When I made my decision to specialise, my platinum printing wasn't very good, but I felt the need to pare down the number of options I had in order to make progress. I’d already managed to make some nice prints and I’d bought some much nicer prints from other people; these left me feeling that it was worth trying to really explore platinum.
At about the same time (through serendipity rather than conscious decisions) I started my first serious nudes project. Even though many of these photos weren’t very good (like my printing!), I realised the two went well together and that helped me stay focused as I learned.
Since then my photographic aesthetic and my printing skills have developed side by side, feeding each other as they go. New and exciting photos make me want to make better prints, and learning how to make better prints has introduced new options for making new and exciting photos. I've got to a point where I just don’t feel any urge to print with other processes (so much so that I've stopped using roll film), and I’m drawn to subjects and compositions that I know will work with platinum.
As an aside, anyone who thinks that people take up platinum printing, and then sustain it for long enough to become good at it, solely because it’s glamorous or in the hope of selling expensive prints really should talk to my bank manager. He’ll happily explain that I’m insane and that the money I’ve spent on this would have been better invested in Enron shares.
As an aside, anyone who thinks that people take up platinum printing, and then sustain it for long enough to become good at it, solely because it’s glamorous or in the hope of selling expensive prints really should talk to my bank manager. He’ll happily explain that I’m insane and that the money I’ve spent on this would have been better invested in Enron shares.
The $1000 question !
Are your platinum prints actually any better than the best Silver Gelatin prints you could make off the same negatives ?
Are your platinum prints actually any better than the best Silver Gelatin prints you could make off the same negatives ?
To be honest, I don't know. Other than a few experiments using RC paper for proofing, I don't think I've made a silver print in 2 years. I'm happy and I can get exactly what I'm looking for with platinum so why would I want to waste my time finding out?
Afterthought: my platinum prints are physically very, very different from silver prints. They have texture; they have different weight, different tones, different contrast; they have lumps and bumps from paper flaws. In my opinion the question is like asking a watercolour painter whether they could get the same effect in acrylics - interesting from a technical perspective but pointless from an aesthetic perspective.
Are your platinum prints actually any better than the best Silver Gelatin prints you could make off the same negatives ?
Ian
That's an apples to basketballs comparison. You don't shoot for the one while thinking of the other, as the prints have very different tonalities. Silver gelatin paper has a different feel - the paper itself is very uniform in color and texture, whereas pt/pd is done on a wide variety of textures and colors. A matt silver gelatin print still doesn't look like a platinum print, and a sepia and selenium-toned warm base silver print on matt paper still won't look like a palladium print. Within the medium of pt/pd, you can have an infinite variety that still have a consistent underlying tonality and emotional response. You get something different from the silver gelatin print - not better, not worse, just different.
My favorite printing process was gum bichromate, perhaps because it took me days and a lot of brushing to make a single multi-layered print. Next was probably salted paper which also demanded a lot of handwork mixing and coating chemicals on the paper. I also used to do a lot of hand-colored silverprints, so the print textures and physical manipulation of the chemicals have always been important to me. I can get lost in oil painting for the same reasons.
Now, I'm doing wetplate collodion ambrotypes. I got hooked on it after watching a Sally Mann video where she held a glass plate up to the sky and poured collodion on it. Being raised Catholic, that kicked in a memory of the priest consecrating the sacrament during Mass. Talk about a hook! I get the same feeling now every time I reverently pour a plate.
I've also taken to developing the glass plates in my hand rather than using a tray. If you think watching a print come up in a tray in the darkroom is intriguing, imagine the magnitude of the feeling when the plate develops almost instantaneously in your own hand. It's like being an alchemist or magician.
And, once in awhile I find the wetplate artifacts like oysters or developer patterns serendipitous.
Assuming the content and message are well crafted should be taken for granted. We can't convey content and message without a medium. There isn't much way to get by a crappy photograph printed in any medium, and I think everybody realizes that.
This is a good point and I am glad you made it. Form and content are always linked -- you can not have one without the other. I get sick of people who claim that the only thing that counts is the content, or the "picture". If anyone feels that way they might as well just look at images on the internet or on television as there would be no point at all in making prints.
Over the years I have printed in both silver and with a number of alternative processes, including carbon transfer, gum, salted paper, vandyke, kallitype, and pt./pd.
However, I don't photograph with any of these processes in mind. Rather, when making negatives I just look for things that are visually interesting, have historical or symbolic importance, or that simply offer interesting light play. If the thing I see is interesting to me I figure that I will be able to make a good print somehow.
I spend most of my time printing with carbon transfer because I am intrigued by the extraordinary surface texture and tactility of carbon prints, which have a relief effect that no other process can imitate. However, carbon is not always the ideal process for all of my negatives as it tends to work best with images that have a lot of important textural qualities and that depend primarily on shadow and mid-tone tonalities. For scenes that work best with long gradations in the highlight I will print with either kallitype (which I tone with platinum or palladium) or palladium. However, as a general rule I prefer the much higher Dmax, the sheen, and the much greater perception of detail in a carbon print than in a kallitype or palaldium print. Although I have done a lot of printing with LF and ULF in-camera negatives most of my work today is done with digital negatives, which gives me the flexibility to tailor the negative for the process that best suits the image.
I've taken up "poly-gravure" (I wish there were a simpler term for it, but I don't think you can usurp "photogravure" since the plastic version really is a less complex process) because I like to get my hands in it. It's that simple. There is a tactile sense that allows you to feel the work in a very real and direct way when you're rubbing ink on and off the plate. The mysteries of the process come into play as well and, since I love not really knowing what I'll get until I pull the print off the plate, I get a satisfaction that no other photographic process has given me yet. The extraordinary combination of chance effects, deep blacks and creamy paper give me a wonderful pay-off. The print is one of a kind and I love it when it works.
Are your platinum prints actually any better than the best Silver Gelatin prints you could make off the same negatives ?
Ian
I just printed some 8x10 negatives using what Sile calls "cyanowhite" the simple beaching and toning method I sort of arrived at on the shoulders of a lot of other people. I had formerly contact printed these on silver gelatin. The silver gelatin prints are really cool, and have a level of detail that cant be matched (by me, anyway) by another process. I'm really satisfied with them.
The toned cyanotypes by comparison, while very sharp, do not carry the incredible tonality nor the very fine detail of the silver contact prints. However the textured paper that I chose, the brown tone with subtle blues in the shadows that never get all the way black, and the feathery feel of the highlight and mid tone interplay give the prints a totally different feel, and nobody could confuse one for the other.
I really like them, but choosing between them is like choosing between two beloved children who have vastly different temperaments.
They are different, you love them both, and you can't really say that one is better than the other.
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--J Brunner, The Prints of Darkness
There are some I've shot with a particular process in mind, and others that just seem to cry out for a different treatment.
Much of the time I find that the variations available in "normal" silver gelatin prints is sufficient - like one negative which I won't print again until I can get more Bergger Silver Supreme paper, or another one which only ever looked right on my last four sheets of severely outdated Ilfospeed G3...
But these "artifacts" are not always obvious, so I will continue to experiment with just about everything.
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-- Ole Tjugen, Luddite Elitist Norway
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