Renovating Jigoro Kano

Most judo clubs have a picture of the founder, Kanō Jigorō (28 October 1860 – 4 May 1938), close by the practice area. It is supposed to hang on the front wall. That is, the wall you face when entering the dojo, called the shōmen (front wall), or kamiza (high seat). The latter because before the advent of the picture that was where the head of the dojo would sit, and over-see practice (As in the below illustration by Shuzan Hishida).

In Bergen the picture had gone missing, and in Uppsala it is a framed but dilapidated poster. Anyway, I decided to get a new one, but quickly found out that it is all but impossible. As a photographer, and, if I say so myself, not a bad printer, my next thought was to find a picture online and print it. This is the story renovating a scan of an old Jigoro Kano portrait for printing. Luckily, by Japanese law any photographs taken before 1946 are part of the public domain (or that is what Wikipedia says).

When working with a picture you obviously want to start with the highest possible quality and resolution, and with a bit of work I found this rather good scan at 3543x4375 pixels (click on the picture to go to the original URL).

It is only a j-peg but with that kind of resolution you can do a lot without destroying it. This is good because there was a lot to be done. There are scratches that seem to be from the original photograph, including one prominent on his left eye-brow. There are some blotches on the background, and I do not want the text or the old name-badge. Finally, it is made from an old tinted photograph, and I don't like the tint.

So, I loaded the image into the old editor, i.e. Adobe Photoshop, and cleaned it up. I tried to upload the actual TIFF to Wikimedia-commons, but that didn't work so I have just uploaded the final j-peg. If I find another place to put the layered file I will, and then you can easily adapt it to your needs. It prints quite well up to A3.

Small Trades by Irving Penn

The well known Vogue photographer Irving Penn, didn't exclusivly shoot the famous, the pretty and the nude in the world of high fashion. From the beginning he was a still-life photographer. He did a large series of portraits of more common people with the implements of their trades. From the start it was a feature for Vogue about the workers of Paris, but he continued long after that. The entire series is 252 portraits and was bought by the Getty museum in 2008. The Getty is also the publisher of the book.



The book is quite hefty and very well made, with heavy, luxurious paper. In the beginning there is an example contact-sheet with some slight variations of the pose of the subject, and some pictures from the back. That way one can get an idea, if only a slight idea, how he worked. There is also a picture of his Paris studio with a large window on the wall and one in the ceiling. In addition, he has a reflector and a mottled back-drop, but that is it. It looks positively frugal by today's measure.



The pictures as such are reproduced in outstanding quality. They depict, apparently, comfortably posed workmen and women with one or two tell-tale tools that they use in their work.



It is a brilliant book for anyone interested in photography in general or in portraiture in any medium.