Print !!!

img153 by hans p berkhout, on Flickr

My perspective: what's the point of taking pictures if you don't print the "good" ones.

I've printed inkjet, piezo, and turned away from it for many reasons, the main ones being a) I felt being a hostage of the hard- and software companies who's equipment I used and b) most importantly ,I was only rarely able to have the print match what I produced on screen.

I am happily using again my De Vere 504 and Focomat 1C- both very old and indestructable. I mix my own chemicals from scratch in other words I have total control of the entire process.

There would be no photo shows if no prints existed.
 
Like many people living in small quarters I have little wall space to display pictures. I print on 8.5 by 11 paper. I have several matted frames each for 7 by 10.5 and 8 by 10 images. I rotate prints through half a dozen frames on the wall so visitors see different prints over time. (Almost all of my landscape orientation prints are 7 by 10.5. Almost all of my portrait orientation prints are 8 by 10.} The remaining 200+ prints are in archival storage boxes.
 
Erik van Straten said:
Yes, but what can I do? I've made since 1971 37.000 pictures. 500 of them are printed. My house is too small to hang them all on a wall.

I have a different way of showing. The 500 prints all have the same format, 18 x 24 cm, and are kept in boxes, about 70 in a box. When someone wants to see some of my pictures, I give her or him a box to have a look at the pictures. Viewing the prints out of the box is like flipping through a book. Very nice.

Erik.
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This is pretty much what I have thought about doing, as it sounds like one of the best compromises. Though for my personal tastes, I need/want different crop sizes, which complicates things.
And almost no one not named Bill Gates has a house large enough to display all the photographs we'd like, on the wall.
 
I have been printing for 38 years. The last 10 of those have been inkjet prints from scanned negatives, but before that it was wet printing. I really enjoy my hybrid workflow and the biggest boon to me has been the ability to do spotting and clean an image up and do it only once. Every print thereon in is identical. Very economical with paper and time.
 
For many years I was regularly showing in multiple galleries in Central Texas.

Supplying these venues with "fresh" work kept me busy shooting, printing, matting/framing and delivering BUT it also supplied "a purpose" for shooting and printing.
Turns out, having a purpose was very important, for me anyway.

Three events have brought all that to a halt.
First, my Epson 3800 printer died after about 8 years of service.
Second we sold our house and moved to the city.
Third, and most importantly I s'pose, I turned 75 and the energy needed, as well as desire for exposure (heh heh) have both waned.

My very occasional printing now is done locally by a professional printer when I need a large panorama (21" x 42" image area)
Like some of you, for other new work I have settled on photo books. Not a perfect solution to be sure but seemingly best I can come up with.

Looking further down the road, I am happy that my three children, while not interested in the practice of photography, enjoy my work and all currently display a good deal of it in their homes.
 
gelatine silver print (summicron 50mm rigid, black) leica mp

Erik.

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I can't remember the last time I made a darkroom print. I've been using a 13" wide Epson inkjet printer for many years now and the inks hold up so well I don't really understand why everyone hasn't jumped off the darkroom ship. I have outside sources for making larger prints (up to 40x60").

My walls are covered with my own prints - all of them dry printed, dry-mounted, and framed.

Inkjet printing has it's own challenges though, including using up ~$100 worth of ink doing nozzle checks between printing sessions! Regardless, I'd never go back to making darkroom prints.

That's not to say I've given up film completely though. I probably shoot two or three rolls a year (it takes me a couple of months to finish a 36 exposure roll) and have them processed and scanned onto a disk as high-rezz TIF files (ready to process and [dry] print).

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Leica M-P 240
50mm Asph Summilux-M
 
Larry Cloetta said:
You just talked about it:) More info would be interesting, there’s plenty you might reveal that wouldn’t interfere with a patent search. Inquiring minds want to know about practical hybrid methods.
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A good inkjet can make an acetate negative that can be fully mapped for contrast then contact printed perfectly, first or second try. No one is the wiser with this method either. It's all the rage with alternative process printers. Easy day.

Phil Forrest
 
Corran said:
I would rather give up photography than own and use an inkjet printer.
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I have an inkjet printer that I use almost daily but not really for photography. I use it to print documents mostly. That said, I have 9 working typewriters, and love writing on them but I'd never say I'd give up writing if I couldn't use a typewriter. Goodness gracious.
Photography is a lot more than using old processes that involve metal reduction and optical reproduction.

Phil Forrest
 
I still do both wet and digital printing. All of my color work and some small format B&W is digitally printed on a Canon P-10 pigment printer usually on Moab Entrada rag or Hanemuhle 308 or their ultra smooth.

For larger format black and white work I’ve mostly been contact printing on silver choride Kodak Azo and similar papers. Occasionally I’ll wet print 35mm with an older Leitz enlarger.

It would be interesting to hear what printing papers everyone is using, both digital and silver.
 
I recently joined a photo club and with that came the benefit of having access to a dark room and I can now wet print. It’s been really very fun and a great learning experience.

However, I have an open mind about it as I need to learn quite a bit as far as wet printing technique so for now I keep an analog/digital workflow as I realized that in time, the results I will obtain from wet printing, will equal and possibly surpass the scanning of negs/Photoshop.

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U68558I1623451514.SEQ.1.jpg
 
Larry H-L said:
I still do both wet and digital printing. All of my color work and some small format B&W is digitally printed on a Canon P-10 pigment printer usually on Moab Entrada rag or Hanemuhle 308 or their ultra smooth.

For larger format black and white work I’ve mostly been contact printing on silver choride Kodak Azo and similar papers. Occasionally I’ll wet print 35mm with an older Leitz enlarger.

It would be interesting to hear what printing papers everyone is using, both digital and silver.
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I use Innova papers for digital. Their fiba range for semigloss and soft textured natural white for matte. I use their cold press rough textured if I want some tooth. I try to avoid papers with optical brighteners. I’m not sure if Innova papers are available in the US. They are very reasonably priced in the UK.

In the darkroom I use Ilford multigrade for normal prints and a range of papers for lith prints (mainly Foma).
 
Corran said:
I would rather give up photography than own and use an inkjet printer.
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The same philosophy as "I would rather push my Harley than ride a Honda."

I thought it was misplaced priorities when I first heard that and it sounds even more so today.
 
Phil_F_NM said:
I have an inkjet printer that I use almost daily but not really for photography. I use it to print documents mostly. That said, I have 9 working typewriters, and love writing on them but I'd never say I'd give up writing if I couldn't use a typewriter. Goodness gracious.
Photography is a lot more than using old processes that involve metal reduction and optical reproduction.

Phil Forrest
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Phil, Everyone has their own connection to their photographic process, like any other human endeavour. An analogy that suits me is music. Would you say to Segovia.....just get an electric guitar? In the same way, I know people who play music because for them, the thrill is getting to stand center stage in front of people..... yet while doing that, the quality of their playing hasn't improved in 10 years. Others I know work very hard at improving their musical skills...and practice for hours every day. Many of them will record, or play with other skilled musicians, but have no interest in playing a bar or concert gig. I have always photographed with film and printed in a darkroom. Besides the digital 'capture', a digital print does not appeal to me in the same way as a silver gelatin image, (enlarged or contacted printed). To me its like suggesting that a road rider (bicycle) just get a motorcycle....or a classical violinist just switch to electronic music. For some people the change is inconsequential and works....for others not. If it works for you... great. Would you tell Vince Lupo to slap a digital back on his Ermanox and just get over his glass plate thing? Like Corran, if i had to go digital, i'd leave photography and devote that time to other interests in my life
 
It just points to one's own dedication to photography itself, not a process. If one is dedicated to a process, that's great. If one is dedicated to photography, then it is going to be done, regardless of what the equipment or process is.
Quitting photography altogether because of a piece of equipment sounds like cutting off one's nose to spite one's face, and points to dedication to process, not the art itself.
I'm losing my hearing and if/when I go completely deaf (or HoH enough to not be able to comprehend speech,) it doesn't mean I'm going to stop communicating with others out of spite for this part of life. I'm currently in a program to become an ASL interpreter, and it will enable me to not only communicate on my own terms, but to also remain a therapist.

Phil Forrest
 
While I see your point of view Phil,..... film is available, enlargers abound, paper and chemistry are available, in other words there are choices one can make. I don't think anyone is abandoning photography because of a "piece of equipment." If someone just beginning the journey chooses digital that is entirely their choice. If someone who has always used film decides not to "go digital," that is a viable choice too. HCB stopped photographing and went back to drawing.....I don't think he was "cutting off his nose to spite his face." Those of us who continue to print in a darkroom are also "communicating on our own terms."......
 
Phil_F_NM said:
It just points to one's own dedication to photography itself, not a process. If one is dedicated to a process, that's great. If one is dedicated to photography, then it is going to be done, regardless of what the equipment or process is.
Quitting photography altogether because of a piece of equipment sounds like cutting off one's nose to spite one's face, and points to dedication to process, not the art itself…….

Phil Forrest
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Phil, not wanting to argue, just express an opinion, (and good luck with the hearing, btw) but “Art” isn’t the end result, it’s the process. Or, at the very least, art is the process every bit as much as the end result. The “art” involved is the way we accomplish something, the facility with which we get to the end result. If something is “done well”, such as a Monet of Water lilies, it was the doing of it that was the “art”. It’s not the water lilies. Had I been standing next to him, and shot a color photo, and the scene depicted was identical, it would not have been art. For those with a creative bent, process is extremely important. That’s a very inadequate exposition of how I look at this; Pirsig’s “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance” demonstrates the difference between art and product much more clearly and decisively, but it’s several hundred pages long.

I shoot film and digital, spending more time with film for a variety of reasons, both process and end result, and I personally probably wouldn’t quit taking photographs if I could not use film, but there are people out there who are much more artistic than I am, and film is their medium. For them, I can completely understand the impulse to quit if they couldn’t practice film photography, which is a craft unto itself.
For me, film and digital are so different, I’ve long considered them to be two distinct hobbies.
I understand there are many for whom the subject matter, Bill and Jane sitting on a bench, sunset behind, is the only thing that matters and it doesn’t matter how that is created, watercolor or oils, film or digital, but not everyone looks at it that way.
 
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