Personal Interpretation in Printing

Those who have been following along with the blog have seen a disparate collection of photographic prints, in medium as well as distinct visual differences between them within the same medium. This is not evidence of chaos or willy nilly lab procedures. Each print was a previsualized choice. I won't stretch the truth and say each image was planned as it ended up in the print. Technically. What was planned was the development and subsequent avenue for printing, to arrive at the best light for that particular image. Another way of playing out Edward Weston's distinction of a fine print image, being; 'The strongest way of seeing'. Simple. Yet subjective of course.

There are photographers who have a signature look, recognizable to the viewer by printing style. Ansel Adams being one. Not hard to spot an Adams print, or a Weston, or a Dorothea Lange. Their respective work was beautiful, even inspiring, and what mostly they had in common was print consistency, respectively. Adams and Weston printed on bromide silver gel papers, Dorothea printed a lot with chloride papers. They found a printing style that suited them, and created a legacy. You won't find that here.

I began seeking such a print style that satisfied me, beginning with bromide papers before moving on to chloride paper which suited my sense for warm tones well. That was Kodak's Ectalure G paper. Just a name in history now. Wonderful paper to work with though. What I can to realize was the each image I was working with sort of had its own story, with the task as I saw it, was for me to find a way to print the image in whatever medium, by whatever process  available to create a look that was the strongest way of presenting that image to the viewer. My photographic vision. That is why each print tends to look so different from the last. It wasn't happenstance.

In the last post I covered printing controls available for visual effect. Variables of silver solution, chemistry, UV intensity, paper type and color, and other choices the printer has all along the process. One fo the choices that will be made at some point is defining your approach to printing. There is the option of eventually finding a printing medium and method, then sticking with it, exactly, for every print. Ansel Adams. There were certainly differences in treatment through the course of his printing career, but his style was immediately recognizable. There are over 200 print copies of "Moonrise over Hernandez", with a visible different in the image over time, like darkening sky more dodging & burning a bit. It was still Moonrise htough.

Two things that irritate me like nothing else in 'Art' photography. Open edition prints and printing of a photographer's negatives after they're dead. What irritates me more is that Ansel did both. Such is life. As I mentioned some posts back, my mentor wasn't Ansel, mine was Alfred Stieglitz. You can bet you won't be seeing any recently printed copies of his work or Steichen's or other historical master. You would do time for that. All of which leads back to the original statement of realizing the strongest way of presenting an image.

Every successful art photographer feels an emotional connection to their work, then expresses it through their prints. For that process, there is no standard procedure that defines that route. Some prints are shown in their strongest sense when they are rich black & white, some come through when they are soft and warm toned. In this day of digital imagery, that task is so much easier to achieve. Just remember you no longer need an enlarger. You do, however, need access to a computer and printer to print said digital negative. If you have no contact with computer editing software and scanning/printing procedures, it can be dome but that begins to get a bit expensive, and out of your control so I don't recommend it.

What I do advocate is coming to know a bit of standard photo chemistry sufficient to mix your own developing formulas. You not only have full control over your negatives, but a number of formulas can be made from just a few constituent chemicals, and the cost is much lower than pre-mixed formulas. At some point in the future I will get into basic understanding of formulas with a couple examples that work especially well in the southern portion of the country, where the light is shifted towards the red spectrum. Panchromatic film is especially sensitive to the red spectrum, hence the misnomer of it being more 'contrasty' in that region of the country. In Oregon it is a shift towards the blue spectrum.

This negative for this print was from a Century Graflex 6x9, developed in a semi-compensating developer ~ Beutler 105 ~ printed on Kodak Ectalure G;

Silver Gel Print ~ "Adley on the Stump"
1984 ~ 8x10 ~ Unique (in silver gel)
Eugene, Oregon