- Print on fiber-based paper as much as you can. RC is great for contact sheets and quick proof prints, but fiber is much nicer to work with for fine prints, and the difference in quality comes through in the final product as well.
Here I disagree, but this is mainly a matter of personal taste. I find it much easier and more rewarding to start with a good RC paper. This is for two reasons: you get feedback more quickly, because you don't have to wait ages for your test strips and prints to dry; and drying the prints is much easier. Since in the beginning one should make lots and lots of prints,
not having to dry every one of them in the drying press or
not having to glue them on glass plates for air drying is a real timesaver. With fiber-based paper one tends to make fewer prints because it's slower, but in the beginning I find at least I didn't have enough experience to get good results from fewer prints. Fiber-based prints look nicer, but I spent something like two years only printing on RC paper.
But this is mainly a matter of personal taste. I like the look of some RC papers. For someone who doesn't, switching over to fiber-based papers earlier might be a good idea.
- Be aware that a lot of people end up overexposing and underdeveloping their prints. If your print is in the developer for 30 seconds and you pull it out to shove it in the stop bath, something's goofy.
Exactly. Paper wants to be developed to the end. Unlike film, it's difficult to overdevelop paper. For the beginning keep it in the developer until nothing happens anymore.
- Finally, and this is the single most important and valuable thing I think I have to say, KEEP GOOD RECORDS. Go to a university book store and pick up a bound lab notebook. Keep notes about everything in your printing process. Make notes for every printing session. Keep track of all your variables. In time, you will be able to identify and better control the variables that are at work in your process, whether they be good things or bad. And, if something unexpected happens (again, good or bad), you're a lot more likely to be able to figure out what it is in short order.
This is in fact absolutely spot on. When I started printing I wrote the exposure parameters (f-stop, time, gradation) on the back of every single print I made.
I also made whole series of prints with slighly different settings on each to compare. If you've got 25 prints from the same negative with five different gradations and exposure settings each you get a pretty accurate idea how exposure works.