Digital BW, The Print

--- In DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com, Tom Baker <tbaker1328@...> 
wrote:
>
> Tyler  -
>    
>   Maybe Epson can help you with your plumbing.  Give support a call.

There you go, and me of all people, they would be thrilled to help.

But hopefully more to the point, after being nothing but smarmy here today...

Good printing is hard to quantify because different people see it differently. A print with 
no technical problem, everything pretty much in it's place, and by most standards "good" 
can still be dead, therefore to me, not good. To someone else, beautiful, and who am I to 
insist their experience of something "beautiful" is false or somehow lacking.
It's very difficult, like telling someone the music they love sucks... and it may, actually.

Seeing great work, not in reproduction but it the flesh, and access to people either as 
teachers, mentors, or workshop faculty, is priceless. I find too many people don't even 
know where the high bar is, they've never seen it, only read about it. So they don't know 
what to shoot for, personally.
One of my mentors told me in my young crazy years to settle down stop freaking, because 
the output from my first ten years will turn out to be crap, but those first ten years are 
essential to get to the point of not doing crap. 
But it's too deflating to suggest to someone in their first decade that their output is crap. 
There's no way I bought that, and I treasured it all. Now, it's all been thrown away.

I think adequate printing without major mistakes is hard to learn, in digital. It could well 
be several workshops, or much Photoshop, color management, etc. studying and 
experience. But not years, if one is motivated. I think the darkroom was quicker to get the 
basics down.
Truly becoming atuned to the possibilies of the materials, feeling your way toward making 
an image come alive, and all that tech skill just instinctual and expected, not conscious...
Some people seem to just have a feel for it, but for most it does seem to take years, and is 
a never ending process. That's why it can be such a rewarding endevour, like music, there 
is always more to master, keeping you engaged indefinitely.
One hopes, anyway...
Tyler