I saw your note the other day about range of tone not beimg the only criterion
for judging a platinum/palladium print. It arose from a comment on Steichen's
prints that did not a a great tonal range but had beautiful gradation in the
middle tones.
I thought I had posted a note arising from the original comment but it must be
somewhere in cyberspace. So here we go again.
Of course breadth of tonal range is not the only criterion. One does not judge a
piece of music by whether it includes every note in the scale or a painting by
the inclusion of every colour in the spectrum.
The beauty of these processes, salt, platinum, palladium, is that, thanks to
self masking, they are capable of reproducing without dodging and burning in,
more than twice the brightness range of a silver gelatine print. When done
properly, without such contaminants as dichromates or potassium chlorate, the
gradation across and in that range is sublime. When the middle tones in an image
sing you have a print to get excited about.. See Steichen and Emerson. When the
photographer takes advantage of both the range and the gradation, the excitement
can be even greater. See Frederick Evans. Viva Steichen and Emerson and
Frederick Evans. And down with the unintentionally contrasty and grainy
platinum/palladium prints, prepared from silver gelatine negatives, that have
been giving platinum/palladium a bad name over the past few years. It is the
negative that is the sine qua non of a good platinum/palladium print.
On the broader front,' Those who question received opinion and conventional
approaches are those who expand our horizons.'
( Terry King,1996).
Terry King
.