Your Top 3 Tips for Successful Fine Prints

Doremus Scudder · Mar 29, 2012

00. What you point your camera at is the most important thing.

0. Know your scene and what you want to say; know how to get that on film and make the best negative you can.

1. Know what you want your print to look like and say before you begin printing. Then stay open for serendipity and new directions.

2. Play tonalities like you play tones on an instrument; how you compose the melody of the grays directs contrast choices and manipulations. If you "feel" the tones and their relationships and let that guide you, you will know exactly what to do technically. Then, you just have to be a good composer and performer

3. Forget dry-down compensations or formulas: dry your prints and evaluate them dry. Only then do you really know what they look like and how the highlight rendering will be. Wet just won't cut it and arbitrary percentages miss the point that drydown is not linear.

4. Forget rules about needing whites and blacks and what skin tones are supposed to be. Print the tones where they feel right.

5. Loud is only effective in relation to soft; contrast is not everything, not even the majority.

6. Adapt to the medium, don't waste time on what will never happen, don't bang your head against the wall, accept defeat and move on. Pick the low-hanging fruit. Accept limitations and work within them.

7. But, don't compromise on quality. Make ample use of your trash can. It is your best friend.

Oops, that's a lot more than three, but I always was bad at editing myself...

Best,

Doremus

www.DoremusScudder.com

dpurdy · Mar 29, 2012

For some of us some of the time the making of the negative is out of our control because we might be custom printing for someone else who made a bad negative.
Working to overcome problems in tonality is a great way to learn about printing.
Dennis

Rick A · Mar 29, 2012

Be careful and THINK about what you are doing. Consider each and every shot you take might be THE best shot you ever made. Get familiar with one or two films and only one developer, and only one paper and developer. Use a graded paper and make your negatives work for that one paper. Never rely on " I can make up for shortcomings with ___" (fill in the blank). Never be rushed, take as much time as you want and need, whether shooting or printing. When processing or printing, have one established routine and never deviate from it.

markbarendt · Mar 29, 2012

jnanian said:
hi mark

i totally believe that if you can print bad negatives, you will become a better printer. the best way i learned how to print
was by printing bad negatives, and printing things that weren't supposed to be printed
because if you can print something that is bad, you will always be able to print something that is good.

it boils down to practice, and knowing your materials ...

I have been making an assumption in my arguments here that may not be true for everybody; that if one wants a fine print as out put from a specific composition then, the negative needs to meet certain standards. For me it has to be able to print all the intended tones as expected.

I've printed more bad stuff than I care to admit, what I have found is that when working with a "bad" negative I can get decent prints, even fun prints that others like, but not necessarily what I intended when I shot the scene. When I reach that limit I'm typically looking to reshoot or skip it.

robbalbrecht · Mar 29, 2012

Great thoughts everyone! I just started printing and these are all very helpful. I'm pretty sure I have the basics down and I'm starting to think about how I can build from here.

HowardDvorin · Mar 29, 2012

Practice

Practice

Practice

jp498 · Mar 29, 2012

I've printed other people's stuff. It's a good learning experience, but I didn't really enjoy it.

1. Have the negative be as good as possible, in an effort the keep the printing simple and predictable.

2. An effectively dust free darkroom.

3. I agree on the instruction to visit museums, see the work of high quality masters, both living and dead. For silver images, seeing Karsh's portraits and Paul Caponigro's mixed stuff has been inspirational. A theme show with old masterful things is nice too (such as the pictorialism versus f64 show the portland ME museum of art had a couple years ago) Along with this, the print exchange (at least on lfinfo) is good for contemporary comparison.

robbalbrecht · Mar 29, 2012

HowardDvorin said:
Practice

Practice

Practice

Absolutely

bdial · Mar 29, 2012

Make negatives of some of the pictures you see
Make prints from some of the film
Repeat

Moopheus · Mar 29, 2012

2. Figure out what the heck "fine print" means.

Jeff Kubach · Mar 29, 2012

HowardDvorin said:
Practice

Practice

Practice

+ !

Jeff

Chuck_P · Mar 29, 2012

Tom Stanworth said:
For 35mm and 120 users, making fine negatives is not always possible due to inevitable compromises that are made at the time of exposure and development.

... and poor negatives make for a skilful printer who will really sing when dealing with good negs!

I understand what you mean. When I was shooting with an RB67, I had multiple backs that I would use for N, N-1, and N+1 development. I believe it is still possible, even with 35mm roll film, but it does take more discipline to carry it out---and this is easier said than done, I admit.

brian steinberger · Mar 29, 2012

Ian Grant said:
3 Show & discuss your work with others who's own work you respect and get feedback, don't work in a total vacuum.

Ian

I'm afraid I'm guilty of this one. There is just no one around me that does this or knows anything about it. So I have no one to share my work with or get tips from. Sometimes I wish someone regional would be willing to visit me and watch me work in the darkroom and offer suggestions. That'd be amazing!

Arkasha · Mar 29, 2012

Moopheus said:
2. Figure out what the heck "fine print" means.

+1

brian steinberger · Mar 29, 2012

Moopheus said:
2. Figure out what the heck "fine print" means.

Exhibition quality print. A print you're proud of. A print you'd hang on your wall.

Moopheus · Mar 29, 2012

brian steinberger said:
Exhibition quality print. A print you're proud of. A print you'd hang on your wall.

Glad we narrowed it down, then.

Mark Fisher · Mar 29, 2012

1. spend as much time and test strips needed to get the right contrast and exposure.....then keep burns and dodges simple
2. Don't listen to anyone else about how to print once you understand the basics.
3. Print how you want to have someone feel when they view the print. If you can't imagine an emotion brought on by the print, try another one
4. Learn to use print color as one of your tools to communicate with the image.

zsas · Mar 29, 2012

Lather, rinse, repeat

DWThomas · Mar 30, 2012

And (to boldly state the obvious!) one can obsess at great length over every nuance of the printing process, but it helps to have a good negative of a subject that offers something to intrigue a viewer -- interesting or unusual composition, textures, mood, maybe even an abstraction of form or whatever. I only attempt to print a very small percentage of my shots. That is partly because I get carried away with "documentation" which produces a record of an event or historical item that I like to keep, but might be utterly fascinating to about 0.0003% of gallery visitors! :confused: Among the few I do print, I have achieved a bit of positive notoriety, so I guess I'm going in the right direction.

In addition to looking at others work, getting comments about your own from people with relevant art or photography background could potentially be useful, (assuming they're not too nasty. I mean honesty can be offered without cruelty!)

Roger Cole · Mar 30, 2012

Dan Henderson said:
3. Embrace the philosophy that good enough is not. Let nothing stop you from making the absolute best photograph of which you are capable.

To me this sounds like a recipe for driving yourself crazy, and I speak from some experience in that I was driving myself crazy. AA said he continued to refine how he printed some of his negatives. You will probably NEVER make the absolute best print you could ever make from a given negative. You will learn more, practice more and see differently in time. Not realizing when it really is good enough can have you just printing the same negative in variations on a theme over and over and over...

I'm certainly not arguing for mediocrity. Try to set your standards high, but achievable. But trying to make every print absolutely perfect in every way can drive you absolutely nuts. You will NEVER get there There will almost always be some tiny detail that could be improved. Fine, improve it next time but recognize when you really do have something good and don't waste another month of darkroom sessions and materials trying to make a 0.05% improvement no one else is going to notice anyway.

I have other thoughts that can wait fir when I'm not typing on the iPhone.

Moopheus · Mar 30, 2012

zsas said:
Lather, rinse, repeat

That's not an archival process.

jp498 · Mar 30, 2012

brian steinberger said:
I'm afraid I'm guilty of this one. There is just no one around me that does this or knows anything about it. So I have no one to share my work with or get tips from. Sometimes I wish someone regional would be willing to visit me and watch me work in the darkroom and offer suggestions. That'd be amazing!

A local town you photographed in the gallery is <2hr from washington DC. I'm sure you could find some analog activities and visit museums there.

As far as someone visiting to help you, keep asking! If you can't find anyone local, put together a vacation package for someone to entice them. You could also travel on a vacation to learn darkroom activities as well (to a workshop somewhere). There are many ways to skin a cat though, and what works for one expert may not be the same for someone else.

Bob Carnie · Mar 30, 2012

I am surprised no one mentioned this but number one on my list is this.

1. When you are finished the print... matt it , frame it, and hang it on your wall and enjoy it.

2. Always look at the negative and try to visualize how the negative tone values compare to what you remember in the original scene.

3. Make three prints that are slightly different, over time you will understand dry down with each emulsion.

I also am warming up to Michael R 1974 .. his advice of above is pretty good as well.

ChuckP · Mar 30, 2012

One thing that helped me was building a test stripper that allows me to view a test strip showing the same print area at different exposures. Makes finding the exposure very easy. Also having a reference print hanging in the darkroom helps when you are struggling to find the right tune. A print of your own or others that you have viewed and liked over a period of time. Look at it next to the print you are working on.

Bill Burk · Mar 30, 2012

1. There is a continuum of quality from OK Print to Fine Print.
2. When just starting out OK is Fine.
3. As you continue on this journey, what you consider OK will continue to get better.

That is Fine.

Your Top 3 Tips for Successful Fine Prints

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