Sandy King (sanking@hubcap.clemson.edu)
Sun, 31 Jan 1999 18:10:14 -0400
Jan Pietrzak,
I can see little point, if any, in a challenge of the type proposed by
Steve Shapiro, if as I understand it, he is to make the negatives and
prints and them have the best print selected by someone else, or a jury.
What could that possibly prove? What is Steve's photographic aesthetic,
that is, what is he trying to do with his imagery? Is he after maximum
detail or soft results, long soft tones or hard contrasts, grainy or very
smooth? And in turn, how can he convey that exact meaning to the jury that
would choose the so-called best image. And what if the difference between
the prints was indeed significant, but Steve disagreed with the juror's
choice?
Sorry, as far as I am concerned this challenge would be a silly, pointless
exercise and a complete waste of time. Better, let Steve do the tests,
evaluate the results for himself and choose the image that *he* likes the
best. That is what I suggested for Dave.
Its appears to me there are three groups expressing viewpoints on PMK, 1)
those who have tried it and continue to use it, for whatever reason, 2)
those who have tried it and returned to other developers, for whatever the
reason, and 3) those who have never tried it. The views of the first two
groups, based on personal experience, interest me, the views of the second
are just opinions, of dubious value.
In my own case I had been working in large format photography for over 15
years when PMK appeared on the scene in the early 1990s. I tried PMK around
1991 for the first time and switched to it for most of my work for the same
reason expressed earlier by Carl Weese, that is, I find PMK negatives
easier to print, both in silver printing and carbon. So, to all those folks
with limited or no experience with PMK, what is it that large numbers of
photographers who have switched to PMK are missing? Can it realy be, as Box
Maxey suggests, that we are all really so mindless that we are using it
because it is the trendy thing to do?
Sandy King
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