09/04/2024
A prehistoric example of some of my early photographic work.
At first performing primarily in front of the lens, a mere ten years after this shot was taken and aged fifteen, I was performing behind the lens.
Photography has never been my hobby. Outside of family, photography has been my entire life.
❤️
For those who may be interested in such things, and though the years have not been kind to the dyes in the emulsion layer, this is a very early, by Australian standards, example of an Ektacolor or “Type C” Chromogenic print.
Commercial use of Ektacolor only commenced in Australia in the early sixties but never took off to any great extent as the even newer colour reversal film (slide film or color positive) Ektachrome was found to be far superior. The colour reversal film Ektachrome was loaded into the camera and was the same film printers would use to create their printing plates. An interim colour print was unnecessary and an interim print only created second generation quality loss. Which loss could be substantial.
Advertising Photographers in particular, upon delivery of their pics, lost access to a reproducible negative as the original film was sent to the agency.
Not so for a photographers black and white negatives, where the agency/client merely got positive black and white proof sheets and black and white prints made by the photographer from agency selected negs.
A huge financial loss for photographers occurred in the 90’s when the newly developed ability of printers to create black and white images from photographers colour shots became the norm. And the black and white darkroom commenced its downward slide into virtual oblivion in the commercial.
Putting a folio together was pretty difficult with Ektachrome (or Fujichrome etc) as a photographer more often than not lost their colour shots to deep ad-agency archive files, or to the agency dumpster.
I’m sure many “vintage” photographers like myself, simply do not have possession of many of their colour shots created prior to digital. Images, millions of them, lost to history at the bottom of land fills or even incinerated.
Now, where was I…
The Ektacolor paper, as used in this print (fibre based not resin based paper) produced a negative print of the colour negative film exposed in the camera. Two negatives make a positive. Same as the black and white positive/negative process only using opposing colours; red = cyan, green = magenta, blue = yellow.)
