How do you define a 'master printer'?

[jcoldslabs]

Bill,

To take your music analogy further, most musicians don't master or engineer their own recordings. They play the instrument (or sing the song) but they rely on someone else's expertise to perfect the sound or craft a sonic palette that is what they want. Those skill sets--musician and engineer--are rarely bound up in the same person.

Jonathan

 

[Mark Fisher]

Taking is everything, as once the image is captured; printing or any other manipulation of the negative to print is of infinite variation within time. Only capture rules supreme. Hence HCB should not be considered in the context of printing.

I think folks like Ansel Adams, John Sexton, Tim Rudman, Eugene Smith and Bruce Barnbaum might disagree. Their interpretation in printing was/is integral to their art.

 

[gandolfi]

In the middle ages in Europe under the trade guild system a "master" was one who taught indentured apprentices their trade, because only masters were allowed by the guilds to practice the trades.

Wow... so here in Denmark, we are still in the middle ages, as we still have that. (called "Mesterlære" as "Master teaching")..

 

[MDR]

Gandolfi/Emil at least you're in good company in Austria we still have the Meisterlehre (Master Teaching) as well as in Germany and some other european countries from the middle ages.

 

[gandolfi]

 

[garysamson]

My selection of master printers in the fine art photography world would include Paul Strand, Carleton Watkins, Bret Weston, Kipton Kummler, Dick Arentz, John Sexton, Bruce Barnbaum, and George Tice to name a few. Their knowledge and implementation of photographic craft and technique allows them to fully realize their individual and distinctive visions as artists.

 

[Jim Jones]

Taking is everything, as once the image is captured; printing or any other manipulation of the negative to print is of infinite variation within time. Only capture rules supreme. . . .

Sometimes this has been true. When Kodachrome was King, we had to get it right in the camera. There was no postprocessing. Of course what was the right transparancy depended on the ultimate use. The projection equipment and the darkness of the room in which they were projected shoud be considered at the moment of exposure for the best results. Transparancies exposed for printing might not be ideal for projection.

 

[Maris]

Within the small world of black and white negatives projected onto gelatin-silver paper I must be a master. After some decades of practice I can generate photographs that deliver anything possible within the technical constraints of a given negative and a given paper. I am sure that there are many many people in APUG who do this routinely.

 

[MattKing]

The well-known Ansel Adams quote respecting the print being a performance, and the negative being the score, is what I think about when I think of "Master" printers.

I know I have always enjoyed discussing with other printers the options available. In particular, discussing the creative printing options available to help bring out the different possibilities of a negative.