hours this evening. Only eight more to go…

After scanning, cleaning and final adjustments it’s time to print.

And before I complain too much about rescanning film and restoring the image, there are some people undergoing similar but much much larger projects.

Adam the Canadian Lumberjack

Meet Adam the Canadian lumberjack.

He cuts down trees. He skips and jumps.
He likes to press wild flowers.
He puts on women’s clothing
And hangs around in bars.