Digital BW, The Print

As a longtime proponent of the silver print and the darkroom process, I have never 
lost my appreciation for finely executed silver prints.  Nor for the amazing 
transformations the darkroom has undergone in recent years.  Indeed, in the last 15 
of the 40+ years I've been going in and out of darkrooms my prints produced there 
have benefitted substantially due to the improvements Bruce is referring to in his 
discussion and his books on technique. But the underlying fact is, my finished 
product is generally better now when produced in the digital workflow, and, indeed, 
some negatives that were previously unprintable are now yielding prints at a very high 
standard of quality.

It can also be said, in response to Bruce's comments, that implementation of 
techniques in the darkroom such as bleaching, masking, etc. cannot put vision into a 
print when it is lacking in the negative. There is the flip side to what he calls "digital 
abuse" where a darkroom trick can substitute for a lack of craft. I've been shocked by 
participants in my darkroom workshops that have said things like "the shadows may 
be printed a bit dark but I'll just open them up with bleach rather than make another 
print." Digital abuse? Possible, of course, but really now... If someone wants to cut 
corners they can do it no matter what their process.

The whole discussion of the artistic value of images has really very little to do with 
the methodology employed in the making of prints. Much of what Bruce says on the 
subject of "seeing" is dead on the mark. But to present the idea that digital workflow 
is dimished or secondary because it enables one to solve some problems after the 
image is taken and that this somehow causes some photographers to take on a more 
casual attitude to shooting implies that anyone who works this way won't spend the 
time required to execute a negative artistically.  This is just not true. If anything, the 
higher level of control I have in Photoshop has caused me to be even more discerning 
of finished print quality and artistic impact, and has raised my whole level of scrutiny 
to the point where I take even more time to perform negatives and make fewer of 
them. It has raised the bar for what qualifies as something I will point a camera at.

> He seems to have forgotten that he is selling silver prints made from
> digital negatives output by film recorders. I own one and I can't tell any
> difference between the print I have and ones I saw in his show. If silver
> prints are what you want, digital vs. traditional is not a choice you have
> to make. You can make great silver fiber prints from any digital source,
> camera or scanner.

I didn't know this, and am a bit surprised by it.  What I saw in the prints he was 
showing was the presence of visible burn/dodge artifacts.  I had always regarded 
Bruce as likely to be a master printer, and was somewhat disappointed when I actually 
saw some of his prints in the flesh, though they were generally beautiful.  Upon closer 
scruting some of them fell a little short in my mind. And I don't mean to sound 
condescending in any way, I went to meet him with an initial positive bias towards his 
work and still feel that he is a significant force in the landscape genre today.

In the end, I don't particularly view his written piece as reflecting the kind of balance 
which he criticizes proponents of digital for lacking. It just comes off as defensive. 
Trotting out the whole issue of hardware obsolescence and the time it takes to move 
your files from platform to platform is pretty weak. I recently made a complete 
backup of all of my work on DVD, it took just a couple of hours, and sent the copies 
to my Dad for safekeeping. I've got multiple backups here and am well safeguarded. 
What really scares me is the vulnerability of my negatives, even though they are 
stored in a firesafe. There is only one each of them...

Finally, I've never heard anyone state that digital technology will "negate traditional 
photography of yesterday, today, or tomorrow,"  or that "the work of Ansel Adams, 
the Westons, Imogene Cunningham, etc." is not still great because we have newer, 
more capable tools.  If anything, I appreciate that work more because of the context 
within which they worked. I only wish Ansel had been around to work in Photoshop...

Now, where did I leave that basket of 5 1/4" floppies...

Cheers,
Phil
http://cirrus-digital.com
http://philbard.com