Digital BW, The Print

I agree. I think we all have ways to "optimize" our systems and color  
manage them. I wasn't expecting everything to be the same for the A  
prints though I was a little surprised. I was most interested in 3  
things on the technical end.

1. Tonal continuity (not necessarily gamma).
2. Hue (this was really interesting. props to Tyler and his 5 and  
6ers.)   We also found out the difference between HP "neutral" and  
Jon Cone "neutral". Jon Cone neutral is somewhere between warm  
neutral and selenium while HP is sort'of around a Piezotone cool- 
neutral. Now if I put an HP set in and a Piezotone Neutral set in I  
could go between Neutral and Neutral.   Great. ;-)
3. resolution and sharpness. (That's an issue with soft papers like  
photo rag at times.)

But I was really interested in the interpreted images. Most everyone  
brought the image down (not down in time ala darkroom, down in  
luminance) and added contrast. A few people rounded out the tree  
trunk and the clay building to the right and burned down the right- 
bottom rock that was nearly the lightest thing in the photo (I was  
surprised that so few people did that rock burn). Most kept open the  
shadows under the cliffs. Most burned down the top-left cliffs to  
centralize the image a bit and give more verticality to the tree  
trunk. I noticed a few had dodged the individual steps of the top  
cliff-ladder . . .

what else . . . . . . .

I guess all in all the thing I noticed most was that we were all a  
little wrapped up in technicalities and forgot to talk about just the  
visual clarity and quality of the prints. I almost wanted to see  
everyone focus on each print alone at a time like a formal crit back  
in art school days. I think maybe is was the little time and little  
space. Maybe we all feel more free typing our words than speaking  
them. I would like to see us all get together again for a full day  
and in a larger space . . . .

Anyway, it was a great get-together none the less.

All the best, Walker