color

Theresa Airey's Creative Photo Printmaking book is filled with her beautiful photographic art and detailed instructions on how to accomplish similar results.

Any photographer and dark room enthusiast/student will benefit from this book which provides more than adequate instructional information on processes such as: infrared, printing on artist papers, wood, or glass, polaroid images, handcoloring, bleaching & toning, and copystand work only to name a few. I particularly enjoyed the bleaching & toning over handcoloring for adding color to my black & whites and her example photographs for this process are inspirational.

We used this particular book in our creative photo class. My fellow classmates became very enthusiastic about their accomplishments, and attributed their successes, in class, to this book. Theresa Airey has an MFA in photography and fine arts and has put together a splendid book that will be an asset to any photographer's library.

The author has done a great job with this book. It is highly readable and useable. I was especially impressed when I saw that included was her workspace setup for doing photo transfers. I was having a problem setting up my workspace with the trays, the electrical things vs. the water things...and was amazed that she thought to include it.

This is an essential book for any photographer who wants to learn to how to create stunning photographic artwork by manipulating photos. A wide variety of unusual and spectacular effects are presented. The beautiful examples have really inspired me.

First it covers manipulating, hand coloring, scanning and even recycling mistakes made with time-zero Polaroid film. Then black and white infrared photography using filters, metering and flash is covered along with film processing and printing. Bleaching and toning are next including great sections on copper split toning, posterization effects and creating pseudo flesh tones. Then emulsion transfers are shown including silverprint and liquid light. These create some great effects on non-traditional surfaces.

Image transfers and emulsion lifts follow. You are shown how to used a slide printer to make a print, make a projection print and transfer images onto non-paper surfaces like glass or silk, even getting two prints from one. Lastly, Polaroid instant slide films, solarization, photo transfers and hand coloring are discussed in detail.

All the instructions are excellent and thorough, covering everything from loading the camera to choosing and developing the film. There are a few demonstrations, lots of examples and great troubleshooting sections for each technique.

The appendixes in the back are very helpful. They include paper selection and characteristics, instructions on working with a copystand and a list of suppliers. This is a wonderful book to help the photographer with some darkroom experience move on to create awesome special effects photos.