Advanced printing techniques a la Stephen Shore

[CB_]

So today on set I was discussing darkroom printing with someone, and they mentioned they had a friend who took a class taught by Stephen Shore at college. He tells me that supposedly Shore taught a unique printing technique where he balanced out each color individually (making a pure magenta print, and then a pure yellow print), and then combined the filtration from both for the final image. Now my first thought here is that this makes no sense and is a product of a game of telephone, but it does beg the question - does such a printing technique exist? And if so what's the specific technique and benefits to printing this way? Sounds similar to additive printing, but doesn't quite hit the mark, and it wasn't dye transfer either; I asked.

 

[Neal]

This is nothing but a wild guess but he might have been doing additive printing. I built a little filter holder for red, green and blue dichroic filters. and tried it once years ago. It was more work to become competent than I was willing to do.

 

[Chuck_P]

Sounds like split grade printing.

 

[pentaxuser]

So is this method a full magenta test strip print( Gr 5 equivalent) and then a full yellow one (Gr 0 equivalent) then using the best times for each of the M and Y?

If so then surely it is just normal split grade printing as Chuck P says except for using Y and M instead of Ilford MG filters?

pentaxuser

 

[MattKing]

Most likely the OP is referring to colour printing.
Much of Stephen Shore's early, well known work was printed with dye transfer materials, so I'm surprised that isn't it.

 

[Vaughn]

Since he was also working with dye-transfer, I can see why he might approach RA4 printing the same way....visually working with single color layers. Interesting. One would develop an eye for judging a single color's intensity.

 

[Sirius Glass]

Sounds like split grade printing.

In color

 

[Don_ih]

There is also the possibility, since he was teaching, that he was demonstrating the range of effect of filtration. You need to understand why the test print looks the way it does in order to adjust the filtration to make it better. He could have been showing the extremes.

I can't see any benefit to doing it routinely - other than a quick way to fill up your trash can.

 

[pentaxuser]

It just seems strange that if this method to achieve colour balance was taught at a college to presumably dozens if not 100s of students that it never seems to have got enough "exposure" to be spoken of and written about

I have found a few of his videos but none, including an hour's worth of a conversation between him and the interviewer seem to mention anything of his printing technique

pentaxuser

 

[gone]

From a painting perspective, or any form of art really, we should keep the colors balanced. Some colors have a lot of intensity, some don't. You should use complimentary colors too, if possible. Just get a simple color wheel and you will quickly see how this plays out. You want to avoid any areas that might result in black too, as black will kill all the other colors. Black isn't a color, it's a complete lack of color, it absorbs all the colors of the light spectrum and reflects none of them back to the viewer.

Adding to this difficulty is knowing whether you're working w/ additive color or subtractive colors. Dye is opaque, so you will see the other color(s) that are laid down either on top of it or below it. Add too much and you kill the color again.

Then there's the mixing of light colors. That's something completely different because they're not reflected by whatever base you're using. You could drive yourself nuts in short order w/ all this, but after a while you start to know when the colors "look" right. If they look right, then they are right.

 

[CB_]

So is this method a full magenta test strip print( Gr 5 equivalent) and then a full yellow one (Gr 0 equivalent) then using the best times for each of the M and Y?

If so then surely it is just normal split grade printing as Chuck P says except for using Y and M instead of Ilford MG filters?

pentaxuser

This is for color printing, not black and white

 

[pentaxuser]

This is for color printing, not black and white

Thanks With the posts of others that had become clear. What I was hoping for was some source that put some flesh on the bones of your opening post i.e. gave answers to my #9

pentaxuser

 

[DREW WILEY]

Since when was Stephen Shore an advanced color printer? He certainly took some iconic shots, but mostly had his prints done commercially. His own prints sure weren't exceptional at all. It was all geared to Ektcolor printing. I've never seen a Shore related DT print. Are you confusing him with Meyerowitz, Matt, who did have his early street work done DT, and even now, being reissued DT, but none of his own view camera work. Both depended on the idiosyncrasies or signature look of old Vericolor L film, combined with Ektacolor, which was comparatively and deliberately undersaturated compared to what DT offered.

Now for the original question - yes, it is possible to make color prints via tedious SEQUENTIAL RGB exposures. It's an efficient route to the insane asylum. I personally have a couple high-output SIMULTANEOUS RGB colorheads, which instantly expose slightly cleaner color than traditional CMY colorheads, which I have too. Dye transfer is unrelated, and is an "assembly printing" method requiring three or more separate transfers of color dye to a specially mordanted sheet of receiver paper - overall, a complex expensive process.

 

[CB_]

Since when was Stephen Shore an advanced color printer? He certainly took some iconic shots, but mostly had his prints done commercially. His own prints sure weren't exceptional at all. It was all geared to Ektcolor printing. I've never seen a Shore related DT print. Are you confusing him with Meyerowitz, Matt, who did have his early street work done DT, and even now, being reissued DT, but none of his own view camera work. Both depended on the idiosyncrasies or signature look of old Vericolor L film, combined with Ektacolor, which was comparatively and deliberately undersaturated compared to what DT offered.

I agree with your point and also thought most of hit prints were done commercially. No confusion about the person though - Shore currently teaches at Bard

 

[DREW WILEY]

The big NYC city lab that did most of Shore's C prints also offered DT's, but his own color palette wasn't geared to that process at all. Eggleston had a lot of DT prints made there. I saw some of Shore's own 8x10 contact C prints when he was just getting traction. OK. That's about it. One doesn't go to him for exciting printmaking techniques. Don't know how his work is reproduced now. Most have switched to inkjet, for better or worse. Eggleston's redos onto inkjet are like drinking Folger's instant coffee after Starbucks - quite a letdown. But only one place in the world is still seriously doing commercial dye transfer work.

 

[MattKing]

Are you confusing him with Meyerowitz, Matt, who did have his early street work done DT, and even now, being reissued DT, but none of his own view camera work.

The only Stephen Shore work I've seen in person, are the prints in the collection of the Vancouver Art Gallery. Most of them are labelled by the gallery with a term I understand refers to dye transfer, but perhaps I am mistaken.

 

[halfaman]

Perhaps is this, the old way to do color prints without an enlarger color head. And yes, it is very tedious.

 

[koraks]

Additive RGB isn't new - in fact, it's as old as color, I suppose.

What I find interesting/fascinating is the notion that a printer would make separate C, M and Y prints, judge/optimize them separately, and then make an additive print using the obtained exposures. I never heard of anyone doing it, but it's a fascinating concept all the same. But I'm not bored enough to try it out, I'm afraid...

 

[DREW WILEY]

That sequential CMY route could be hypothetically made to work, but whyyyyy? Sequential additive works on pure RGB. But CMY always involves some white light spillover because its subtractive. You wouldn't gain a thing by doing it sequentially rather than all at once. With additive, doing simultaneous is an engineering issue due to the much greater density of the filters involved. Sequential additive was therefore the preliminary mode. In its earliest fashion, once panchromatic film was invented, it involved three separate film exposure through deep R,G.B, then three aligned carbon act projectors respectively equipped with RBG filters. Must have been stunning slide shows - I heard an old-timer describe them once - but also very slow and no doubt in uncomfortably hot rooms due to those carbon arc bulbs.

But I doubt Shore was actually recommending any CMY step by step approach. Maybe he fiddled with it once early on, just to find out. Once he could afford to, he farmed out his enlarging work to a commercial outfit. A master printer he was not. Few of those 70's-color types were. They relied on labs.

 

[pentaxuser]

It sounds as if no-one knows enough about the lecture(s) referred to in order to say what Mr Shore was actually referring to in those lectures

Maybe he was referring to the Greg Davis video but wasn't wearing the Greg D's outfit when he lectured which might explain why it lacked impact

pentaxuser