Hi Thomas
thanks for the good plugs,
I was lucky to see some of Thomas and Andrew Moxams*sp* lith prints at photostock and they were really, really good.
I have seen Tim Rudmans live prints here at Elevator and all I can say they are all good and beautiful.
My paticular path follows the Mike Spry, Anton Corbjin style. I love this style ,the longer times higher dilutions route give's a complete different image / colour gamut than what I prefer. But for me the enlarger, focus, tissue effects always come into play,,, take some thick plexi lay on a blow torch melt it and add cut ups of nuetral density.. it all is good.
I tried for years to make the perfect print and really got caught up in the tone on paper game. In fact I was chasing magic bullets.
My eyes were opened up for me during a very troubling point in my life, 1998, I was two years into a very messy relationship, I started drinking and around that time I discovered Star Trax , a book by Anton Corbjin which was printed by Mike Spry from Downtown Darkroom in the UK.
It completley blew me away and I started lith printing.
A client of mine from California, sent me a set of twenty negatives and paid me up front to make a portfolio for her and there was no restrictions on what I sent back and she paid me double my going rate for lith prints.
As I said at that time I was drinking and just in a plain shitty mood, I took the negs into the darkroom, cranked up the volumne of heavy metal and basically drank and printed for 12 straight hours.. no test, no drydown inspection, just plain out crazyness.
five or six prints per image and each one totally different. lights were rarely on and at the end of the day had over 100 11x14 lith prints that to the purist would not have been washed.
Next day with a massive hangover, I spotted the prints, packaged the prints, sent them off via fedx and started praying that I would ever work for her again.
Well 10 years later she is still sending me work , in fact I printed lith for her last weekend, now she is in New York, doing very well.
Bottom line to this ramble, she loved the work, her portfolio was different, She went on to win Juno's and a Grammy for her photographic work, and I learned a valuable lesson. We do not print grey scales or wedges to hang on a wall , We print images, and a perfect print will never be made , because there is no such thing.
I like Thomas do not eat big macs unless your buying, but prefer a diet with variety. I think getting over the master print idea completely changed my printing life and I recommend everyone to play , play and play with their images and forget the stepwedges and microwaves to see .
Personally I am to itchyof a printer to wait the twenty minutes some of you do for your lith , but I compensate on a standard setup with bizarre enlarger work.
By the way I still drink, with moderation, but if ever the chance came again to go absolutely nuts on a big job you can bet I will.
I should have added that with the smaller volumes used by most, it doesn't take as many prints as Bob is doing to get the developer 'aged' and nice looking.
Bob, I really like your approach of fun and not worrying so much about exact color, but rather going for the mood of the scene. It totally reverberates with my own philosophy. I don't know if you agree, but I think perfect is kinda boring. Always knowing what to expect is like eating at McDonalds every day. Not very exciting.
- Thomas