Holga + Ilford HP5 + Rodinal 1/200
El rosedal de Palermo, Buenos Aires, Argentina
Great thing about BW film is that it can take amazing amounts of under & over exposure.
Like in this picture here, scenery was a delight for human eye but light conditions were terrible. Subject is in the shadows whilst the background is bathing in hard midday sun. This combined with Holga which has only 2 shutter speeds (bulb & about 1/250) would probably end up in a catastrophy without the flexibility of modern films. If relying on automatics of my film scanner the end result would be something shown on the 2 small examples, dark or washed-up.
Someone has said that all the needed information is in the negative, you just have to know how to dig it out. One could probably do this digging easier with photoshop but you wont find info about that here. Instead this is how i did it.
First of all I like to develop my films with stand developing. That means long developing time with weak dilution. This way negative comes out smooth, low contrast and with as much of information stored as possible, making it easy to manipulate in darkroom.
Recipe for stand developing i prefer is Rodinal 1 + water 200 (20
°C) for about 2 hours. I've done the same with Tmax -dev, then its Tmax 1 + 32 water, but this picture here is with Rodinal.
1. Base exposure, 10 seconds with filter no. 5 to bring out the details of the under exposed main subject (Vika) and the pole Vika is leaning to.
2. 6 seconds with filter no. 3 whilts masking the main subject all the time. This brings out the leafs and the masking prevents the main subject from becoming too dark.
3. Base exposure, 2 seconds with filter no. 3. This adds to the leafs and also gives Vika's skin and the pole some tone.
4. Burning through a hole with filter no. 00 for about 2 mins. Brings out the water and palm trees.
5. Same as phase 4 but about 30 seconds burning around this area.
Masking in this picture might be bit rough but after all its Holga art so if its somewhere near its good enough.
