Progress

[Photo Engineer]

Thank you all for your encouragement and kind comments. I'm still going strong at it, but taking tonight off to get caught up in the data and also to work on the workshops.

Warmest wishes to all who love analog photography.

PE

[Donald Qualls]

I can add though that in-line with my previous post today on another thread,... Well, if you are all so interested in preserveing conventional photography and fear its demise, why are you not doing more to learn how to preserve it?

When it vanishes, it will be gone! I assure you of that fact.

PE

"If the question begins with the word 'why', the answer is money" -- Robert A. Heinlein (in the voice of Lazarus Long).

If your workshop were being held locally to me, I still wouldn't be able to afford to attend. I'd love to learn all there is to know about emulsion making, but if the cost of admission is more than I can pay, I'll have to remain ignorant, and either reinvent the stuff for myself when the time comes or learn it the way people learn wet plate now -- they aren't going to stop making glass any time soon, and if I can coat glass, I can do what I need.

Meantime, I do the only thing I can do -- use and buy film and paper from the companies that appear committed to trying to keep the process alive on an industrial scale.

[Photo Engineer]

"If the question begins with the word 'why', the answer is money" -- Robert A. Heinlein (in the voice of Lazarus Long).

If your workshop were being held locally to me, I still wouldn't be able to afford to attend. I'd love to learn all there is to know about emulsion making, but if the cost of admission is more than I can pay, I'll have to remain ignorant, and either reinvent the stuff for myself when the time comes or learn it the way people learn wet plate now -- they aren't going to stop making glass any time soon, and if I can coat glass, I can do what I need.

Meantime, I do the only thing I can do -- use and buy film and paper from the companies that appear committed to trying to keep the process alive on an industrial scale.

Donald, I can see your logic but I cannot agree completely.

Look at all of the posts about pt/pd and other alternative methods of photography and look at all of the workshops on these subjects. People are out there paying as much or more to make pt/pd prints than they would to make AgX prints.

Silver halide in gelatin is far more flexible, more useful and certainly has its own beauty as an art form. The photographic speed and curve shape variations are almost endless.

Yet, look at the dearth of workshops on silver gelatin and look at the lack in the number of those interested in it, when, OTOH almost all of us use it in-camera!

That seems to confound your argument to some extent and I cannot fully understand the situation out there. Things just don't add up completely. AgX is easy to make, repeatable, easy to coat and fast in speed. It will become a lost art if not learned well by some of the people out there.

I guess no one will truly miss it until it is gone.

PE

[Markus Albertz]

PE: just a suggestion: have you considered writing a book and perhaps self-publishing it? This would at least leave a record of the procedures you are currently developing. I for one have a pretty crazy schedule for years to come and don't think I will be able to participate in any workshops anytime soon, as much as I would like to. To me it is obvious that a workshop would be the best way to learn coating AgX, but on the other hand, I am always eager to add to my small photography library. In fact, I think quite a few folks would consider getting a book on AgX coating. Just a thought.... keep plugging ahead...

Regards, Markus

[avandesande]

A book will also raise interest in your workshops. Most of the guys doing workshops have built their reputations over many years.

[Photo Engineer]

Yes, a book has been mentioned both to me and by me here on APUG. Thanks again for suggesting it. I will not forget.

However, to even get the book ready, I'm working a full schedule of up to 8 hours per day several days / week making, coating and testing emulsions. I was asked to do the workshops first and then later this year I'll get to the book.

One sure thing is that giving a workshop is easier than writing a book. I can assure you of that. I watched while Grant Haist wrote his 2 volume text and I have a friend who writes SF novels. Both liken it to the hardest work in the world and I can believe it just trying myself to write up the 30 or so pages of formulas and instructions for the workshop.

While I'm on APUG here, I have up to 3 or 4 documents open in Word and Photoshop open with several scanned pictures including those I post here and those to be used in the workshops. Of course, at the workshops, the students will get to handle the originals themselves, while in the book I can only offer the scanned photographs.

That work is just about done, and I'm starting to 'build' the 'kit' for the workshops. I have loose ends to clean up with the film as noted above, and I have to do more work with baryta paper which has been slow coming but will be here soon.

PE

[vet173]

its posts like this that verify there is light at the end of the tunnel -


thanks!
john

PE will make sure we have a mitt to catch that light. Thanks PE

[Donald Qualls]

Yet, look at the dearth of workshops on silver gelatin and look at the lack in the number of those interested in it, when, OTOH almost all of us use it in-camera!

That seems to confound your argument to some extent and I cannot fully understand the situation out there. Things just don't add up completely. AgX is easy to make, repeatable, easy to coat and fast in speed. It will become a lost art if not learned well by some of the people out there.

I guess no one will truly miss it until it is gone.

It's denial, Ron. I see myself doing it -- seeing Foma doing well, Ilford and Fuji reaffirming their commitment to film, and it's easy to think this will all turn out to have been a bunch of overreaction, there'll still be one or two film companies making 4-5 emulsions in another 25 years, and that's the worst it'll get (after all, there's more money in artist's oil colors now than there ever was previously in history, right?).

And maybe that view is correct.

But maybe it's not.

Quite honestly, I don't have the money to pay for workshops in *anything*. I learned cyanotype by reading a bunch of stuff, buying a kit, and making some prints, but I still have trouble with it sometimes. Soon I hope to try recreating some of the work that led up to Cyanotype Rex -- which I can afford because it uses no silver, and for $20 I can get enough ferric ammonium citrate and potassium ferricyanide to make far more than the 20 8x10 prints the box specifies. Add to that the cost of silver nitrate, and I couldn't afford to make my own emulsion even if you came to my house and gave the workshop gratis.

I've finally started to accept that if photography goes much further along the path of scarcity and decreasing demand leading to loss of economies of scale, I won't be able to stay with it. I hate the thought of giving it up, even more so that of becoming a pixelographer. Most likely, if there in fact comes a day when I can't buy film at a price I can afford, I'll either settle for making in-camera cyanotypes using the high-speed methods and either contact printing or direct positive chemistry, or I'll dump my equipment to collectors (the kind who dust their cameras, rather than shoot them, even now while film is easy to get and not too expensive) and spend the proceeds on an easel, some brushes, canvases, and tubes of oils. That I can more or less afford, and it's not getting any more expensive as the years go by...

[Photo Engineer]

Donald;

I know exactly where you are coming from. It hurts me to charge, but being retired, I have spent an arm and a leg on my first love! The honorarium to me won't even cover the travel for my wife and for me. I woulnd't go without her afer 40 years together.

I feel so sad, I can never fully express it here. And, things may come to what you allude to in B&W photography. Maybe, color as well. IDK.

Your little addendum also strikes a chord with me, having been in it since I was 12. I reemember my mother helping me control temperature for my first E1 Ektachrome process. It brings back memories. I wish you could be there. I would love to meet you.

All my best wishes for you.

PE