 My name is David Patton. When I started photography, I wanted to make art. I wanted to be a landscape photographer But with a family to feed and bills to pay, I decided it would be better to be a working photographer than a starving artist So I took a job as a photojournalist 25 years and thousands of assignments later. It was time to go back to my first love. It was time to follow my passion Come along on my journey to become the best black in my photographer I can be whether it be film or digital. I will be sharing what I learned through my successes and my failures and hopes to inspire and educate This is my journey This is brightening the edge. Today, I thought I'd talk a little bit about the digital process for my film photography The why? Well, I guess you could say my philosophy to processing large format film And why I don't use the traditional darkening process for printing nor do I plan to in the future? But first I need to get a couple photos to use as examples Today the film using is Elford's FP4 plus And I'm developing that in Clayton F76 plus Now I know I said at the beginning of the video that I don't use a traditional darkroom printing process For my printing for my prints in 4x5 and that's really for a couple different reasons I find that as you go up in size in formats The printing process gets a little more complex. I think it's quite a bit harder to Make the size of enlargement that I'd like to have In a traditional darkroom, especially one that a darkroom I could have in my house I don't have a lot of space. I don't have a lot of room And with that big negative you've got to get enough extension on any larger You've got to have a bigger and larger bigger trays and for 4x5. I find that the digital process works very well So I don't really feel the need to have a darkroom for that film or that format every once in a while I get a comment that says Why don't you use a traditional darkroom? Why don't you print print in a darkroom? That's what I do and And if I was doing smaller prints working in a smaller format It would probably make a little bit more sense. I understand the excitement enthusiasm around using a traditional darkroom Those comments make it sound like they assume. I don't really have an experience in the darkroom I printed thousands of images in the darkroom. I'm well aware of what to expect from Traditional darkroom printing that being said, I'm a much better printer Digitally than I ever was in the darkroom. I was never that good in the darkroom. I was fast and I was efficient I had the process down pretty good If I was doing it now for fine art, I probably could slow down and put out some pretty decent prints But the size of the prints that I'd like to have would be quite difficult in a traditional darkroom So I've chose to scan my 4x5 film There are some advantages to scanning the images you it's much easier to clean the file Much easier to clean the image in software It takes a few minutes and you can go through and get rid of the dust spots and scratches and that kind of thing And another thing that I like about the digital process is you only got to edit once and that when you get it How you like it you can print as many as you want and in the course in the traditional wet darkroom Each print is kind of unique which in a way that's kind of cool too But if I want to sell a lot of a specific print that becomes very expensive and labor-intensive to do So I'm going to talk a little bit about the scanning So when I scan a negative My goal is to Have a pretty well balanced scan so they're going to look kind of flat I'm going to try not to clip the highlights and I'm going to try to have some detail in the shadows Actually, it looks a lot like a raw file when I when I get it into my editing software The software that I'm using now is the software. I've been using for the last three years I get asked all the time. Are you still using affinity photo and the answer is yes I can't remember what version I'm on right now. I've updated it quite a few times And I also still use silver effects pro one of the nick plugins It kind of gets me where I want to go quicker I could do all that I do to my images in Affinity photo, but I find that taking it into silver effects Really does seem to speed up the process for me. It gets me where I want to go quicker I do the traditional dodging and burning and I really like the tools and affinity photo for Cleaning the negatives getting rid of scratches and spots. It works just as well in film as it does a digital cameras file It might even be better. I like to layer the contrast. I like to start with a fairly flat negative and layer the contrast to taste I Find that it's easy to add contrast, but you can't take it away So I don't go for a contrasting negative so my approach to the negative is really to try to expose it in the way that I can get detail in the shadows and Not clip the highlights. I don't use a lot of filters Polarizing filter as in this video here. I did use on the second exposure of that a little waterfall area And I'd use the polarizer pretty sparingly, but there are times where I feel like it's needed It's probably my most used filter And I have a yellow filter I use occasionally I haven't gone to red or orange filters a lot of that effect. It's just adding contrast to the negative. I May experiment with that in the future, but it's not something that I feel like I really need to do. I Keep my photography pretty simple. Maybe over simple You know, I'm very slow to adopt new approaches When things seem to be working for me, I don't I don't go off looking for a Problem to fix when there I don't see a problem So I keep it pretty simple. I just carry a couple filters But it's all based around not having too contrasting of a negative Because to me in my process too much contrast is working against what I want to do I don't print my photos here at home on inkjet or anything like that I send them out and they're done on photographic paper It's an ill for product It's still uses silver processes in chemistry, but it's for the digital process. I think they're called light jet type prints So you get a really nice photo and the weight of the paper feels like a photograph I've been very happy with the results. I've been getting So I probably won't change that in the future either I'm not against inkjet printing I just prefer the The traditional feel of a photograph This is just meant to be a quick overview of my process how I approach my four by five film photography and why I've decided to do the things I do this isn't meant to be a tutorial or Meant to suggest that this is how you should do it. This is just how I do it This is how I get to the final image that you see on these videos and on my website as They often say there's really no one right way and I think it's been official for Photographers to see how other photographers make their images and how they process their images Not necessarily to emulate what they do but just as a Good way to see if there's something that they can adopt or try in their process You just need to figure out how you can get to the image you want to make So I'm gonna end this video right here. Until next time. Thanks for coming along for the ride