My response to NETFUTURE #73: Can Photography Blind Us
On photographer Joseph Holmes spending three or four weeks of a year in the field with a camera, and the rest of the time in the studio printing: This is close to the ratio for serious fine art photographers who print their own work with analog techniques. Why should things change?
There is a lot more to building a fine art print than slapping a negative in the drug store processor and punching "go". A serious printer will start by building a contrast mask, usually letting the edges of that contrast mask bleed a little bit creating an "unsharp mask" which increases local contrast.
Then they'll play with color balance. Films are generally balanced to a couple of semi-mythical light sources that only really exist in tightly controlled studio settings, and the prints made from those films will be viewed under some other random light source. The image should communicate the message of the photographer in these final conditions.
Then they'll dodge and burn, darken and lighten (or vice-versa, depending on whether they're working with a negative or positive process) areas of the image.
All of these expensive and skilled analog techniques exist in PhotoShop, with immediate results and "undo". Not only that, but while the Ilfochrome process which is usually used to make prints from slide film will last essentially forever in dark storage, after 30 years in standard gallery lighting it will have changed perceptibly from the original print. The EverColor Illuminage process, for instance, is more stable.
My favorite fine art photographer, Christopher Burkett (who uses the older techniques), says at http://www.christopherburkett.com/indexb.html
"To master the photographic process, it is necessary to intuitively understand the nature of light and color; and their interactions with film and sensitized materials, from the moment of exposure to the final print. Only by a complete knowledge of the entire process can a person fully utilize the materials for the clearest and most complete artistic expression."
That sounds to me like it's going to take me at least a decade. I can spend that decade learning an increasingly expensive optical and chemical process using tools which no longer have mass-market price or R&D advantage, or let someone else incur the capital costs in processes which are actively being developed and already have better archival properties, while I build a calibration system, and do proof prints on my monitor.
I'm with Joseph Holmes, this is a no-brainer.
Friday, June 19th, 1998 danlyke@flutterby.com