Photography Seminars By Jo Avila

Sunny16 lab organized a black and white darkroom printing workshop last week. I started off the first hour by giving a short lecture and held an open forum. We grouped the students into three batches and went into the darkroom after the lecture.

I stood in front of the enlarger and couldn’t help but think of all the good memories that I had working in a darkroom.

The first time I ever stepped into a darkroom to print my own black and white negatives was when I was a junior in college back in 1988. My parents put up a darkroom for me soon after. Mom paid for the construction of the darkroom and dad paid for all of the needed equipment. I soon found work after graduation assisting my photography teacher and having to work in the company darkroom.

There was a time that I ended up working for the Jesuit Communication Foundation (JESCOM) at my alma mater. One of my duties was to produce black & white prints for educational purposes and to develop color slides using E-6 chemistry.

Time goes quickly in the darkroom. I was reminded of this fact when I looked at my watch and realized that several hours had already elapsed by the time I was teaching the last few students.

I applied what I knew about the darkroom when I first started to learn how to use Adobe Photoshop. It made the process of learning how to use a post processing program easier.

They say that once you never forget how to learn how to ride a bike.

I think that I can say the same about working in the darkroom.

You never forget the knowledge, skill and memories of the good times.

I have an upcoming workshop on black & white printing on June 30, 2018. The workshop is being organized by Sunny 16 Lab. Did I mention that my upcoming workshop is about black & white printing in a traditional wet darkroom?

Yes, I am headed back to a film darkroom.

That’s why I found myself at Sunny 16 yesterday. I wanted to familiarize myself with their darkroom set up. I also had to shoot photos to be used as materials for my lecture presentation.

I spent a couple of hours photographing darkroom equipment like the enlarger, negative carrier, enlarger lens, tongs, trays, easel, focusing magnifier and grain magnifier among other things.

Please check out the page of Sunny 16 Lab and sign up if you want to learn the basics of printing black & white photos in a darkroom.

Creating a custom profile for an Epson L -805. Almost done 😁

Basic color management discussion (Part 2):

Jo Avila on Color Management | Part 2 Part 2 of our Photography Over Coffee session with Mr. Jo Avila, The Philippines' Color Management Guru about getting the right colors for your images both o...

Basic color management discussion (Part 1):

Jo Avila on Color Management | Part 1 On this Episode of our Photography Over Coffee session, I talked to Mr. Jo Avila, The Philippines' Color Management Guru about getting the right colors for y...

I’ve do a lot of post processing for our print clients. I work faster if I am using a graphic tablet. I needed another graphic tablet to use at our printing service at ShutterMaster Pro Makati when the Huion H640P caught my eye.

The Huion H640P measures 5.8” (147.7mm) by 10.23” (260mm), a thickness of 8mm and weighs 227 grams. The active area of the tablet measures 3.93” (100mm) by 6.2” 160mm). It has six programmable express keys and its pen has 8192 pressure levels.

The pen is passive and does not need to use batteries.
The Huion H640P is both Windows and Mac OS compatible.

The appropriate drive may be downloaded from the site of Huion.

What do I like about the Huion H640P? I like its budget friendly price of Php 2,790.00 (SRP). The pen is responsive and is comfortable to hold. It’s small and lightweight enough to stuff into a backpack with my Dell laptop. There is a lock button on the side of the tablet if you want to disable the express keys.

The bottom of the pen holder doubles as the nib puller and houses eight extra nibs.

What don’t I like about the Huion H640P? My only minor complaint is that the surface of the tablet is slicker than I am used to and lacks the feel of working on paper (which isn’t really a deal breaker for me).

The Huion H640P is available from Ynzal Marketing Corporation (www.ynzal.com).

Windows 10 Fall Creators Update (Build 1709) created a problem for those of us who calibrate and profile our monitors.

Datacolor is working to release Spyder5 v.5.3 software soon.

But we need a stopgap solution for the meantime.

The recommendations are as follows:

1) Do a clean uninstall of your display driver, reboot your system and install the latest version of your display driver.

2) Follow the steps listed here: http://support.datacolor.com/index.php?/Knowledgebase/Article/View/1690/0/i-updated-my-windows-10-to-the-fall-creators-update-build-1709-when-i-now-run-a-calibration-i-will-show-no-effect-and-no-effect-when-switching-between-the-calibrated--uncalibrated-view-at-the-end-of-the-calibration-process

Don't mind the Error 404 preview. The link works.

These steps should work for the meantime until the new software update is released.

Page not found - 404 "2FKnowledgebase2FArticle2FView2F16902F02Fi-updated-my-windows-10-to-the-fall-creators-update-build-1709-when-i-now-run-a-calibration-i-will-show-no-effect-and-no-effect-when-switching-between-the-calibrated--uncalibrated-view-at-the-end-of-the-calibration-process" SWIFT App does not exist

Our printing service is finally open in ShutterMaster Pro Makati!

We are located at Unit 1B Kamagong Building, 9641 Kamagong Street, San Antonio Village, Makati City (tel. 899-0385).

We are offering a 20% discount for all print jobs accepted at ShutterMaster Pro Makati from December 11-16, 2017 to commemorate the launching of our new printing branch.

See you guys soon!