Do you print, and why ?

Inkjet here, no wet darkroom.
I print a lot because I like printing. I do not print all my photos because of lack of space to sore them and because of the cost.

I like to print to make small handmade booklets, I print to give to friends (very very rarely give them a file), I print ot make dummies of books.

Sometimes I like to print on some "strnge" ununsual paper.

As many already said printing is an essencial part of the process.
 
I will check Digital Silver Imaging, thanks. My first good digital camera was a 4 mp Canon SD-10. If I self timed it and had it on a tripod, it amazed me. I didn't make big prints but they were really nice.
 
Maybe because I am old and I always have been an Art lover.
A photo for me is a print, possibly large.
I remember when I was a youngster (more than 55 years ago) in my parents' home I had a desk with a glass plane. I used to put under the glass the prints of my best photos (back then all B&W), all made by the mythical lab Nannini located in Via Crispi in the center of Rome.
I wonder if anybody here has known Nannini.
His customers used to make a joke. They said him to look at the negatives and tell the lens. He had an incredible hit rate.
 
PaulDalex said:
Maybe because I am old and I always have been an Art lover.
A photo for me is a print, possibly large.
I remember when I was a youngster (more than 55 years ago) in my parents' home I had a desk with a glass plane. I used to put under the glass the prints of my best photos (back then all B&W), all made by the mythical lab Nannini located in Via Crispi in the center of Rome.
I wonder if anybody here has known Nannini.
His customers used to make a joke. They said him to look at the negatives and tell the lens. He had an incredible hit rate.
Click to expand...

Paul,

You made me remember one of the most important reasons to print. The legacy and immortality it could provide.

Archival prints will last hundreds of years.

Cal
 
Like the gentleman said above, I am when taking an image on a 120 roll of Black and a White film, i am imagining it being framed on a wall. That is for landscapes only, in general I do not want people in my images but if they are it’s a image of them that I print for them.
I have one digital camera I do use for records and CLICKS, I do not consider it real photography, it produces beautiful images but if I have a roll of colour in a film back I am back into images on a wall. I am old so the modern digital world does not impress me at all. Only the digital camera needs a battery, all nine of my film cameras are battery free.
 
Silver gelatine prints are the goal of my photographic activities.

LeicaIII/Summar50mmf/2/TMY400/IlfordMGFB

Erik.

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Nicely put Erik. I agree & that's my endpoint too. Darkroom. Silver gelatin, FB not RC. Without a print, a negative is just like notes lying on a page....just silence...no music.
 
I'll play the devil's advocate. I don't find myself printing that much and I don't know many people who do. Even for my friends who are interested in film, most of them stick to scans and post them on social media.

Resolution and IQ isn't great for Instagram, but it's easily accessible and can be viewed on a phone. There's ways of optimizing the image and making it look a bit better. Medium film IQ is still great on Instagram, even though it massively downsamples the image, it still gives a pretty good impression.

It broadens your audience, while printing stuff generally limits me to giving out prints to family and friends. Sometimes I will frame stuff but I've run out of space on my walls. I've gotten tired of the prints I have up so so I may swap them out sometime though and give away the existing prints I have in the frames.

The other problem is that prints take up more space, and they will degrade over time especially in the sunlight here in Hawaii, if you have them up for awhile. Storing prints is problematic if you have lots of them. I've mostly gotten rid of my old books and go to the library to get books since I don't want to store any more printed books in my house.

Printing also costs money. At my school we have the color printer locked up behind a locked door because it's expensive to do color prints. I mostly outsource my printing to mpix if I do do printing, and from what I can tell, most people are doing the same these days and printing has been consolidated to a few large printing operations that do mail orders in the states.

When I worked at "unnamed" printer/scanner manufacturer, we were losing a lot of money and having to lay people off, and cut people's benefits/retirement because people were making the switch to digital. It was just more practical, especially for business.

That being said, I think the way that you interact with a printed image is very different than the way you interact with a digital image. There's something very different about the tactile quality, physical size, and I think prints are also a little bit easier to see/view because of limited size of monitors/phones.

I also plan on doing a zine and experimenting with the format. I want to integrate narrative and themes into photography series (I enjoy the "themed" photo threads here where people post photos based on thread theme).

I think a mix of both mediums can take advantage of the benefits of both print and digital.
 
"It broadens the audience"..... You make some good points Forest. There are so many varied ways that photography forms a part of one's life. There are some very good and very well respected image makers who do just that. They take photographs. They don't process their own film....Nor do they make their own darkroom prints. Some are well-known professionals. Some, as you say, use social media as their medium. At the other end of the spectrum are those for whom the making of an image involves hands-on work in every step of the process. And of course for some photographers their style and level of involvement changes over time. A few days ago, someone who came looking to buy a print said to me "can you just send your negative away? I think that would make a great 3' x 4' photo."
Maybe....but for me personally, that would not be at all satisfying....even if it 'broadens the audience.'
 
I am sure that even with the best digital gear you can not get the image quality that gelatine silver paper can give. This is however only true for B+W. B+W printing on silver gelatine paper is a graphical art, like etching or lithography.

Everyday photography can very well be done digitally.

Leica1A(1928vintage)/Elmar50mmf/3.5/TMY400/AdoxMCC110

Erik.

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For me wet printing has always been the most enjoyable part of the photographic process.

In college I worked in a large well-equipped and well-maintained professional caliber darkroom.
For many years I had a relatively spacious dedicated darkroom in my own home.
Now in our small coop I use our only bathroom - windowless, fortunately (?) - as an occasional darkroom.

But no matter; the pleasure of wet printing is still the same. There's nothing like it - it's simply magic.
I feel like an alchemist, making an image appear on plain white paper merely by using light and chemicals.

Chris
 
B&W inkjets can be just as beautiful as silver gelatin prints. There ain't much silver in those gelatins anymore anyway. Not compared to the papers from a few decades ago when I started working in the darkroom. That was one of my pet peeves by the time I shut down my darkroom--none of the material was as good as it used to be. Even Tri-X didn't look the same. And trying to get the richness of Portriga-Rapid or Medalist was impossible.

Some of the papers for inkjet printing has its roots in art papers from 300-400 years ago, much older than photography. The best inks on the best papers are incredibly beautiful and they can last as long or longer than darkroom prints. Even color prints done with pigment inks and art papers will be more archival than most chemical processes for color printing.

I can't see the point in taking pictures if you never print them, darkroom or digital printer.
 
I find posting on social media broadens the images I show. I have images I like, but not enough to spend money on printing and framing. And the framing is the killer for me.

Color printing is galaxies ahead of what it was decades back. Back in the day I'd get a gorgeous Velvia chrome but to print meant an inter negative or or (masked maybe) Cibachrome. Expensive and aways disappointing.

Today I get my file how I like it, send it to a lab, they print it on photo paper and I can see how stuff looks for very little money. I have 5 prints coming back, 10x10 color prints are $5. Wow!
 
Yes, occasionally. Nothing like I did even ten years ago.

I've had a darkroom since 1961. On turning 70 in 2017 I did a life reassessment as we all do (don't we?) in old age, and realized the long-cherished thrill of seeing a paper print pop up in the Dektol tray had passed - that and inkjet quality is now so good that with a little care, I can do a finished print without spending my fast-disappearing time in the dark, as good as anything I did under a safelight even when my eyesight was up to it, when sadly it no longer is. Age has wearied me -that and the cost of darkroom supplies in Australia, which has hit new heights of horror for pensioners who need to watch their discretionary expense.

I print for a few other reasons, summed up as follows -

I've kept two truly great enlargers, a Leitz Focomat 1c with a Multigrade head, and an LPL 7700. Both were bought new at horrific cost. I love playing with them, and I still enjoy the process, more or less.

Now and then an old client wants a print or a series of prints but doesn't care for an inkjet result. Or I donate a print to an institution, usually as one inkjet print, one print on 'traditional' FB paper, and a detailed caption. These days for me the most difficult part is writing the caption, involving a time-consuming search in my old diaries or work sheets for the information. The printing is still easy.

Someone in the family wants a print. Very few of these requests take up my time now as I mostly photographed older friends, grandparents, aunts and uncles who long ago fell off their perches. Now and then someone finds an old print of mine and want a new copy. I still have almost all of my old negatives (the color slides in my archives have all re-avatar'd to clear bases) and I can usually find the originals without a a lengthy search. I print these on (fresh) cheap RC paper.

I have a large stock of FB paper, some dating to the 1980s but unusually, still good for printing. Before we moved back to the mainland from Tasmania last year I gave away almost 100 boxes of RC paper to photo clubs or friends who still have darkrooms. My FB was kept frozen for many years and survived the journey well. I'm now trying to use it up before I pop off - I plan to survive this project but I'm looking forward to finishing the last box of eight-by-ten. When the paper is used up, I've decided, the darkroom will go.

I no longer print anything larger than half plate (six by eight) unless the original negative/s are super good. No more landscapes. Only people shots and now and then, an old travel photo. In July I did 24 exhibition images of a journey I did to Turkey and Greece in 1970, for an exhibition in Mykonos. I made quarter plates on Guilbrom (does anyone still remember this beautiful French-made paper?) FB glossy. I had 500 sheets of this beaut stock but am down to my last 25. Time passes, lovely things vanish.

Now and then I find an image from my past printed decades ago and forgotten, or one never ever printed. It's a sort of personal project of mine to finish the saga of those pictures in my life, by finally putting them to paper. What I'll do with those images, well - never mind. It's the process, not the product.

Giving away my (RC) paper before our move, and after vetting (and mostly destroying) old prints and hundreds of contact sheets I made back in the days when we all did them, taught me a lesson about life, hoarding, and the passing of so much time so quickly.

So yes, I still print. For how much longer - who knows?
 
Ozmoose - nicely written. I know I’m entering that stage in life, as well. In this time of Covid I’ve been going through my photographic life, winnowing and remembering, and feeling joy and melancholy. At times I consider getting rid of my darkroom, but then I go make a print and feel the life affirming creative process again. It will stay for now.
 
Dogman said:
Not compared to the papers from a few decades ago when I started working in the darkroom. That was one of my pet peeves by the time I shut down my darkroom--none of the material was as good as it used to be. Even Tri-X didn't look the same. And trying to get the richness of Portriga-Rapid or Medalist was impossible.

I can't see the point in taking pictures if you never print them, darkroom or digital printer.
Click to expand...

Dogman, Every generation faces its tribulations and every cycle of printers has the choice to use the best materials currently available. The talented printers, like Jay Dusard, Bruce Barnbaum, Alan Ross, John Sexton, to name just a few, still make stunningly beautiful prints on papers that are available. Perhaps Tri-X isn't like the Tri-X of old, but TMax films and long standing films like Ilford FP4 are still more than capable materials.Of course, it's your choice to print digitally, but that doesn't automatically mean that there are no good products for darkroom printers.
 
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Leica MP Summicron 50/2.0 HP5+ in D23

I can only achieve a gratifying gray scale with film printed on fibre based paper. Digital shooting b&w and processing can be good. A few people achieve excellent results but that's the exception- personally I never came closer than 80% or so of what I aimed for.
 
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