I really admire the work of Andreas Bitesnich. Does any body know if his work is done in Ortho film or have any lead on how to get these rich skin tones? http://www.bitesnich.com/index2.html

-- Herbet Camerino (herbetb@yahoo.com), March 06, 2002

Answers

Ortho film is a very high contrast film used mostly in the printing industry. I'd say he is using regular old b/w film. The tones are probably achieved buy using large format film and very careful processing and printing. Although he maybe be using scala which is a b/w transparency film but I doub't it. doug

-- doug (doug@ajenda.com), March 06, 2002.

The most common ortho films today are, indeed, those high contrast films used for printing. But continuous tone ortho is available (from Ilford and others), and could produce the skin tones shown. An alternative is to use panchromatic film and a filter.

-- Charlie Strack (charlie_strack@sti.com), March 06, 2002.

It's not ortho. It's just well crafted b&w.

-- Ted Kaufman (writercrmp@aol.com), March 06, 2002.

There's certainly something odd, and IMHO, ugly about those B&W skin tones. The nude on the beach, for example, has hardly any separation between skin tone and sand, sea, or sky. I suspect that the originals were all shot in colour, and B&W prints made from colour neg or from scans.
Alternatively, a heavy body tan or make-up may have been applied to the models. In any case, it's not a look I feel a desperate urge to emulate.

-- Pete Andrews (p.l.andrews@bham.ac.uk), March 07, 2002.

It can be ortho film or heavy filtration, but ortho films are not necessarily lith films. Maco (maybe the best B&W films available on the planet) has continuous-tone ortho films in 120 at 25, 100, and 400.

Xosni

-- Xosni (xosni@gega.net), March 07, 2002.

I once saw a picture of A. Bitesnich, where he was holding a Fuji AF 6x4,5. Also, some of his outdoor work is a little bit out of focus (by the way, he is a grat photographer, and I am just an amateur, so this is nitpicking), which would not be untypical for this type of camera. For the film (again outdoor pictures), I suppose it's a chromogenic one, printed high contrast on warmtone (FB) paper.

georg

-- Georg Kern (georg.kern@uibk.ac.at), March 07, 2002.

Thanks for all the repplies. I found an old issue of the French PHOTO magazine whith a brief interview with him (he never comments on the techniqhues). There are about 5 of his pictures (all outdoor) and the captions with his comments say that 4 of them where taken in 35mm using Ilford Delta and only one (centerfold size) was taken with a Mamya RZ67 loaded with TriX. In all of them he mentions that only natural light was used. In one of the pictures a girl is sit on a big old wooden box with CocaCola all over. I assume that was red painted. The box is almost black in the picture (blue or red filter?). What boggs me though is that the blue California desert skies are really dark as well. Split printing? How would you even out all the tones? I tried a roll of Delta with Green and Blue filters yesterday. The skin tones look similar, but skin blemishes are terribly accentuated. If he's using filters, the make up ought be heavy.

BTW, his book Nudes got the Kodak award as book of the year in 1998. He got raves reviews saying that he work combines the graphism of Herb Ritts, the strength of Mapplethorpe and the lightness of Schatz. Nowadays he's considered in Europe as THE nude photographer.

Any more thoughts on how to reproduce that, guys?

-- Herbet Brasileiro (herbetb@yahoo.com), March 07, 2002.