This Gallery contains examples of Robin’s clinical work. It is however not possible to put many medical images on a public website: the confidentiality of the medical record means that I am only able to include photographs of those patients who gave specific permission for this purpose. Unfortunately therefore the range of patient work is very limited. These images are largely drawn from Robin’s successful Associateship submission to the Royal Photographic Society and were all created over forty-five years ago – when Cartier Bresson was still taking pictures and Don McCullin was still shooting in Vietnam! Large format (5”x4”) black-and-white was the norm for the patient records and for publication (no journals appeared in colour in those days!). Kodachrome II, with an ISO of just 25, was used for teaching transparencies. All processing was by hand in a darkroom. No computers and no Photoshop for nearly two decades! Unsharp masking – which was used to create the line edges around the instrument photos and to enhance the vessel details in the infra-red work – meant actually creating an out-of-focus positive mask and ‘sandwiching’ it with the negative for printing! All text had to be overprinted in the darkroom. All multiple images had to assembled ‘live’ on the enlarger baseboard with complex masking techniques. Looking back, the ‘superior’ quality of film is a myth – we are so lucky today with high sensitivity, high resolution, digital photography and the convenience of the ‘Light-room’ for processing!
© Gigi & Robin Williams Photography
