Mackie Line: a darkroom solarization AI photoshoot
You get a close beauty portrait printed with the Sabattier effect, where only the brightest edges of face, hands and silver jewelry reverse into fine pale lines. Skin keeps its real midtones, so each frame reads as a photograph with a drawn outline laid around your own face.
Art direction: Alex But
- Lens
- 85 mm
- Aperture
- f/8
- Shutter
- 1/125 s
- Light
- Bare beauty dish, lilac and cyan rims
- Film
- Color negative, Sabattier print
Best for
Six frames from this shoot
Five frames and one detail, made by haloshot from three phone photos of one person.
Frame 1 · Mackie Line 
Frame 2 · Mackie Line 
Frame 3 · Mackie Line 
Frame 4 · Mackie Line 
Frame 5 · Mackie Line 
Detail · Mackie Line
About the darkroom solarization look
A bare silver beauty dish hangs high above an 85 mm lens set to f/8 and 1/125 s, giving a hard key, a small nose shadow and crisp points on cheekbones and metal. Two gridded strips behind add lilac on one side and cyan on the other. The medium-format color negative is hand-printed, and a short flash of light during development turns those rims into silver-white lines with a thin dark border.
Clothes, place and when to pick it
haloshot dresses women in a pearl organza cape over a black high-neck knit with filigree ear cuffs, and men in a sharp ivory wool vest over the same knit, both with a rigid silver collar, wide cuffs and stacked rings. The set is black velvet in a studio. Pick it for a portfolio cover, beauty editorial or a record sleeve with a precise, odd edge.
How it works
Add three photos of yourself: face, half turn and full length. haloshot renders a free five-frame preview of Mackie Line with your face. Pick the frames you like and keep them in 4:5 HD.
How to solarize a portrait print in the darkroom
The effect happens on the paper: a brief white flash midway through development fogs the blank highlights, and pale Mackie lines form along each hard edge between bright and dark.
- Hang the bare silver dish high over the lens; set gridded strips behind, lilac gel left, cyan right, on black velvet.
- Shoot medium-format color negative with 85 mm-equivalent framing at f/8, 1/125 s, keeping rims and metal well above skin.
- Print RA-4 in trays in total darkness; halfway through development, flash a dim bulb for about a second, then finish.
- Test-strip the flash length and expect a dozen prints per keeper, since no two solarize alike.
Wear nitrile gloves and ventilate; color developer and bleach-fix irritate skin and lungs.
Set notes by Alex But, art director · Updated
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Three photos in, five free preview frames out. Keep the best ones in HD.