Ok since you are enjoying it and its Saturday Morning and nobodys here to bother me **Dinesh**I will add a few more thoughts for printers .
Too many people are trying to make the perfect print, perfect neg or at least that is my take on things over the last few years reading on APUG.
When I first started my small company , I was trying to compete in a very tough marketplace with some good printers already established and I thought the road was to make prints of perfection..
What I found out quite quickly that my clients had the final say and seemed to like something just a bit different than I did. They did not care if I left an inperfection , hot spot , dead spot in the print.
So I started this policy, and it really pissed off my competition.. for every 16x20 print that someone ordered I would make three, two I would just give them.
But the two I gave them for free were different from the first print I sold, I would force myself to get what I thought the client would like.. then take a few moments and make two **sometimes totally different takes on the final** What I found was two things ,, since I have a frame shop all three prints usually got framed and over time it was not always the first image that people liked.
IMO-Good printing is a frame of mind that you get into , its not a series of notes and tempeture checks.
Good practice is advised but once you are under the lens anything and everything should be an option. For lith printing I use tissue alot on the paper under the lens, try warping plexiglass during an exposure see what happens. Use your dodging tool as a burning tool , gives fantastic vignettes if you hold the interest spot to the tone you like.
Print on grade 5 and flash with 00 , you may be suprised on how that looks
Print on grade 00 and just put a hint of 5 black in your picture ,, keep it on the light side and you have created a wonderful image.***I learned this one from Les Mclean who I consider one of the great printers of the last 50 years.
When making contact sheets of your work,, make experiments with darker and lighter contacts ,, 1/2 stop 1 stop even more. Critically look at your work and you will see some interesting images that you would have glossed over trying to make the perfect print.
Since day one of printing I prefer to do full test of any negative, when I am showing people how to print I will make test strips , but when I am alone I only do full sheets.
I thought I was the only one doing this until in the mid 90's I read an article
in View camera by MAS who described the outflanking method that he uses in making prints.. you learn things by looking at mistakes.
Contour Printing, New coccine on negatives, bleaching negatives, stripping out tones in negatives are all old practices that I have tried , with some success or faillure , but each method brings more weapons to your arsonal of working methods under the lens.
Anyone like Lillian Bass work, Yosef Karshes prints, Joel Peter prints.. Jerry Ullseman, Man Ray prints?? the list goes on and on.
After seeing Sebastio Salgados work at the George Eastman House I was convinced that print perfection is not all what we think it is, there must be emotion in the print that matches the image.
It was a experience I will never forget when I saw people weeping over images , that were exhibited and for what its worth the prints were great, but not exceptional or perfect.
Man Ray... now he is something to talk about.. I think all printers who want to be better should try making prints or images with no negatives and experiment with materials and see how light goes through them and lands on the paper..
Photograms on Steroids
Imagine on your enlarger a swing in device that is adjustable in height , may be glass , maybe plexi , may be tissue, maybe ** you fill in the blanks** during a series of exposues you lay things on to affect areas of the print ,, may be gels , may be nose hairs, may be whatever.
As I point out the device is adjustable so you can match the print size and as well use this for feathering. I think this device would be a wonderful way of making enlarged prints but adding the element of Man Rays crazy optics.
I'm enjoying this... should be made a sticky with Cheryl's advice to aspiring photogs.
