Digital BW, The Print

Well said Tyler.  And we seem to belittle the significantly greater level of
control available today.  The price of this control is the need to
understand how to use it or not use it.  The early pioneers of photography
probably had to be more chemists rather than photographers.  Thank God we
don't have to learn all that stuff today. Imagine what their forum would
have read like!

But we do still need to understand the principles of light and the tools of
our trade.  Weston, Adams and all those guys of the past were well-versed in
these...or they farmed it out to a lab (but this forum is not about
outsourcing the print....).

If you seek plug 'n play then don't be surprised when it doesn't work and
you have no clue as to why not or that you end up resorting to hours of
trial and error in order to get a sensibly pleasing result.  However, with
understanding comes opportunity.  The good news is others like Roy, Steve B,
Tyler, Ernst, Carl and Paul, to name just a few, are putting in the hard
yardage and can distil things down to a more digestible level.

People also need to realise that this forum is intended to cater to a wide
variety of people with disparate degrees of knowledge.  It is what makes
this forum so informative and powerful.  The amount of knowledge on this
forum simply dwarfs that which I have found on any other.  Would you prefer
a forum for "Digital B&W The Print for Dummies (to paraphrase the popular
learning series) and those who don't want to understand and simply want to
be told what to do"?  I don't think so.


> From: Tyler Boley <tyler@...>

> 
> 
> --- In DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com, "outlaw07480"
> <outlaw07480@y...> wrote:
>> 
>> Reading this entire thread I just can't help but wonder how Weston
>> got by with just three trays and a light blub.
> 
> With an extraordinary amount of talent. The sparcity of his means and
> tools are no comment on his level of craft, which was also
> extraordinary, even if intuitive.Very few of us will have either in
> such amounts as to literally change the coarse of an art form.
> Not a good example.
> There is no either/or, knowledge/instinct, black or white. We all have
> our different ways of moving forward. Those who choose not to pursue
> the immense amount of technical knowledge available are in no more
> position to critisize those who do, as are those knowlegeable to
> critisize those percieved for having no digital "chops".
> 
> There's no need to inhibit those who feel the need to learn more,
> about anything.
> 
> Tyler