Never seen a whole book dedicated solely to D&B but Tim Rudman's " The Photographer's Master Printing Course is as comprehensive a book as I have seen about all aspects of printing. It contains an excellent piece of advice. It say that in addition to the book you need two other things. A waste bin for the mistakes that you learn from and lots of paper. The other essentials can't be bought. It's time and desire to practice.
I agree with pu that Tim Rudman's book is excellent. I also found that these were useful on dodging and burning:
Creative Elements: Landscape Photography (by Eddie Ephraums)
Larry Bartlett's Black and White Photographic Printing Workshop
These two books basically go through the procedures they used to print several different negatives. Extensive dodging and burning being crucial to many of the images.
If you can find a copy of Lootens on Photographic Enlarging and Print Quality
Amphoto revised 1969 It is about as complete a primer on dodging and burning, and a host of other techniques that are being rediscovered today, as you will find anywhere He included examples,diagrams and set ups for different techniques. And as well as some sage advice to novice photographers and printers
Amazon .com carries quite a few of them
All the books mentioned here are excellent, I have them all but my personal favourite is Larry Bartlett's book. He was a master craftsman and this well written book describes his methods very well.
John Blakemore's Black and White Photography Workshop. Not only a comprehensive book on the subject, but he uses his own masterful pictures. John, Emeritus Professor of Photography Derby University, taught a generation of photographers to print. It is in print and available from the usual places.
hope this helps
Alex
Printing techniques are relatively easy to learn and easily executed with a little practice. The difficult part is knowing when and where to use them. This of course depends on your vision for your particular print. I'm not sure a technical manual could help you here. Honing your understanding of a good print is best accomplished by looking at a lot of exhibition quality prints.
Pierods, let me suggest adding this to your repertoire: Per Volquartz taught me that the warmth of your fingers can be used to selectively accelerate development over parts of a print (and thus darken it) while it develops. Since trying it, I almost never burn any more. You can see the difference almost in real time as you go. It is a good thing for small areas.
Pierods, let me suggest adding this to your repertoire: Per Volquartz taught me that the warmth of your fingers can be used to selectively accelerate development over parts of a print (and thus darken it) while it develops. Since trying it, I almost never burn any more. You can see the difference almost in real time as you go. It is a good thing for small areas.
thanks, ive heard of (and tried!) breathing on the print, but i ran out of breath at one point. didnt occur to me body heat gives the same result. =) will have to try that sometime soon.