Why alternative processes?

[sly]

Oh, aren’t we a passionate bunch!
For me it is about being hands on, about putting my time and physical being into the process.

I was gifted with a bread machine once, but after trying it out, it just sat until I re-gifted it. What was the point of making bread if I wasn’t going to beat the sponge, sprinkle flour on the counter, get dough under my fingernails, and use my muscles to turn a pile of stickiness into a springy globe? The resulting bread may not be differentiated by others, but is much more satisfying to me.

Both silver printing and alt processes do the same thing for me - I’m doing it, not some machine that I push a few buttons on.

 

[Bob Carnie]

Oh I am sorry. I meant the OP. He said he scan the 4x5 neg then made digital negative before making prints. Why can't he print directly from the 4x5 negative?

I think this sentence sums it up for me by the OP... I've been making kallitypes for about a year and a half, using digital negatives made from scanned 4x5 negatives. It occurs to me that I could make inkjet prints that look as good or better than the kallitypes, with better tonal range and (almost) as much archival permanence. So why do it?

I think the OP may need to spend more time with researching the materials we use before asking this question. He or she can make wet prints from the original negative, but I think the difference in materials is something he or she should spend more time investigating.


Though I do not make Kallitypes I do make silver, pt pd and gum and with each of these processes the image resides within the paper not sitting on top like an inkjet.... Though I do inkjets for a living , and do not knock the process in any way, they do not look anything like an alt print but have their own beauty..... regarding (almost) archival permanence statement comparing the noble metals, pure pigment in gum, and silver I am very much on the fence regarding inkjets permanence.. How may people remember the Manufactures ads (they all did it from there perspective marketing depts) telling us the materials will last... C prints suck in that catagorey, so too Cibachromes.. We have seen RC Prints de silver in frames, and the first inkjet prints are all faded. To believe Harmon, Kodak and Fuji claims and now Canon, Epson about their (not 20 year old products) is IMO not reliable sources of permanence info but rather would go to sources like (Wilheim or Arrenburg sp ?)
This is a very old topic that is much like the question Can I make more money using a digital camera vs a film camera?? I now feel its time to stop commenting on this topic as I believe you either get it or you don't . I am pretty confident about the reasons
I would chose one material and process over the other, as I have been chasing process now for quite a few years.

 

[Chan Tran]

I think this sentence sums it up for me by the OP... I've been making kallitypes for about a year and a half, using digital negatives made from scanned 4x5 negatives. It occurs to me that I could make inkjet prints that look as good or better than the kallitypes, with better tonal range and (almost) as much archival permanence. So why do it?

I think the OP may need to spend more time with researching the materials we use before asking this question. He or she can make wet prints from the original negative, but I think the difference in materials is something he or she should spend more time investigating.


Though I do not make Kallitypes I do make silver, pt pd and gum and with each of these processes the image resides within the paper not sitting on top like an inkjet.... Though I do inkjets for a living , and do not knock the process in any way, they do not look anything like an alt print but have their own beauty..... regarding (almost) archival permanence statement comparing the noble metals, pure pigment in gum, and silver I am very much on the fence regarding inkjets permanence.. How may people remember the Manufactures ads (they all did it from there perspective marketing depts) telling us the materials will last... C prints suck in that catagorey, so too Cibachromes.. We have seen RC Prints de silver in frames, and the first inkjet prints are all faded. To believe Harmon, Kodak and Fuji claims and now Canon, Epson about their (not 20 year old products) is IMO not reliable sources of permanence info but rather would go to sources like (Wilheim or Arrenburg sp ?)
This is a very old topic that is much like the question Can I make more money using a digital camera vs a film camera?? I now feel its time to stop commenting on this topic as I believe you either get it or you don't . I am pretty confident about the reasons
I would chose one material and process over the other, as I have been chasing process now for quite a few years.

I don't know about the Kallitypes, in fact this is the first time I heard about it. I though if someone has a darkroom then making a print from a 4x5 negative is easy enough and would produce the best quality in my opinion. It's OK too to scan the negative and make inkjet print if one doesn't want to deal with wet printing. But making a digital negative doesn't make sense to me because I believe digital negative is made via inkjet printer and thus there is no way a print made from it can be any better than the inkjet print.

 

[railwayman3]

I think that it's really like the difference between someone taking a shot of a scene on their smartphone, while someone else will spend 2-3 hours making a watercolor painting of the same scene. Both are happy with their result, it's not that one way is intrinsically better than the other, just two ways of getting pleasure from their visit, their time, their interests and their memories.

 

[pschwart]

Inkjets have their place, but they don't come close to mimicking most alt processes. We celebrate the craft and technologies of alt processes, and they also provide a vastly expanded palette of effects that we can use for expressive purposes. A fine alt process print shows the hand of the artist in a way that an inkjet cannot.

Bear with me while I play devil's advocate. I've been making kallitypes for about a year and a half, using digital negatives made from scanned 4x5 negatives. It occurs to me that I could make inkjet prints that look as good or better than the kallitypes, with better tonal range and (almost) as much archival permanence. So why do it?

I like being back in the darkroom again. I like the physicality of the process. I like the difficulty of coating the paper, the anticipation of seeing if it turned out. I like the story I can tell my friends of going back to a 19th-century process. But does the print have any more value? If you can't tell it from an inkjet (except, perhaps, with a 10X loupe) does it have more actual value as an art object? Am I like those guys in their woodshops, making and painting little whirligigs and then trying to sell them, when the fun is in the making, not the having?

Am I like the Instagrammers with their filters, pasting Art over my images to give them more pizazz? Much of museum-grade fine-art photography is about the artist's concept, not the image (which can be stunningly mundane). Am I like that, making prints because of the story I can tell, or because the doing of it is fun? Obviously, in any hobby we're doing it for fun, but I want to produce something whose value justifies the extra work.

I'm not just trolling here. This is a real question for me. What do you think about this? Why do you use alternative processes?
Tom

 

[ced]

Bob try using a greyscale and colour guide alongside to keep track of the reproduction. I guess you are familiar with the method.

 

[removed account4]

NLOL ( nervous laugh out loud )
i don't even know what alternative process is anymore because
to some using film and paper, or paper negatives is considered alternative process.
whatever it is i am doing i enjoy because i find it to be fun
its nice to make something out of thin air and at time
while it seems like a parlor trick, or like i am some illusionist sawing someone in half
i enjoy doing it and dont' really get tired of opening the can after film fixes, or when an image appears inthe
developer
or ... coating paper by hand and doing something with it, whiether it is a silver print and SVG or a cyanotype that i just rinse..
its fun ...
and i think that is why people do anything, cause its fun ..

 

[Peter Schrager]

I just did a ziatype workshop with Anne eder..
At digital silver imaging in boston...you can make so many color variations with this process...after 50 years I'm still fascinated to see an image come up on a piece if paper
Most of the attendees were using digital negatives. .photography is at a better place today than ever before...get your hands dirty
And have fun..did I say fun?? Yup

 

[Bob Carnie]

Bob try using a greyscale and colour guide alongside to keep track of the reproduction. I guess you are familiar with the method.

Colour Balance and Density is not the issue... the issue is the physicality of the actual alt print is quite different on many levels, even holding a gum over palladium on heavy HPRag paper is a delight, I never get that rush holding C prints , Cibachromes , or Inkjet Prints.

 

[jtk]

There are a number of differences between photography-as-image-making and photography-as-print-making.

 

[Bob Carnie]

There are a number of differences between photography-as-image-making and photography-as-print-making.

Indeed there is , but the OP is asking why alternative process.

 

[jtk]

Permanence of Gum and Palladium definitely out trump inkjets .

That is an untested, unproven marketing assertion.

Inkjet prints can be virtually eternal, if one wants, due to the nature of the digital file that produces them...the file and the print are parts of the same phenomenon. The inkjet print can be a perfect expression of the file. Inkjet prints made ten years ago are often fading due to the early inks, but there's zero evidence of that with today's Epson and Canon pigments.

 

[Bob Carnie]

Well the same could be said about Gum and Palladium as being virtually eternal...... I just finished seeing a show of alternative prints, circa 1876 which by my estimation is over 140 years old, so much for Marketing Assertion..



but there's zero evidence of that with today's Epson and Canon pigments.


Give it time lets say 15- 20 years .

 

[Andrew O'Neill]

Inkjet prints are not handmade.

 

[warden]

This is just one of the reasons I relate to.

I have the same feelings about working with scans in Lightroom: someone at Adobe did all the hard work - I just make a few choices by pressing buttons. After years of working this way - telling myself "but this is so much easier!" - I find digital imaging processes demand TOO LITTLE of me. So what is the most satisfactory process I use now? Wet Plate Collodion. It demands that I learn some serious skills in order to create decent output.

But that's not the whole story, by a long shot.

I've watched the digital imaging industry grow and blossom over the past 20 years, and one thing is glaringly obvious: there is no long term solution for the archiving of digital work. Passing on terabytes of files from one hard drive to another, ad infinitum, is NOT a solution. (For me) As a friend of mine in the software industry says in a lecture he gives to his peers: "I can read sheet music written by Bach 300 years ago, but I can't open a Word document written in 1995".
I tell people that its important FOR ME to work in materials and processes that do not require any tool other than ones eyes to interpret the work. All of the digital tools we use today are guaranteed to be obsolete in under 50 years (in some cases, it may be 5 or less) which leaves the files created with them in limbo. Nobody is going to look at your hard drive in 100 years to see what you created, but if they find a box of my ambrotypes, all they have to do is pick them up and look.

Lastly, I do not want to be beholden to the few remaining film/paper suppliers to provide me the materials I need to do work. I'm happy to switch back and forth from film to collodion, knowing that if Ilford (or any other supplier) should vanish one day, I'm not going to be stuck without materials to make work I enjoy making.

These are MY reasons, and mine alone. Maybe you relate to them, and maybe not, and that's fine either way.

Nice. I’m very much in agreement.

 

[jtk]

Well the same could be said about Gum and Palladium as being virtually eternal...... I just finished seeing a show of alternative prints, circa 1876 which by my estimation is over 140 years old, so much for Marketing Assertion..



but there's zero evidence of that with today's Epson and Canon pigments.


Give it time lets say 15- 20 years .

 

[jtk]

That was an amusing sales pitch. Most photo collectors buy photographs as images and few buy them as investments. Sales are booming for fine inkjet prints...in the real art world.

 

[Bob Carnie]

I

That was an amusing sales pitch. Most photo collectors buy photographs as images and few buy them as investments. Sales are booming for fine inkjet prints...in the real art world.

I agree. the contemporary art world is full of inkjets...

 

[MattKing]

The classic, what is now often referred to as "silver gelatin" print actually has some of the characteristics of many of the alternative process prints.
I'm thinking in particular prints whose image tone has been adjusted through careful and creative toning, but even untoned prints can have subtle indicators of hand made origination.
In essence, I think the difference that matters is that much of the alternative work creates prints that are themselves individual items of interest. Every photographic process is capable of product that can be viewed on a computer screen, but not all photographic processes create prints that are so substantially different from their computer screen facsimiles as to make those facsimiles unrepresentative of the most intriguing characteristics of the print.

 

[Arthurwg]

The answer is Beauty." If you don't find it beautiful it's not for you. If you don't like what you've been doing, switch to something else.. There are many to choose from.

 

[removedacct1]

I

I agree. the contemporary art world is full of inkjets...

And I think its very premature/naive to accept manufacturers statements about permanence. Ask me again in 40 years. Know what I mean?

 

[Bob Carnie]

And I think its very premature/naive to accept manufacturers statements about permanence. Ask me again in 40 years. Know what I mean?

Yes indeed, this history has a way of repeating itself, I do remember the Kodak ads telling me to use the great Kodak paper for all those precious memories circa 1975. where are they now??

 

[TonyB65]

Why do we use old mechanical film cameras, wind film on, develop it, wet print it etc etc?....because it's the doing that's the thing. Automation is purely for saving time, but if you enjoy the time it's not really saving you from anything except what you enjoy, and what's the point of that?

 

[removed account4]

Yes indeed, this history has a way of repeating itself, I do remember the Kodak ads telling me to use the great Kodak paper for all those precious memories circa 1975. where are they now??

LOL all those pigment ink jet prints from 10-15 years ago have a lovely green tint now.
and friends who worked in commerical labs were telling there were problems with
either fuji CA or kodak paper that was supposed to have a wicked lifespan
and in less than a year's time did some crazy color shift ( 10-15 years ago )..

 

[jtk]

And I think its very premature/naive to accept manufacturers statements about permanence. Ask me again in 40 years. Know what I mean?

My 10-15 year old pigment prints have not shifted and if they did their files would replicate them. Just as Ansel's files will in a few hundred years.

Bob's sales pitch is a little light. I know his prints deserve respect for more than fade resistance.