>>2716396on the calf pic? it's mostly lighting and the angle it was shot. the sun was setting, but the day was somewhat cloudy, but the camera was lowered enough to show the glow reflected on the wet calf leather. if you look closely you'll noticed that both the cow and the sky are blown out, ie the calf was over exposed and the scene would look quite like that. this is why I think mf and lf b/w is good, as there's some room to play with the exposure and still looks smooth in the end. the film was Fuji Acros developed on rodinal, 8min.
the horse one was kind of trickier, it's a very very sunny day and the horse was under a shadow. so I positioned myself against the light, so the background would glow, and exposed for the horse (which was grey). the roll was stand development, so the highlights would contract and not look like pure blown white. as I was using a high contrast film (rolei 80s), I still got a pretty crunchy blacks.
