Digital BW, The Print

> If I had it to do over again, I would
> go to a workshop to get started instead of picking up info here and there,
> some workable, some not.  You might check out Santa Fe Workshops
> (http://www.sfworkshop.com/digital/index.cfm) or maybe Anderson Ranch or
the
> Maine schools.  If you can get some comfort that real photographers are
> teaching, as opposed to some of the really tasteless stuff you can do with
> Photoshop, you will save yourself much money and time.

Good advice. I took a digital B&W printing workshop at Santa Fe Workshops
from George DeWolfe, who is a Camera Arts columnist and an expert on the
Piezography/Epson system of making prints. The workshop was essentially a
digital lab and printing class -- no shooting. I learned much more in that
week than I could have in several months on my own. You will learn much
about setting up your monitor and your color settings to make everything
work. You will also learn lots of Photoshop tricks geared toward black and
white images. Unless he has changed the workshop you will not learn any
other workflows besides the Piezography/Epson system. One downside of the
workshop was they did not have enough printers to service the printing
demand and the staff was not familiar with the workflow. Santa Fe Workshops
is Mac-based which will cause a bit of confusion for PC users who've never
been around Macs.

I think George is teaching this workshop again in 2003. Jean Miele (a noted
digital B&W photographer) will also teach a 2003 workshop which is a
combination of shooting and digital printing. Jean has most of his prints
done with Fuji equipment at NancyScans in NYC.

Jim Richey