...I wouldn't normally bother to post all this, except that yesterday, Tony came back and brought in a book for me to look at. Its called "Full Moon" by photographer and artist Michael Light. I found it quite stunning.
Full Moon is a beautiful book and you can get it 2nd hand pretty cheaply - make sure you get the full sized version.
I heard many favourable comments about "Full Moon" at the 2003 incarnation of ApolloHoax and/or at the Bad Astronomy Bulletin Board, and eventually bought a copy of the smaller version in 2005. Was impressed by the great selection of photos that I hadn't seen, but being a black-and-white printer and purist, was dismayed at the poor technical quality of the black and white photos.
Anyway, Smartcooky, what's your opinion of the fogging that must have been in the prints that Michael Light used? I think there were copies of some of the fogged prints on the internet in the early 2000s too.
It's black fogging into the grays, and highly noticeable when compared with the same photos at the ALSJ, so must have been caused in the darkroom when prints were made from the negatives.
It might have been caused by a printer who smoked in the darkroom, therefore fogging the lens with tar. In the mid-70s I knew some darkroom folk who did that. I smoked too back then, but not in the darkroom. However one guy told me it was "safe" to smoke when printing (meaning the light didn't affect prints), so I briefly did a test with a cigarette to see if the light would fog black and white printing paper, and no, a brightly glowing cigarette was a mini safelight.
Also in my early darkroom days, the diaphragm of one of my enlarging lenses squeaked, and in my ignorance I oiled it lightly, so, until I discovered the cause, had untold grief from similarly fogged prints to those in "Full Moon." The heat of the enlarger lamp caused the oil to very lightly fog an element (single lens) inside the lens.
