The Cinematic Notebook

The craft behind our portraiture and film development.

How This Notebook Connects to Film Photography and Film Development

Every article in this archive reflects the full analogue workflow used by Liquid Light Whisperer and Liquid Light Lab — from motivated lighting and optical rendering through to controlled development and high-dynamic-range scanning. The same discipline documented here is applied to commissioned portrait work and to every roll processed in the lab.

The Creation of 35mm Photography: Oskar Barnack’s Vision and the Leica Legacy

The Creation of 35mm Photography: Oskar Barnack’s Vision and the Leica Legacy

From the earliest days of photography, cameras were hefty, complicated devices. Plates were large and unwieldy, limiting both portability and the opportunities to shoot spontaneously. Oskar Barnack (1879–1936), an ingenious optical engineer at Ernst Leitz Wetzlar in Germany, would change all of that forever.

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