Glow effect

[CCOS]

Looking for a way to make a glow effect on my b/w prints both toned and not. Easy on digital images but not the kind we are working on so... any one?

Jesper

[Kvistgaard]

Dav Jesper,

found this at the luminous-landscape.com site. (c) Mike Johnston.

Hope it helps!

Søren

[Vaughn]

Printing part of your exposure thru a stretched out nylon stocking?

Vaughn

[sdivot]

For a slightly diffused effect, I like to use a Hasselblad soft focus filter. Usually a #2 works well. Just hold it under the lens for as little or as much of the exposure as you want.
It must be image appropriate of course, but on the right image it looks very nice.
Try it you might like it.
Steve

[Nicholas Lindan]

Looking for a way to make a glow effect on my b/w prints both toned and not.

The first requirement is a subject that glows or that is photographed in glowing light. Something photographed in harsh noon-day sun will never glow no matter how you print it.

Keep subject contrast low - or the glow can turn into glare - there should be detail in the highest of the highlights. In general there should be no pure white in the print. As mentioned in the excerpt from Mike Johnston (above), you need to make sure you are not printing with too much contrast: make test prints at lowering contrast grades to find the optimum. Print for the highlights and light midtones and burn the shadows in as needed.

[AlanC]

Mike Johnson says you should shoot away from the sun to get " the glow " but the wonderful English photographer James Ravilious often shot straight into the sun and made prints with an abundance of glow.
He used pre-war leica lenses for their low contrast and to avoid flare used black tape on the lens hood to mask off everything exept the picture area.

Alan Clark

[Louis Nargi]

great post

[phenix]

Print partially (10 to 30% of the total exposure) a little bit out of focus. This out of focus should be done on the side of a larger format, not of a smaller one. You have to try different ratios of exposure and amounts of out of focus in order to find what works for you.

[freddiebotham]

breathe on the enlarger lens
(preferably on a filter in front of the lens, to avoid leaving anything undesirable on the glass)

[David A. Goldfarb]

Diffusing at the enlarging stage produces anti-glow--the shadows bleed into the highlights. If you do it very subtly, usually with a mix of exposure with diffusion and without diffusion, then you can get a reasonable softening effect. If you overdo it, it becomes kind of ghoulish. In either case, I wouldn't call that a glow.

To get the highlights to spray into the shadows, which I think of as a "glow", you need to do it when you're making the photograph, and Mike Johnston offers many fine suggestion in his article, linked above.