Re: Direct Carbon Business Wise

In a message dated 31/07/05 16:52:45 GMT Daylight Time,
achakali@wideopenwest.com writes:

> John,
>
> I will attempt to answer your questions. Please feel free to contact me
> off-line if I missed the mark.
................................................
Art, Thank you so much for spending the time to discuss some of the Direct
Carbon and Fresson issues. Over the past ten years, or so, there have been many
postings on this list regarding the historical, technical and aesthetic
aspects. I think it must be one of the most long standing subjects together with
GUM, of course. Judy's Post Factory No 9 issue on Fresson has an historic value
which would be difficult to surpass in its comprehensiveness. But there
surely must be more ongoing work being done by students of photographic printing
which will widen the picture even more over the coming years whether or not
there is a digital link. I recently heard about something called ''digital
bromoil'' and thought it must be a joke. It was bromoil technique simulated by
software. Digital Fresson? Why not?
                 I will contact you ''off list'' if the subject becomes
private or involved with personal financial business matters, but as regards
dialogue concerning processing I am sure many readers would be interested to learn
more about the social connections we have made during our search for
information and the leads which have helped us in our research.
                   Bill Foster knew and had met Echague way back but inspite
of their close relationship apparently never acquired any cutting edge
infomation from him on processing. Echague was extremely wealthy and successful with
many publications of his images of Spanish life origionally made using the
Fresson process.
                    However, Echague did publish an outline of his working
methods using Fresson paper and sawdust to develop and this has been very useful
to me in my experimenting with Direct Carbon techniques. I can provide a
brief resume if anyone would be interested through a future posting depending on
the reaction of list members to this offer.
                      Business wise the way ahead is not clear. As you say,
much money and effort is needed to make the whole thing work viably and
commercially. Personally, I am not in a position to give away free the results of
thousands of hours of painstaking testing only to hear further down the road that
someone is marketing a product based on my research. This is why I do not
wish to patent my findings which would make the critical information available
to public investigation.
                        What I discovered in the formulation of the process
was totally new in concept to anything which I had read in publications of
formulae. In fact, as with Artigue, it was an accident while experimenting with
known recipes which gave the clue to further work which gave me the final method.
                          Again, Judy's article in PF No. 9 contains most of
what I am refering to. I would suggest to anyone who seriously wants to devote
several hundred hours to Direct Carbon research, to obtain a copy. Thanks
again, Judy !
                         The quest goes on.
                                       Cheers John- photographist
Received on Fri Aug 5 12:18:35 2005