Carl Weese (cjweese@wtco.net)
Fri, 19 Mar 1999 10:41:55 -0500
Rob Altomonte wrote:
>
> How come there are so few platinum/palladium portraits? Maybe I just
> haven't seen my share but is it a contrast issue or that plat/palladium
> lends itself more to landscapes/stills more than people?
> Rob Altomonte
Interesting question, Rob. There could be several answers. I'm not
certain that portraits printed in platinum are really all that
rare--what's the ratio of portraits to other sorts of picture in the
world of silver or color?
But unless you go the enlarged negative route, platinum means big
cameras to make big negatives and doing portraits with 8x10 (or larger)
cameras is quite a task. For commercial/retail portrait work, platinum
would be very expensive. Finally, lots of people working in platinum
are, or at least dream of, selling their work as fine art and portraits
quite famously _don't sell_ to collectors. Unless the subject of the
portrait is a celebrity, which is a whole different matter.
>From a technical standpoint, the ability to distinguish incredibly small
nuances of tone makes platinum printing a natural for either portraits
or nudes. Maybe I should go and do a few of one or the other this
afternoon <s>.
---Carl
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.0b3 on Sat Nov 06 1999 - 10:09:04