The fact that digital prints seem less valuable is kind of a good thing I think. The history of photography is rooted in printmaking. Printmaking--etching, lithography, etc--is a way to reproduce drawings cheaply and easily. Photography made it even cheaper and easier to make "drawings," with light. Now digital prints make the photographic print itself less labor-intensive and therefore cheaper. I am all for it. I still mostly make silver prints, but it's great to know that if I get a machine made print and I damage it a bit, no sweat: I can just crank out another one, or pay somebody to do it. I have hung digitally-made prints on occasion without frames, because it's no big deal if they get damaged a little.
On a related note: recently I made some inkjet prints of a 4x5 transparency, on three different Epson printers. Then I took the same transparency file to a lab and had them make a digital c-print. The latter was so much better than the inkjet prints. It cost more, but it was worth it. Continuous tone still rules, in my book.
However I have seen some really good inkjet prints. Not sure how they do it.
--shannon On Nov 30, 2008, at 1:43 AM, Harry Lock wrote:
Hi AllDana makes some very valid points, about the artist/photographer's intervention at the digital printing process, but one cannot help the feeling that ink-jet, or giclee, prints are some how less valuable than a silver gelatine print.Let me explain.I am a photographer that sells prints in galleries and as such, have over the years framed all of my own work. Word is out, and I now get framing from other photographers who want archival framing.A couple of years ago I framed some silver gelatine prints produced by one of this country's best known (and expensive) photographers. I was quite nervous, handled the prints with great care and did the job, breathing a sigh of relief when it was done.This year I had to frame 20 prints by the same photographer for an exhibition - this time thought they were ink-jet prints. I found myself being 'less careful' in a way. Any damage to a print would not send him back into the darkroom to produce another print, I would just pick up the phone and order another one from the printer. So you can see what I am getting at. I should know better, but I still, sub-consciously, place more value on the darkroom print.Ask me about this in a few weeks time and things will probably have changed - on Friday I will be taking delivery of my own Epson 3800 printer.Cheers for now Harry----- Original Message ----- From: "Dana H. Myers" <dana.myers@xxxxxxxxx>To: <pure-silver@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> Sent: Saturday, November 29, 2008 10:57 PM Subject: [pure-silver] Re: "Hand Printed"Elias Roustom wrote:Today I went for a bike ride - it was in the mid forties and sunny.Yesterday's jaunt was a very pleasant club ride that included a 6-mile, 2200' climb into a fog that condensed on both sides of my glasses. The descent was a bit harrowing since my glasses fogged-up again and I couldn't tell where the wet or muddy patches were in the road. No one crashed and it was a fine, social 39 miles. Today's ride started in fog at 7am but it cleared into a fine, brisk morning by 8am, temperature in the high 40s, total of 58 miles including a loop through Napa vineyards.Very refreshing.Yup, same here. [...]but I had a laugh when I read the title advertising the quality of the prints: "Hand Printed on an Epson..."While I, too, question some of the pretense around giclee and carbon-pigment prints and so on, I don't see why this is worth snickering at. > so when you think aboutthe leap to digital, and all the losses of manual control associated with it, not to mention that the digital image itself does not even exist as a thing, the prospect of a human mind concluding that an ink jet print is made by hand is simply astounding.Losses of manual control associated with "digital". Digital what? Digital capture? Digital manipulation? Digital printing? Digital SLRs today provide at least as much manual control as the film SLRs they grew from. If one, like me, starts with capture on silver halide film and scans, there are a range of controls available there, as well. Digital manipulation, at a very minimum, provides all of the manual control practiced in the darkroom, including dodging, burning, cropping, exposure and easier selection of image curves. It is certainly easier to do bizarre manipulations via digital means, but that hasn't prevented some pretty odd things from coming out of darkrooms. Digital output via inkjet doesn't need to be a turn-key affair, either. Many artists experiment with ink-set selection and profilingto tune the output. People that might have experimented with developersand papers are probably the ones mixing their own inks today. So, the notion of "Hand-printed on a Epson" really isn't worthy of a snicker once you have anything beyond a superficial appreciation of the craft. My take is that the artist uses the phrase "Hand-printed" to expressthe attention given from capture to print, or, perhaps, it's yet another bit of artistic pretense in the name of marketing. But the same can besaid of most "hand-made" silver gelatin prints, no?Lest any think it, I am not offended in the least. In fact there's a mischievous streak in me that actually appreciates the statement. Atworst it reveals a character flaw of mine, a real need for "calling it like it is" on a number of levels. But it gave a me chuckle that I hopeI've passed along.Heh, I suspect I have that character flaw as well, the one about "calling it like I see it". Why would you be offended by someone practicing their photographic craft with care? (Even if their craft differs in process?) Ride strong - Dana====================================================================== ======================================= To unsubscribe from this list, go to www.freelists.org and logon to your account (the same e-mail address and password you set-up when you subscribed,) and unsubscribe from there.----------------------------------------------------------------------- ---------No virus found in this incoming message. Checked by AVG - http://www.avg.comVersion: 8.0.176 / Virus Database: 270.9.11/1816 - Release Date: 11/27/2008 7:53 PM======================================================================= ====================================== To unsubscribe from this list, go to www.freelists.org and logon to your account (the same e-mail address and password you set-up when you subscribed,) and unsubscribe from there.
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