Rob,
If your really serious about reproduction, I'd look seriously at a good scanning service, that will wet mount drum scans.
The initial costs may be high, but you'll save in the long run and have something that you can reproduce in any medium.
Just a thought.
Anyway
BC
Hi!
Yes, a drum scanner would indeed be nice, but my basic problem these days is that there’s next to nothing left to scan! As I think I’ve mentioned in the past, I sold or dumped pretty much everything when I moved to live in Spain. At most, I may have about a dozen 6x6 and the same in 6x7, the latter local landscape ‘atmospherics’ intended for travel stock and nothing I’d lke to work on at all. For what’s left, it’s hadly worth the bother for so small a volume. I'm a bit better off with volume in 35mm, though.
Your shot with the smoke rang bells: there’s was a huge department store in Glasgow called McDonalds, part of the House of Fraser. I was asked to shoot a Christmas press ad. for them one year, and we decided to photograph a large Christmas tree that had been erected in Central Station, with lots of fancy fake presents stacked up at the foot, and a model wearing some outfit or the other. I’d bought a smoke bomb thing from a theatrical supplier some time before, and since the background was pretty distracting and pot-ugly, I decided to set off the smoke thing in order to create mystery/mood. We’d got permission to photograph there, but nobody had thought of the artificial smoke, least of all myself, for whom it has been a last-minute idea as I packed the car; one of those ‘just in case’ moments, you know.
Anyway, we did some preliminary pix and then I introduced the smoke. You’d think we had started to fire machine guns! We didn’t get long to work using it – couldn’t control it at all because it was a wide open space inside the building, draughts in every direction, and we were pretty much thrown out. But we did get the ad, so not too bad. Never used smoke again.
I like your shots; the girl in the non-smoke one reminds me of a young Laetitia Casta. It's those delightful little tendrils at the side...
Rob C