P3D Dodging & Burning !!!

[bill3dbw3d@xxxxxxxx (Bill C Walton)]

The preparation and mounting os stereo prints is somewhat more labor
intensive ( big understatement ) than is the preparation and mounting of
stereo slides.  That is part of their charm as the resulting effort is an
individual, hand crafted stereo image.  I receive 50-60 Christmas stereo
cards annually, most of them individually produced  and mounted and these
cards are most welcome.  There may be an exchange of Christmas Stereo
slides among those who favor that format, but in the three years I was in
Alpha Transparency folio I only received one Christmas stereo slide (of
course that may be a personal problem)  A couple of recent Christmas
stereo cards come to mind:
Bill Patterson's hand tinted snow scene and P3D Dick Twichell's card,
made in front of the fireplace in his living room.  What made this card
so outstanding was that it included a picture of his late dog, a Boxer
named Tristan, that was a stereo within a stereo.

But back to the subject of this posting- Dodging & Burning-  There are
very few prints produced that cannot be improved by a little application
of either of these age old procedures.  This is one advantage that those
of us who work in prints have over those who work in slides.  I guess you
could convert a slide to a digital image, dodge and burn as necessary,
then convert it back to a slide.  But I think the issue of  the
degradation of images in  copies of original slides has already been
discussed.  

Does it take a lot of time and effort to burn and dodge a pair of stereo
prints?  Of course, but again that is part of the charm of working in the
classic format of stereography.  I am not sure of how many P3D members
belong to stereo card or stereo slide circuits, but those who do know
that if you send a stereo print/slide around to the group that has either
mismatched densities in the prints/slide, or has large areas that could
be improved by burning or dodging, someone will let you know about it.  I
would not think of sending a stereo print in a folio that was going to
Paul Wing (who has been doing stereo cards since the early 1940s until
his recent operation) unless I had done everything I could to make it as
good as possible.  Because, believe me Paul doesn't mind at all telling
you how you could have improved a particular set of images, and he is
usually 100% correct.

I don't know if everyone has a favorite picture of themselves, but I do. 
It is a stereograph of me at the controls of a CH54A  helicopter, 800
feet over West Point Georgia, made during my last flight  as an Army
Aviator, before my retirement after 30 years of active duty, in August
1978.  It is of course black & white and it was made by my co-pilot.  The
exposure in the cockpit is quite good, so that part is easy to print,
although I have to give it a bit of attention on enlarging as one
negative has more subject matter than the other.  But the city of West
Point and the Chattahoochee River, 800 feet below, are overexposed and
require some intensive and lengthy burning in to make that part of the
images enjoyable.  There are three sections of the helicopter window that
you can see through and each section requires a different amount of
burning in.  Yes, it takes a long time to print this stereo image
correctly, but it is a real "jewel" when I get it finished (despite me
being the subject matter) and I have printed several times , over the
years, when someone asked for a copy.  It was reproduced in the Dec 1979
Stereo World before I knew what a stereo window was.  

Many stereographers do not have the time or the passion to devote a lot
of time to a single stereo card and I can understand that.  But those of
us who take the trouble are amply rewarded, I believe.


------------------------------