I'm looking for some thoughts people might have.
I've been making pictures with film since my dad set up a darkroom in our bathroom when I was 12. I went the usual route via scanning negatives and inkjet printing and a decade or so ago picked up an LRPS along the way (more of which later). After emigrating to NZ three years ago I decided to move properly to Platinum printing after having dabbled some years ago, and set up a room for the purpose.
I set things up, sourced paper and have a lot of support from a well-established Platinum printer in the US (including tutoring via Skype). I've printed on Stonehenge and Cranes brushed with Oxalic acid, moved from rods to the fabled magic brush, and played with Na2 and good old solutions 1 and 2. I've struggled with weak blacks and muddy highlights and finally, after many many sheets of paper and copious amounts of precious metals, settling on Platine, a humidifier and hygrometer, I get prints that consistently have black blacks and white whites (without becoming flat) and a smooth tonal range in-between. They may not be great photographs, but technically they basically work and I like them (so does my partner, but she may be biased). But they are Platinum prints, so put them alongside my old inkjets they are softer tonally and appear to lack a degree of contrast (even though the blacks are definitely black and the whites definitely white - at least as white as the paper goes).
So against my better judgement I put 15 prints in for an ARPS - the feedback, all twenty words or so, was basically not enough contrast and I was advised to put the prints under the UV light longer. I did complain, but the reply told me they were experts and they'd never heard of me so I was wrong.
I've previously had issues with the RPS approach of "we're experts, we were appointed by experts which makes us experts, and if your pictures don't look like ours they aren't good", but was persuaded to persevere with the LRPS a decade or so ago and managed to swallow my arrogance and produce pictures they liked.
The problem I have is this. I don't really know how to get reliable input. I don't think feedback suggesting, essentially, that my prints don't have enough contrast will help, and suggesting more time under UV as a "solution" really is nonsense. I also like my pictures - I'm on a journey and want to develop (excuse the pun) but I prefer the work I do now to anything I've done in my 30-odd years as a photographer. It may still be rubbish, I know that, but I do have strong ideas about what I think I want my pictures to be. The photographer I've been getting advice from suggested I should rely on my own judgement and the relationship between inkjet/silver to platinum is like oil painting is to watercolour, a totally different aesthetic. I can't help feeling a bit bruised by the dismissive RPS folk though and I think I really need some good input, but I really don't know where best to go.
Anyway, if anyone has read to the end of this I really would welcome thoughts
I've been making pictures with film since my dad set up a darkroom in our bathroom when I was 12. I went the usual route via scanning negatives and inkjet printing and a decade or so ago picked up an LRPS along the way (more of which later). After emigrating to NZ three years ago I decided to move properly to Platinum printing after having dabbled some years ago, and set up a room for the purpose.
I set things up, sourced paper and have a lot of support from a well-established Platinum printer in the US (including tutoring via Skype). I've printed on Stonehenge and Cranes brushed with Oxalic acid, moved from rods to the fabled magic brush, and played with Na2 and good old solutions 1 and 2. I've struggled with weak blacks and muddy highlights and finally, after many many sheets of paper and copious amounts of precious metals, settling on Platine, a humidifier and hygrometer, I get prints that consistently have black blacks and white whites (without becoming flat) and a smooth tonal range in-between. They may not be great photographs, but technically they basically work and I like them (so does my partner, but she may be biased). But they are Platinum prints, so put them alongside my old inkjets they are softer tonally and appear to lack a degree of contrast (even though the blacks are definitely black and the whites definitely white - at least as white as the paper goes).
So against my better judgement I put 15 prints in for an ARPS - the feedback, all twenty words or so, was basically not enough contrast and I was advised to put the prints under the UV light longer. I did complain, but the reply told me they were experts and they'd never heard of me so I was wrong.
I've previously had issues with the RPS approach of "we're experts, we were appointed by experts which makes us experts, and if your pictures don't look like ours they aren't good", but was persuaded to persevere with the LRPS a decade or so ago and managed to swallow my arrogance and produce pictures they liked.
The problem I have is this. I don't really know how to get reliable input. I don't think feedback suggesting, essentially, that my prints don't have enough contrast will help, and suggesting more time under UV as a "solution" really is nonsense. I also like my pictures - I'm on a journey and want to develop (excuse the pun) but I prefer the work I do now to anything I've done in my 30-odd years as a photographer. It may still be rubbish, I know that, but I do have strong ideas about what I think I want my pictures to be. The photographer I've been getting advice from suggested I should rely on my own judgement and the relationship between inkjet/silver to platinum is like oil painting is to watercolour, a totally different aesthetic. I can't help feeling a bit bruised by the dismissive RPS folk though and I think I really need some good input, but I really don't know where best to go.
Anyway, if anyone has read to the end of this I really would welcome thoughts