Digital BW, The Print

Djon,

I certainly place my self in the sensualist camp but I
find it deeply curious to work on b&w prints without
looking/working with b&w files before printing. Unless
you previsualize using the same algorithm that the
QTR/gimp uses, it is unlikely that you will ever get
the exact print you envision. Of course no one but you
knows that so your secret is quite safe. In a way it
is more like the result of wet dark room work where
the fruits of your labors are only seen in the
developer not on the easel where most of the
manipulation occurs -- perhaps this is the attraction,
the role of chance? I don't like the amount of wasted
paper it took to make a wet darkroom print sing. With
softproofing using qtr_matte prints just match. From
raw file score to symphony finished print with more
control than we ever had in a wet darkroom (though we
wave our arms less now). Does an inkjet print have
Buddha nature? It does if the artist has skillfully
presented his vision and  shares it's meaning.    

Peace,

Guy
--- Djon <westsidemaurice@...> wrote:

> Steve, there are/were two divergant Zone System
> tendencies. 
> 
> One emphasized number assignment, the other
> emphasized
> previsualization. Two sides of the same coin, appeal
> IMO to two
> fundamentally different kinds of personality. 
> 
> You're right that Zone System doesn't simply mean
> "previsualization,"
> but previsualization is central to it. 
> 
> Post-processing that's not the result of
> previsualization is (IMO)
> outside Zone System, a matter of manipulation (not a
> negative IMO).
> 
> I happen to resonate more with what I understand,
> from several of his
> students, to be Minor White's angle on Zone System
> rather than Ansel
> Adams'. 
> 
> I think Minor's angle emphasized previsualization
> more than Ansel's.
> Minor's students were printing masters but they
> didn't seem very
> interested in densitometry and were obviously drawn
> to strongly 
> emotional images more than to beautiful rock and
> water with subtle
> tonal scales. Like Weston, a better printer early on
> than Ansel, Minor
> appealed more to sensualists.
> 
> From small dealings in the Seventies with Ansel and
> his students, and
> from following his books and later work, it seems to
> me that he grew
> more technically than visually with age, the
> opposite of Minor's growth. 
> 
> In Ansel's last (perhaps) book project he focused on
> quantitative
> technical matters (scanning and lithography). This
> is honorable, an
> extension of his angle on the Zone System that he
> began with Minor White. 
> 
> Minor, on by contrast, was a Zen practitioner who
> photographed people,
> content, and meaning...a different side of the brain
> with different
> passions, employing a different angle on the Zone
> System. Ansel was
> also a fine people photographer who could make
> eloquent connections,
> but some forget that in their enthusiasm for
> numbers.
> 
> Minor's Zone System game seemed to make the image he
> wanted to make. I
> think Ansel's was more a matter of process for its
> own sake...workflow.
> 
> ++++ Photography and printmaking are part of a
> continuum and that this
> is sometimes forgotten by people at the extremes of
> the continuum. 
> 
> Djon
> 
> 
> 
> --- In DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com,
> Steve Kale
> <stevekale@b...> wrote:
> > Firstly I did not assert that pre-visualisation
> was no longer relevant.
> > Secondly, the Zone system has nothing to do with
> black and white per
> se - it
> > is merely a system for determining appropriate
> exposure when such
> exposure
> > can not be significantly "altered" post shutter
> release.  All the Zone
> > system does is provide a rigorous framework for
> determining middle
> exposure
> > and an understanding as to how the rest of the
> elements will be
> exposed as a
> > result.  
> 
> 
> 


		
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