Please check out the Hybrid Photo Group on APUG

dwross2

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Hi All,

I honestly don't know if the "Hand Coated Wet Prints" sub-forum is so quiet because DPUG is the wrong forum for the discussions, or if it's because actual print making is becoming a rare (a)vocation, but regardless, not much is going on here. Sean Ross, owner of this site and APUG, has made the Hybrid Photo Group on APUG easily accessible and public (it was "private".) It can be linked from the home page (English forums) or Groups. The direct address is (there was a url link here which no longer exists).

Please join.
d
 
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pschwart

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I checked out that APUG page which says:

This group is for traditional film photographers who want to discuss:
1. Scanning film or prints
2. Photo editing of scanned files to make digital negatives for contact printing, post images for web presentation, or prepare for wet printing (chromogenic prints for example)
3. Inkjet printer based negatives for wet traditional or historical contact printing
4. Wet printing using laser or LED printers like a Lambda or OCE LightJet on traditional wet process papers

I guess this means APUG now loves hybrid as long as the image doesn't originate as a digital capture.
This was supposed to be DPUG territory, so maybe this is a tacit admission that almost all of the posts on DPUG are about digital cameras and scanning. That leaves just discussions about digital cameras and lenses exclusively in the domain of DPUG, and do we really need another site for that?


 
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dwross2

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Hi Philip,

I guess hope springs eternal with me. I don't know where all the alt process printers hang out these days. I know it's not here. A bit of time ago you said this and you were right:

"Only 10 postings in the Hand Coated Wet Prints forum for all of 2013. Unless you want to join the endless discussions about scanning and digital negatives, there is not much here that bears directly on printmaking. The opportunity exists, but I guess printmakers are reluctant to post when they know their activities are of of only passing interest to the majority."

I really hope that the Hybrid Photo Group on APUG will attract oldtimers and newcomers to alt process printing. Fingers crossed. Except for digital camera capture, the Group guidelines will allow comprehensive conversations. (And, I can't imagine too many people objecting if a question about digital negs from a digital camera comes up.)

d
 

pschwart

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The carbon group owned by Sandy King sees regular posts about carbon technique and prints, but it's only about carbon. There is also the Bostick & Sullivan site that currently doesn't see a lot of traffic, but has always been focused on process and printmaking, not hardware.
 
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dwross2

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"currently doesn't see a lot of traffic" is probably the rule rather than the exception. Forums may be coming to the end of their shelf life (at least as something besides bully pulpits.) It happens. To everything a season.
 

pschwart

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So why do you think those folks don't post their images on DPUG? It's nice to see the images, but for me, Facebook is too unstructured for really in-depth sharing.
 

David A. Goldfarb

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There are lots of people on facebook and not so many following forums in the way they did when APUG started, so I think that for some people, facebook is just the easiest place to get to these days. Eventually it will be replaced by something else. The "unstructured" aspect of means that each user can create their own structure by controlling who their contacts are, what pages they follow, what their privacy settings are, and how much they want to see of another user's feed. To do this successfully, however, requires constant attention to one's settings, friends list, etc., and people who think that "internet=facebook" more or less, probably don't have the wherewithal to do that, so a lot of it comes across as relatively freeform.
 

pschwart

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I'd say there is something else going on -- typing "dpug" isn't a lot more difficult than typing "fb." And as you said, maintaining one's facebook account requires more effort -- a forum is structured to take care of most of the housekeeping for participants. My guess is that the number of people seriously interested in the craft is pretty small; most just want to post a few images and take their bows without a serious exchange.
 

RalphLambrecht

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I checked it out once but was disappointed because ,I have a ddifferent understanding of'hybrid.to me hybrid starts with digital and end with analog.scanning a negative is not hybrid to me.digital negatives,onthe other hand, are,
allthe bestor better yet: any workflow combinin analog and digital techniques to get the best ou of both worldswould count but,I like to end up with a wet print.
 

RalphLambrecht

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I like to see the APUGlogin to work on all of Sean's excellent forums;maybe a special subcription price for all.I spend a lot of time switching from one forom to the next and many questions would benefit from digital and analog experts with some almost ideal for a hybrid audience. the split is not helping anyone it's hurting in my opinion.
 
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dwross2

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I think Ralph has nailed it. The split personality aspect isn't working very well. And, dpug posters have almost no interest in talking about darkroom prints. Hopefully, the hybrid group on APUG will. But, really, in the last couple of weeks on APUG, all barriers to 'talking digital' seem to have fallen. It's hard to know where either site will end up.
 

jimcollum

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I guess there's another forum needed then. For those of us who do digital (and film) capture, and wish to produce analog prints (silver, platinum, gum, carbon.. etc).. and who have no desire to produce inkjet.

I don't post in Apug anymore.. after a while, having one's work marginalized (you know those 'clever' words.. phauxtography, pixelography, etc) wore me down. I'd rather discuss work among people who would at least start off a discussion giving the benefit of a doubt that the work was actually valid.
 

David A. Goldfarb

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What seems odd to me is that the original idea of DPUG was that it was supposed to be open to all kinds of digital hybrid work--D->A, A->D, A->D->A, and to all digital work informed by an analogue sensibility (i.e., APUG members committed to film, but also working in digital). At the beginning, it seemed mostly to attract people producing alt-process prints with digital internegs or from digital originals, which was great, and then when people started talking about inkjet prints, the hybrid alt-process printers were turned off, as if they couldn't exist in the same space as those people producing prints with a machine. While I can understand that these are two different sensibilities, there is a certain amount of overlapping content and even combinations of techniques (like platinum over inkjet pigment), and if one must, it's easy enough to turn off subforums one finds uninteresting.

So maybe indeed many separate forums are needed for different kinds of hybrid and digital photography, but I see it as unfortunate.
 

pschwart

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Most alt process printers make inkjets, too. The issue for me is there has been almost no discussion about *any* kind of printing. Sure, one could always fixate on cameras and lenses, but in the digital universe there is so much more hardware and software to serve as distractions. The endless discussions about scanning, what's in your bag, which camera should I buy, film vs digital, yada yada have supplanted discussion of things specifically photographic. I get it -- the number of alt/hybrid practitioners is tiny compared to the number of digital afficionados, so hybridphoto became dpug, but that killed the uniqueness of the site. DPUG certainly accomodates posts about hybrid but there are almost none; folks could have posted digital topics on hybridphoto but generally chose not to. So there you have it -- I suspect no one wants to feel marginalized by creating posts not of interest to most participants.
 

jtk

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Interesting line of thinking from ancient times !

Here's a toast to the thinkers who have given us Photrio !
 
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