Introduction to the Darkroom galleryIntroduction to the Darkroom gallery on dADarkroom on dA is a tribute to the traditional, involving chemical developing and printing techniques which have barely changed since the birth of photography, a symbol of the modern, making use of technological advances in digital processing, and a whole lot of amazing and beautiful things in between.While the majority of Photography galleries on dA are subject-based, Darkroom is technique-based. Photographs using Darkroom techniques are generally accepted in the other photography galleries too, but if you wish to categorise your Darkroom photography submission based on how it was created, then Photography > Darkroom is here to allow you to do that.If you're not a photographer, or you arrived on your photographic journey at a time when digital was in full swing, you may have never shot on film, been temporarily blinded by walking into daylight after hours spen
What is Traditional Darkroom?What is Traditional Darkroom?Traditional Darkroom is where it all began. It started in a world where the word 'photography' didn't yet exist and the art of creating images of reality with light and chemicals sat somewhere between science and magic. Did you know that the mathematicians Aristotle and Euclid describe pinhole cameras in the 4th and 5th centuries?In the early 1800s, artist/inventors like Louis Dageurre and Henry Fox Talbot (among others) experimented with ways of fixing images using chemicals, including silver compounds, following exposures on materials like glass and metal, lasting from several minutes to several hours. By 1840, Talbot was creating negative images using the calotype process and John Herschel had invented the cyanotype process (where the term 'blueprint' comes from) and created the first glass negative in 1839.In the middle part of the 1800s, the wet plate collodion process be
Shoot Yourself: Self Portraiture Contest "Shoot" Yourself - A Self Portraiture Photography Contest The idea is to get creative and move away from those myspace style self-portraits. Admit it, most of you did them - and fine tune your photographic skills by taking your own picture! Using technique that you possess, can learn from tutorials or may pick up this week, you need to take a shot of yourself as creatively as possible. Start Date: 27th AugustEnd Date: 2nd SeptemberSubmission Folder: Here! Rules Entries MUST be NEW - this means created on or after 27th August 2012 One entry per person Manipulation must be kept to a minimum - entries MUST be Photography with minimal editing. Editing allowed - retouching, black and white, colour adjustment, blur and other m
Project Educate: Classic Portrait PhotographyClassic Portraits are Photographs of people in traditional pose. These are often formal, refined and restrained in style. As you will see within the Gallery they often involve a plain and simple background which is a popular feature of Classic Portraiture. One of the most notable things within the Classic Portrait Photography Gallery is that there are a lot of art nudes. This actually occurs across the board with People & Portraits and I cannot stress enough - that if your work features nudity, it belongs within the artistic nude gallery! Conversion to black and white with concentration on bringing out tones and shadows creates that timeless classic look and is often favoured by the elite artists that submit to the People & Portraits - Classic Gallery. Whilst D-SLR's have a monochrome function, for the most part (mine h
Project Educate: Expressing and EmotingEssentially, these are mostly the same thing with a few minor differences which are explained below. But before we move onto that, there's an important message to share when it comes to categorising your work. To get the best out of the photography galleries it's vitally important that you categorise your work properly. That' why these weeks exist in some respects, to help educate you through that. With regards to Daily Deviations - Community Volunteers will not give features to pieces of work that are mis-categorised. They might assist you by moving your work or explaining where it should go, but seeing a deliberate miscat is a bit off-putting when it comes to choosing pieces to showcase. Take some time to have a look through your gallery (I'm going to do the same!) and figure out if everything is in the right place. If you're struggling, just ask. We're here to help. What we won't do is rearrange your whole gallery for you. We will however, work with you to try and straighten things
People + Portraits Photography Talent Spotlight`Kendra-Paige has been on deviantART for over eight years now and has made a strong mark on the people and portraits gallery especially with her fashion work. Her kit consists of a Canon 5D Mark II and a Canon EF 85mm 1.2L II lens using various other lenses and focal lengths but repeatedly gravitating towards the 85mm. She uses a combination of lightroom and photoshop to post-process her work although she keeps her editing as minimal as possible as she doesn't enjoy the post-processing bit of photography! Why did you choose people as a photographical interest? I have always found people to be fascinating, and I have a particular interest in expressions and eyes. The eyes tend to be the focal point in a lot of my work, and typically dictate the image. Aside from this, it’s the collaborative effort that I enjoy in portraiture. When you take images of animals and nature, there is only so much control you have with the subject - a lot of it is luck
Project Educate: Dragonfly-oli on Still Life`dragonfly-oli is fast becoming one of the most well known Still Life Photographers on deviantART. Whilst she has only been here for 2 years her artwork has certainly made its mark on the community. Here she shares a bit of insight into what she does and why.:icondragonfly-oli: Tell us about your style...I do really like close-ups, as you can see in my other shots. So I tend to take pictures of little objects. All in all I do really like to do conceptual shots, because I cannot implement my ideas in nature photography. What are the trials and tribulations of Still Life Photography in your opinion? Well, it's easier than taking pictures of people or nature! It's a challenge to search for the right object to make a conceptual piece out of it. The light and composition are essential for a good photo here, because people look for the message and the technique in general.Merits are th
Project Educate: Photographing Infants + ChildrenPhotographing infants and children can either be really painful and frustrating, or incredibly fun and rewarding. It depends entirely on the child. I kid, sort of. It's what you make of it and how you treat the moment. Children are fast, sometimes moody, sometimes hyper and nearly always think they know what you want them to do when you turn the camera on them. Either run, or crack that huge fake camera smile that they've been taught to do for their school photographs. Don't force a smile. If the child doesn't want to smile, don't make them. You'll end up with the fake smile. However having said that, you can try and be funny, but again don't push it. They're smarter than many give them credit for. If you're not getting a smile but you're getting a rude funny face, then accept it. Those sorts of shots can be awesome as well. Learn to accept imperfections. Whether the children are strangers to you or not, you can't have it perfect all of the time. Messy hair,
Everyday we're CV'ingAs a Community Volunteer - I do as much or as little within the community that I feel comfortable doing. We're not pressured to do this and that, we don't even have to give a Daily Deviation every day, we choose how we promote our selected galleries/chats and forums and we're not fixed to any specific rule on how much or how little we do. But I do believe that it's important to share with you just what the community volunteers do and why we do it. More importantly it's so easy to get lost on this site full of many people - and miss out on the awesome that's going on. So I'm going to share with you exactly what the latest awesome is... Project Educate Almost every week since October last year the Community Volunteers have been working hard both independently and as part of small teams to bring You Project Educate.Project Educate is about bringing forward art forms whether they are popular or overlooked and giving
Project Educate: Artistic Nude + Fetish RecapThis journal contains mature content. For ease of access we've started to put all of the previous Project Educate articles into the relevant folders within our gallery. This means that if you want to read up on a certain topic that has been covered during Project Educate, you can head over and find it really quickly. Within People & Portraits there are several sub-categories that are managed by specific Community Volunteers, one of these is Artistic Nude. You should direct all of your Artistic Nude Photography suggestions towards ^Nyx-Valentine rather than a general photography CV such as myself or ^3wyl Additionally, ^Nyx-Valentine covers the Fetish Photography Galleries, so again, direct your suggestions to her.Artistic Nude Recap
Project Educate: Summary and End:iconprojecteducate:Project Educate: Summary:Wrapping up the Horror/Macabre Photography Project Educate week with a quick overview of what was shared with the community!Welcome to Horror/Macabre Photography Week!An introduction on what to expect from the Horror/Macabre Project Educate Week!A Brief History of HorrorA brief rundown of various genres and types of scary!Project Educate: Suggesting Horror/Macabre Daily Deviations!How to suggest daily deviations for the horror/macabre photography gallery!
Project Educate: Final Thoughts:iconprojecteducate:Project Educate: Final Thoughts:Final words of advice from some wonderful deviants who create within the spectrum of the dark and eerie!*Ptollemy is a lovely Australian based photographer who seems to have a knack for conceptually dark images that never cease to amaze.1: What are some hints, tips or pointers that you could give somebody who wanted to start, not just for horror/macabre or conceptual, but for any genre? *Ptollemy - "Shoot as often as you can and shoot what you love.Look for the story in the image. What do you want the image to say?Be creative and don’t be afraid of something not working out the way you first planned. Sometimes “failures” can lead to great idea and great images.Your own style is something that develops over time. Keep doing the best you can, experiment with new lighting, subjects and locations.Most of all keep shooting. The more you shoot the be
What is Digital Darkroom?What is Digital Darkroom?Digital Darkroom is the evolution, converting chemical processes to digital ones, cellulose and silver to pixels and bytes. The first digital camera, weighing 8 pounds with a resolution of 0.01 megapixels, was built in 1975 and recorded black and white images to a cassette tape. The first camera which recorded images as computerised files was made by Fuji in 1988 and the first commercially available digital camera was created in 1990.The Digital Darkroom gallery on dA is for photographs which have been digitally processed or edited with the use of computer software to emulate traditional and alternative film darkroom techniques. It's also a place for very modern processes like HDR photography, which involves creating images with a higher range of visible tones than regular photography.Most of the functions available in digital editing software were created to mimic actual darkroom
dA Groups that welcome Darkroom photosdA Groups that welcome Darkroom photosCheck out these fabulous dA groups which are home to some truly stunning darkroom creations.:iconalt-process-printing:#alt-process-printing's gallery is like a living history of photographic printing techniques, from Polaroid emulsion lifts to Dageurrotypes. You'll find some familiar processes here as well as many that you've never heard of or seen before. This group is a great place to browse if you want to learn more about Darkroom photography as well as see beautiful images. :icontlrs:#TLRs is a group for photos taken with (and of) twin-lens reflex cameras. These are film cameras that have two lenses with the same focal length, one being the 'taking lens' (which actually takes the picture) and the other being used as a view-finder. :iconanalogphotographers::
Project Educate: People and Portraits IntroductionPortrait or Portraiture Photography is about a person or a group of people arranged in a certain way to convey the mood, emotions and possibly even a story. On DeviantART there are many sub-categories within the People & Portraits Gallery and some of those are self explanatory whilst others take a little bit more planning and thinking about to achieve. Throughout this week, we'll be working to hopefully clean up misconceptions and straighten out parts of the People & Portrait Galleries. So here's what's happening...Shoot Yourself - Photography Contest Open Forum - Throw your questions to the photography CVs and expect the answers (as much as possible) by the end of the week! Getting your Emotive on - Definition
Project Educate: Darkroom Photography Week Begins!Welcome to Darkroom Photography week at #projecteducate!Here's a taster of what you can expect to see here over the coming week...TuesdayIntroduction to the Darkroom gallery on dAWednesdayWhat is Traditional Darkroom?ThursdayWhat is Digital Darkroom?FridaydA Groups that welcome darkroom photosSaturdayDarkroom photography tutorialsSundayArticle round-up
can't wait!