Digital BW, The Print

RE: Peter Nelson's, Bob Michaels' and Clayton Jones' recent posts about BO prints

I'd like to comment on a few of the things said by the above during the progress of this 
engaging thread. I'm going to bypass formal quoting protocol because so many are 
involved. Please let me know if I've misrepresented anyone's original posts.

When I look down at the end of my arm, what I see is 'my hand', and not a collection 
of variously colored spots or patches. However, I can radically reorient this 'normal' 
way of looking, and try to see my hand as just patches, and when this happens the 
sense of 'handness' recedes, and I have a totally different kind of experience.  Then, 
when I return to seeing my hand, the 'patches of color ' awareness largely vanishes. 
My eyes haven't suddenly become defective -- rather, I just use my eyes in a way that 
relates to the task at hand. If my job is cleaning fish at a market, I wouldn't do it well if 
I got engrossed in the visual details of the fishes' scales.   

Peter Nelson's provocative theory that people who like BO prints have defective 
vision doesn't take into account that seeing/viewing is always done with one or another 
intent. I think he sees disturbing dots in BO prints because his intent when looking at 
pictures is oriented by his highly valuing full-scale continuous-tone photographs -- 
from this standpoint, dots are indeed anomalous distracting artefacts. His view of BO 
prints strikes me as similar to the  one voiced 130 years ago by critics of Impressionist 
paintings who found no sense in the latter's break from the ideal of seamless surfaces. 
This ideal is a valid one for picture-making, but it isn't the only one that's valid. One 
can groove on impossibly smooth tonal passages as well as on ones that have a 
nonsmooth more physically-immediate quality. However, for making pictures, being 
committed to just one approach isn't always a bad thing:  narrowing can promote depth, 
I think.

The results of Bob Michaels' study comparing BO vs Quad versions of the same 
images should shake-up the prejudice that BO prints are always inferior. I've done 
this less formally with my own work, and my results are not as clearcut:  the images 
where very subtle and smooth tonal passages are important so far look better as 
Quads than as BOs; however, these images aren't as satisfying to me as my BO 
ones of images that don't stake everything on tonal smoothness. Maybe the difference 
is just that my agility with BO printing isn't good enough to handle the smoothness, 
or maybe I'm about to realize that the smoothness of Quad prints gives a 'presence' 
which feels a little too hermetic for me, and that I find the more open-air 
physically-immediate BO prints more satisfying. 

Last August, I found on MIS's site John Woolf's comments comparing prints done 
with his workflow (which has little dots, like BO) versus one's he did using Jeff Randall's 
partitioned (dotless) workflow. He said there that 'under magnification there is slightly 
less microbanding with the Randall method'. And then he went on to say, "But also under magnification, you will see that my method produces a sharper image; it produces 
greater acutance and my curve has more internal contrast -- better midtone separation. 
All of these differences are subtle. Both methods produce excellent results. It is a matter 
of taste and imaging requirements. I think I will stay with my method for most things, 
because of its simplicity, sharpness and tonal punch. But if I am printing an image which 
is predominantly made up of smooth, light tones, like a portrait or a nude, I would use 
Randall's partitioned workflow."  (I would note for the present context that Woolf's workflow 
uses much more black ink than Randall's does, so as a method it's in between Randall and BO). Woolf's characterization matches up very well with my own findings so far, but,  
I haven't closed the book on finding how to adapt an image so BO can handle smooth, 
light tones.  

I'll end this with thanks to Clayton Jones for his leadership in advancing BO printing as 
a valuable approach which yields prints with very satisfying distinctive qualities. He's 
opened things up, and his efforts at characterizing the special qualities of BO prints 
prompt us to continue to look at them with open eyes.

John               
       



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