Digital BW, The Print

Clayton wrote: 
 
      >>What I'm wondering is how important this will be for someone coming into BW printing with no previous darkroom experience? Upon what basis will this theoretical person make a choice between a grayscale or color workflow? 
 
  You raise a very interesting point, Clayton; one that I've devoted considerable thought to because of the university curriculum we continue to develop at St. Edward's University (Austin, TX), and the workshops I teach, and I have a few observations to share with you. 
 First, the digital darkroom is fundamentally a color darkroom regardless of workflow, grayscale or color printing. Unless you're working on a monochromatic display, the grayscale pixels viewed on-screen are composed of RGB information. More importantly, all grayscale printing paths move data through the computer's and Photoshop's color engines, and ICC profiles are structured around color information. And, with rare exception, scanners and digital cameras are RGB devices. This is to say that some level of color expertise is important if a printer wants to move even marginally beyond plug and play (and most, sooner or later, do). 
 In the wet darkroom era, a black/white printer could easily avoid knowing much of anything about color theory. In the digital era, this would be a severly self-limiting mistake. Workflows are obviously important, but to concentrate on them at the expense of fostering an understanding of how an image making system works is potentially a mistake of the first order. 
 Essentially, photographers use technology to transform one kind of information into another. You can transform photonic energy into metal or dye particals using film and the wet darkroom; you can transform photonic energy into binary information and droplets of ink. It's been my experience that when young photographers (regardless of age) "get this", its easier for them to make informed decisions and choices. Creating workflows that support these decisions and choices is rightfully a result of this process. It puts the horse in front of the cart, in my opinion.
  
  Second, I've found--much to my delight--that even those students who do not have wet darkroom experience gain from learning the digital darkroom by analogy to traditional wet darkroom practices. At the least, this builds a common working vocabulary, which is very important. This commonality, by the way, extends well beyond technique to include how images are critiqued and discussed. 
 Third, at the risk of being too obvious I'd distinguish between a "photographer" and and "printer." The photographer doesn't necessarily need to make prints--and thus, never needs to know much about how beautiful prints are made. They can hire someone else--who does understand the system, and has mastered the workflows--to make their prints for them. This has always been true, and the shift from wet darkroom to digital printing doesn't necessarily effect this in any meaningful way. If a photographer wants to also be a printer, and so many do, their apprenticeship to craft will be dictated by their need or ambition. 
 Bill Kennedy K2 Press Author of "The Photographer's Guide to the Digital Darkroom"
  
 
  
  
        
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