I would say that there are some of us who like to approach the kind of complex
dodging/burning that his method produces in a less systematic way - using
pieces of cotton wool and standard dodging tools etc, in fact the same
techniques - with slight modifications - that one can use with silver gelatine.
Of course the methods than one can use depend on the light source - I use a
mercury lamp (or the sun) which both are more or less point sources allowing
plenty of room between light and film for normal dodging. Obviously this isn't
so easy with those of you using arrays of tubes close to the neg.
Were I going to be making a number of prints of the same subject I think I
would consider producing a single mask with different densities to allow the
same masking effect to be done in a single exposure. For silver gelatin printing
two methods are either to produce this mask on film or you
can also build up a suitable mask using layers of acetate with red ink on them.
++++++++++++++++++
To comment briefly on Terry's response to the post:
<< Peter Marshall said that one could print more than the eye can see onto
silver gelatine paper. Then I disagreed but it has been demonstrated to me since
that I was wrong. The practical demonstration was achieved through a combination
of exposure and development of the negative so that it would print onto the
silver gelatine >>
Terry - no wish to open that particular argument again, but I said that we
could see - meaning get information visually from a scene and not what we would
apprehend in a single blink - more than can be recorded on silver gelatine
emulsion (film or paper). Secondly I said that if silver gelatin can record it
on film, there is no reason why silver gelatin won't transfer it onto paper
(even if this is not normally how we work.)
And of course if it isn't on your film you will not get it on paper using any
process, alternative or not. Until we go digital, all our processes are founded
on silver gelatin even if neither appear in the final print.
When we see we don't have to take in the information all at once in a single
'exposure'. This gives seeing an enormous advantage over film - like working
not from one negative but from a whole range at different exposures.
I have been struggling today to read numbers in the shadows that I know were
clearly visible when I took the photos but do not appear on the negs. I could
have exposed to make them visible but then the highlights would have been over
the shoulder of the film. I had no such problems when standing there.
+++++++++++++++
Back to masking etc and the comments on silver gelatine curves:
As to the preferred non-linearity of film curves for printing on silver
gelatine, is surely a matter of matching the response of the film to that of
the paper - the familiar quadrant diagrams from books on sensitrometry. Straight
line film curves just don't give the 'best' results from a scientific point of
view - though as we all know some bad practice technically can often give
exciting results aesthetically.
For printing on materials with a more straight-line response you need to avoid
the toe of the curve by giving more generous exposure.
Perhaps we should also remember the degree of control possible on silver
gelatine by using variable contrast paper with separately dodged/burnt in
exposures through yellow and magenta filters. With this technique you can not
only alter densities at any point in the print but can also alter local
contrast. I think the only way we can do this with alt-photo is to work on our
negs digitally.
Peter Marshall
On Fixing Shadows, Dragonfire and elsewhere:
http://faraday.clas.virginia.edu/~ds8s/
Family Pictures & Gay Pride: http://www.dragonfire.net/~gallery/
and: http://www.speltlib.demon.co.uk/
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