Enlarging without dodging.

Keith Tapscott. said:

You summed up my thoughts exactly. I'm beginning to regret posting the link to his blog now.

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Please don't. I think we've all learned some things — including how darkroom tutorials are shared in 2025 — and I think some discussion is meaningful. I've discovered that some people interpreted Andrew's article as "this is the way you must do things" and not simply a brief article discussing his own process, wishing to share something he does, with others. I'm honestly surprised that some have interpreted the post as they have, but I can also understand how his choice of language leaves room to be misinterpreted as "this is what you should do".

This illustrates one of the great hazards of publishing anything on the Internet: there will always be some people who don't like what is being offered to them or strongly disagree with it, and they are happy to engage with their community to complain about what they didn't like. It's the way our modern online life is now: maximum engagement has been built into the system and so that's what we often get: maximum enragement. Navigating that can be very frustrating and it wastes time and emotional energy. I quit all social media last year (I don't think of Flickr as social media, since it doesn't foster engagement in the same way) and I don't miss the bickering and pushing back and angry diatribes. But it's hard to avoid completely when you venture onto the Web.

albireo said:

Notice that nowhere in his piece does he preface any of the truisms above with an 'in my opinion'.

In my view, any tasteful criticism or commentary of this sort of zealotry is completely fair game.

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What makes me immensely sad is that I know Andrew and we have conversed many time in private, and he's a very gentle, kind, and thoughtful person, and I think he would be very hurt to think that anyone interpreted anything he wrote as "zealotry".

retina_restoration said:

What makes me immensely sad is that I know Andrew and we have conversed many time in private, and he's a very gentle, kind, and thoughtful person, and I think he would be very hurt to think that anyone interpreted anything he wrote as "zealotry".

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I'm sure many of us are much nicer individuals beneath the social media personas we choose to project!

I don't see zealotry in his article. I see an outline of how to attain his results, for those who are interested in doing similar. Everyone is free to disagree with it and, if you want different results or have a different way to get similar results, that's fine.

retina_restoration said:

What makes me immensely sad is that I know Andrew and we have conversed many time in private, and he's a very gentle, kind, and thoughtful person, and I think he would be very hurt to think that anyone interpreted anything he wrote as "zealotry".

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I have no problem believe this is the case. As I mentioned earlier (#49), misunderstandings have come not from the blogger itself but from the mode of communication. Bloggers write too fast, and write for impact and engagement. Visceral ractions from readers are kind of built into the system.

Again, the discussion about the necessity (or not) of printing and dodging is really interesting. It reminded me of this comment by Neil Selkirk, the only person autorized to print Diane Arbus' photos, which I've quoted in another thread:

"Allan [Arbus] introduced her to the process of mixing the proprietary Kodak print developers Dektol and Selectol-Sof in differing proportions in order to control contrast. At some point, she may have switched to the similar, more thoroughly controllable but time-consuming Beers developer. As the process of my trying to match precisely her prints proceeded, the most unexpected fact emerged, namely that she apparently never dodged or burned a print. The sole quality that she chose to exercise control over was contrast. Using contrast-controlling developer, all of Diane's prints sat happily on either Portriga 3 or 4... Again and again Diane's technique would enable me to effortlessly generate a print that would have won accolades from the academic printing establishment, only to have her comparison print command me to dilute the richness of the result. On the other hand, she would often print far harder than would optimise the rendering of the information in the negative."

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You could give a negative to 6 people and they would all print it differently, how they arrive at their desired print is up to them. Some like a quick low waste repeatable way, others enjoy trial and error and a bin full of prints. A lot of the advice you find on the net is confusing or misleading. Nicholas Linden (see pg. 1) gives a solid approach worth following in my humble opinion.

Keith Tapscott. said:

I'm beginning to regret posting the link to his blog now.

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As the others said - don't be. Criticism says something about the critic as much (or more so) than about the work that's being criticized. What's being criticized here is moreover one particular piece, which isn't yours and I don't think anyone would hold you responsible for whatever problem they have with it. To the contrary, since this is a discussion forum, what many of us like the most is a proper discussion, so we're by definition grateful to anyone offering something up to talk about.

retina_restoration said:

What makes me immensely sad is that I know Andrew and we have conversed many time in private, and he's a very gentle, kind, and thoughtful person, and I think he would be very hurt to think that anyone interpreted anything he wrote as "zealotry".

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Duly noted, and thanks for sharing that, too. It's all too easy to project an inaccurate image of the person behind the words we read. In doing so, it's all too easy to do injustice to them. You're right for pointing this out.

koraks said:

Duly noted, and thanks for sharing that, too. It's all too easy to project an inaccurate image of the person behind the words we read. In doing so, it's all too easy to do injustice to them. You're right for pointing this out.

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The unfortunate fact is that on the Internet, people say all kinds of hurtful things that they would never say to someone's face. That's something to keep in mind when you start writing something you're about to share with thousands of strangers on the Web.

retina_restoration said:

What makes me immensely sad is that I know Andrew and we have conversed many time in private, and he's a very gentle, kind, and thoughtful person, and I think he would be very hurt to think that anyone interpreted anything he wrote as "zealotry".

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Very sorry you feel this way and like others already said please don’t.
I was harsh but not against the person, against the blog concept in itself.
English is not my native language and I wish I could have all the nuances that I have in french.
A good friend of mine was teaching painting for years. When covid hit he suddenly had to teach painting classes online. Doing so by zoom and emails.
As a result he resigned because he couldn’t properly teach anything to his students. Keeping doing this would have been being part of a hoax as he used to say.

This is what I’m talking about. I have nothing against this man but the medium used.
I strongly believe that you learn this craft while doing it in the darkroom and that any literature or blog dont do much. Except maybe the desire to go to the darkroom.

koraks said:

I do want to apologize for the panties remark; responding with rudeness to earlier rudeness wasn't the correct way of handling the matter.

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BS, koraks. Perhaps it was due to shaky use of the English language, but you insulted Cliveh, and when he called your insult rediculous, you doubled down. Period.

You wrote...

'Necessity' is of course rather subjective in this context. Looking at the gallery of B&W images on your website, I personally would have applied burning and/or dodging to about 95% if I were to print them for presentation. That doesn't mean it's "necessary". Just that I think they could look even better that way. I have a feeling that the man who wrote this blog we're commenting on would have made the same argument.

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A photographer who is serious about their work prints it the way the best expresses what they wish to convey. To tell cliveh you could do a better job of conveying his emotions and other content of his images by simply doing a better job of burning and dodging is rude and simply rediculous. You abuse your position as a moderator.

Lol shame on you. Them’s thread locking words.

Vaughn said:

You abuse your position as a moderator.

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Vaughn said:

BS, koraks. Perhaps it was due to shaky use of the English language, but you insulted Cliveh, and when he called your insult rediculous, you doubled down. Period.

You wrote...


A photographer who is serious about their work prints it the way the best expresses what they wish to convey. To tell cliveh you could do a better job of conveying his emotions and other content of his images by simply doing a better job of burning and dodging is rude and simply rediculous. You abuse your position as a moderator.

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I didn't read it that way at all. There could have been a hint of sexism in referring to "panties" getting twisted, but I went back and looked, and @koraks initially said underwear, not panties.