Digital BW, The Print

Not to be a complete nihilist and fun as it is to become embroiled 
in technical arguments, they really don't, to my view, address the 
final result which is to produce a print that "says something." 

Fred Picker used to make the point that to make a great print you 
had to see it as it was going to hang on the wall about the time you 
snapped the shutter. He taught technique just so far as to give one 
the tools to produce a good print of archival quality and spent most 
of the time in his workshops trying to teach people to see, a far 
more difficult task than learning how to develop and print. In my 
experience there are far more good printers than good photographers.


Seems to me that thanks to a few noble souls digital B&W is 
approaching, perhaps now equalling, good silver prints and the tools 
are now there to be used. The tools have to be mastered to be sure 
but measuring the density of innumerable step wedges isn't going to 
produce a single memorable image. Somethimes I wonder if having the 
ability to modify so many parameters compared to wet printing we 
wander in the trees and have lost the forest.

Roger