Branch: First draft

Pookeyhead said:
I'm not sure myself yet.... just playing with it at the moment.





Hmmmmm...... (strokes beard)...




Mark up your prints then :) I spend quite a long time creating test strips and various grades for various parts of the image, so I know exactly how much to dodge and burn by, and at what contrast filter. Usually, I get the finished print on the second try.. sometimes third if it needs you to be particularly dexterous.
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I suppose that even by the time I went to college I had been printing regularly for some twelve years and hardly had to think much about the process at all, it was all pretty automatic. When I said some time, I did not mean a long time. If it was necessary to make test strips. I would never have expected to make more than two full size prints. Thinking back I never saw anyone marking up a print in my entire working life, memory and the projected image were all that was needed. But each to their own. I never owned a print timer till I started colour printing, my natural count was rather less than a second but very consistant, which is all you need.
As I almost never needed to revisit exhibition prints, print notes were a complication I did not have time for. Had I needed to print other peoples work then such thing are probably very necessary.
 
Terrywoodenpic said:
I suppose that even by the time I went to college I had been printing regularly for some twelve years and hardly had to think much about the process at all, it was all pretty automatic. When I said some time, I did not mean a long time. If it was necessary to make test strips. I would never have expected to make more than two full size prints. Thinking back I never saw anyone marking up a print in my entire working life, memory and the projected image were all that was needed. But each to their own. I never owned a print timer till I started colour printing, my natural count was rather less than a second but very consistant, which is all you need.
As I almost never needed to revisit exhibition prints, print notes were a complication I did not have time for. Had I needed to print other peoples work then such thing are probably very necessary.
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Some of the best printers in photographic history would disagree. I'm assuming you've heard of Pablo Inirio?

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Pookeyhead said:
Some of the best printers in photographic history would disagree. I'm assuming you've heard of Pablo Inirio?

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And some would probably not.
When you print other peoples work you need to keep copious notes if you want to ever repeat what you did previously.
However those instructions seem somewhat more detailed than I would expect. Probably because of the dire tonal deficiencies in the original.

At least with digital processing you do not have to repeat all that sort of work.
To day there is some benefit in making a digital inter-master from analogue, even if you want a wet print as final output. Especially for limited art print runs.
 
Terrywoodenpic said:
And some would probably not.
When you print other peoples work you need to keep copious notes if you want to ever repeat what you did previously.
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As you do if you need to reprint your own. I can't remember how I made a certain print from 20 years ago.. can you?

Terrywoodenpic said:
However those instructions seem somewhat more detailed than I would expect. Probably because of the dire tonal deficiencies in the original.
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Well... he's widely acknowledged to be one of the finest black and white printers the world has ever seen, so who are we to argue Terry?

Well.. Maybe Dennis Stock wasn't as great as people reckon then huh? Back in the day, behind every great photographer, was a great printer (even if they were one and the same person). Today... we have Photoshop for polishing turds :)

Terrywoodenpic said:
At least with digital processing you do not have to repeat all that sort of work.
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Which is a shame in some respects.

Terrywoodenpic said:
To day there is some benefit in making a digital inter-master from analogue, even if you want a wet print as final output. Especially for limited art print runs.
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Disagree strongly. That's exactly when you would NOT do that. If you're making limited run black and white fine art prints, what people want is a hand print, not a digital hybrid cheat. Making a digital inter negative is basically just admitting you're crap in the darkroom, by doing all the work on the computer, just so you can churn out single exposure, easy to print examples of the work. If people are paying a premium for a limited run, genuine black and white print, they want the real deal. They want an example of a print that some labour and care went into producing. If I'd paid a premium for what I thought was a hand made print of a limited run, then A) I'd incensed to learn it was made from a digitally manipulated inter neg, and B) I'd find out any way, as they'd all be identical.... the one thing you would NOT expect from a limited hand printed collection of images.
 
Digital enlargers have been used for this for some time. The ethics around how such hybrids should be called is ill defined, and like Glicee prints have come to inhabit the Art world since they were first introduced.
When circut cameras were invented and required large volume contact printing. Layered tissue contact printers were invented, they took considerable skill to use as exposure varied both across the field and verticallyand locally, but when successful, produced Identical prints.
When used for producing art prints the same tissue process was used.
All technology over time moves into the art world. Old, "new," technology like steel, copper and stone litho prints are now the stock in trade of many print studios.
I for one do not try to hold Art to a set number of approved processes.
 
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Terrywoodenpic said:
Digital enlargers have been used for this for some time. The ethics around how such hybrids should be called is ill defined, and like Glicee prints have come to inhabit the Art world since they were first introduced.
When circut cameras were invented and required large volume contact printing. Layered tissue contact printers were invented, they took considerable skill to use as exposure varied both across the field and verticallyand locally, but when successful, produced Identical prints.
When used for producing art prints the same tissue process was used.
All technology over time moves into the art world. Old, "new," technology like steel, copper and stone litho prints are now the stock in trade of many print studios.
I for one do not try to hold Art to a set number of approved processes.
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If something is advertised as a limited edition hand print, then I'd not expect it to be made from a digitally manipulated inter neg and nor would the people expected to pay the premium price for it. I'd expect a real silver negative, printed on real silver paper.. by hand.

Giclee prints... or inkjet prints in other words are of course accepted as a means of printing a digital file, or even a scanned negative. However.. something advertised as a limited edition black and white hand print should be just that. If all the dodging a burning was done on Photoshop, how is it a hand print? It may as well be a machine print as all the aspects that make a skilful print were not actually employed, but done by some Mac monkey instead. This is not about art being held to a number of approved processes... it's about the trade descriptions act :)



Giclee is just a word appropriated because snobs dislike the word "Inkjet".

"Giclée (/ʒiːˈkleɪ/ zhee-KLAY or /dʒiːˈkleɪ/) is a neologism coined in 1991 by printmaker
Jack Duganne for fine art digital prints made on inkjet printers. The name originally
applied to fine art prints created on IRIS printers in a process invented in the late
1980s but has since come to mean any inkjet print."

Giclee is a french word for "squirt". I can;t help but think Mr Duganne is just having a laugh.
 
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Of course I am aware of these things.
What distinguishes a Mac monkey using photoshop, and an artist making a copper etching. Or using photoshop as an intermediate stage in his print making, both are used to make repeat images.
As much as I like silver gelatine prints, I also recognise that the are only a medium for reproducing the work of an artist. The technician who makes the print can be praised for his skill but he is never recognised as the artist. (Unless he is the artist). The medium has no inherent merit.
 
Ok... I'd rather not have my thread messed up with an argument Terry. The difference between a Mac monkey doing it and a real black and white photographic printer doing it, is that one is dead hard and requires a huge amount of practice and dedication, and the other is dead easy and can be done by almost anyone with very little practice.

Please start another thread if you wish to discuss it further.
 
jerry12953 said:
My instinct told me that this project might work better in black and white, and now you've posted some b&w images, I'm more sure that it would!
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I really don;t wanna here that.... (sigh).... however, I simply can not ignore your point.
 
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