Dec. 2000
President's
Message
Portrait of ...
Portrait Of ...
Mark Friedman
The fascination of photography began for Mark Friedman when as an army dentist in the far east, he became familiar with the new 35mm range finder cameras manufactured in Japan. New names like Nikon, Canon, Minolta, Ricoh and Topcon were flooding the international market with quality cameras and exceptionally fine lenses that rivaled the once impenetrable Leica line. Shortly thereafter, the 35mm single lens reflex camera was introduced along with slow speed Kodachrome film (ASA10), changing the face of color photography forever.
Delicate Arch
Copyright © M.Friedman
Opting for the Canon line, Mark, to this day, uses the old fashion manual focusing reflex Canons. As a nature and landscape photographer, the vast majority of his images are relatively stationary. Never completely satisfied with the quality of commercial prints, he began to dabble with the current home color printing processes by Kodak and Beseler. But it was 15 years ago that his prints took a quantum leap forward when he discovered the positive- to-positive Cibachrome printing process.
Transparencies have extremely high sharpness and beautiful color rendering and the Cibachrome printing material has the greatest sharpness and tonal range of any printing paper as well as a very high degree of color fidelity and print longevity. The main problem in fine quality color printing is lack of contrast control, which can be overcome with masking.
Contrast masking is the process of making a black and white contact negative of the original transparency. Placing the negative in perfect register with the original (positive) transparency, a print is made from this “sandwich”. It enables good tonal separation, which is crucial for any print to have life and depth.
Much effort is expended in his attempt to produce luminous prints with the greatest degree of clarity, brilliance and color saturation. Mark strongly believes in the intrinsic merit of traditionally made photographic prints. None of his prints have been digitally produced or altered in any way. Aside from significant esthetic concerns, once the image enters the digital world it loses its claim to authenticity and believability which are qualities vital to the production of his photographs.
Mark’s prints have been seen throughout the Delaware Valley both in competitions and his many Cibachrome Print Appreciation Programs. In 1991, the Puerto Vallarto Print White Water won Best of Show, Color Division in the Wilmington International Exhibition of Photography. His 16”x20” Cibachrome prints are owned by private and corporate collectors including the Dupont Foundation of Wilmington. Audio-visual slide shows round out his repertoire of programs.