From: Carl Weese (cweese@earthlink.net)
Date: 08/29/02-08:57:35 PM Z
Jeffrey,
I'm sure that what you say is true. I've seen some of your prints in
platinum enlarged from 4x5 to 8x10 and the techniques, which you are always
careful to point out you learned from Sal Lopes, certainly produce the best
enlargements of large format I've encountered. But they aren't contact
prints.
Another recent message, I apologise for not remembering the poster, talked
about spending hours and hours manipulating an image in PhotoShop before
printing it out digitally.
Both of these messages about, well, "fixing" the negative make me wonder a
bit. Maybe it's just me but the Pt/Pd contact print offers the most direct
photographic experience imaginable. If you do everything right making the
exposure, and don't screw up developing the film, you get a wonderful print
on the first or second try (if the picture was worth making in the first
place). If a negative doesn't work, make another. Move on. The idea of
fixing-up and manipulating the image simply doesn't appeal to me. It may be
a game worth playing to change a negative into something it wasn't to begin
with, but the game that interests me is getting the perception in my head
straight through the camera and the negative into the print. ---Carl
--
web site with picture galleries
and workshop information at:
http://home.earthlink.net/~cweese/
----------
>From: "Jeffrey D. Mathias" <jeffrey.d.mathias@att.net>
>To: alt-photo-process-l@sask.usask.ca
>Subject: Re: Enlarged negs from pyro negs
>Date: Thu, Aug 29, 2002, 7:49 PM
>
> Robert Newcomb wrote:
>> Can the"magic" in a pyro negative be transferred to an enlarged
>> negative if it too is developed in pyro? Please excuse my
>> ignorance...because, well that's what I am and why I'm asking.
>
> Carl Weese wrote:
>> ... But then, I don't make
>> enlarged negatives because I find all enlargements from large format
>> negatives disappointing compared to contact prints.
>
> There is no real "magic" in a pyro negative. The resulting effects in
> the print can be obtained through other methods. Although pyro does
> have it's own advantages as do other developers as well as drawbacks.
>
> As to enlarged negatives. Yes and no. If they are built with
> techniques such as those described in my guide (at web site below) they
> can offer a negative impossible to create with camera, film, and
> developer of any combination. Or they can give the effects possible
> with any camera, film, developer. If they are simply enlarged to make
> bigger without any "building", then they will most likely produce
> inferior prints as noted by Carl. But enlarged negatives that are built
> can produce some of the most elegant prints.
>
> For some time (and still occasionally) I even built negatives of the
> same size (without enlarging) to take advantage of the immense control
> possible.
>
> --
> Jeffrey D. Mathias
> http://home.att.net/~jeffrey.d.mathias/
>
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