Digital BW, The Print

--- In DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com, "Clayton Jones"
<cj@...> wrote:
...
> >Nick, who's prints I have not seen, apparently makes small impressive
> >silver prints-
> 
> How are you defining "small" here?  I'm asking because I prefer small
> prints, but it means different things to different people (for some,
> 11x14 is small, but for me that's large).

Hi Clayton, nice shot, you got me on that one. I had a workshop long
ago with the great Linda Conner. She had her gorgeous 8x10 gold toned
POP contact prints. She mentioned that her galleries kept complaining
that she could not supply them with large prints due to her process.
Her comment was- well... they seem pretty d**n big to me!!
We were a bit surprised, but darn if we didn't look down at the table
again and yup, suddenly they seemed plenty big!
You are right, big or small is subjective and somewhat meaningless. In
fact I'm pretty tired of all this huge stuff, the photographic
integrity of the image is often lost, they lose presence and
substance. The whole viewing distance issue is irrelevant to me as,
well, I'm going to put my face right up to any print of whatever size,
as well as stepping back. Many are printing big simply because they
can. I'm pretty pleased with the beautiful things we can do with
putting down ink here, and most people just want me to make big things
for them, and somewhat dismiss the ink possibilities as less
interesting to them.
Being able to print bigger was a revelation to me though, it was
difficult for me to go bigger than 11x14 in the darkroom. My stuff is
very busy compositionally, with lots of detail, and suddenly things
began to work as intended a bit bigger. But these are about as big as
I want, few of my negs will go bigger and hold up, in my opinion, and
some I won't even print this big.
But many of my favorite things by others are quite small. Caponigro's
latest stuff is amazing little still lives.
I was told Nick's are around 8" square. But, I may be getting into
trouble here. I have not seen them, nor have met or talked to him.

>  I'm also interested in how
> they will be hung.  It's hard to mix large and small prints together.
>   Any chance you can take a snapshot for us?

They won't be mixed together, we'll be on separate walls and the space
divides up a bit.

> Last winter I saw a wonderful traveling Edward Weston exhibit and of
> course everything was 8x10 or smaller.  Was very inspiring, with a
> good mixture of his well known and lesser known works.

Last Weston I saw was with Modotti in 06, Mexico work. I actually
liked hers better but it was early work for him. Some were trimmed 4x5
contact prints, now that's small. His prints are always a pleasure to see.

> How are you printing these days?  I have it in mind that you use K7,
> but not really sure...

I've been using the same combination of Piezotones for some time now.
A selenium set and a custom mixed warm set with a shared black in the
9600. StudioPrint has given more and more control over how to put them
down, and even though the setup has been the same for a while, I keep
learning more and more ways to put the inks down in better and better
ways. There are always at least 6 inks in my prints.
But it's gotten extremely complex, and I often think no one can see
the difference but me. Keeps me off the street though.
If I had more printers the K7s would be in here in a second. It'll
happen, things are evolving. I'll get a sneak peak in the magic
factory when I teach there in a few weeks.

> ...May you sell a ton of prints...

Now you're talkin'. Credit cards pretty maxed out for these frames <G>
Well, that was a ramble...
Tyler