Re: sizing and gum reference images

Thanks Katherine, with your help I bet it can be done.

> From: Katharine Thayer <kthayer@pacifier.com>
> Reply-To: alt-photo-process-l@sask.usask.ca
> Date: Tue, 06 Sep 2005 18:33:10 +0000
> To: alt-photo-process-l@sask.usask.ca
> Subject: Re: sizing and gum reference images
>
> Jack,
> You're right of course, and well said. This is a very busy week for me,
> but I'll see what I can do.
>
> This was something I always intended to do on my own website, show a lot
> of mistakes along with the solutions for them, so that learning printers
> could compare their failed results to the pictures and see how to fix
> the problem. But I haven't got around to doing that yet, and this would
> be a way to start a piece of that project. Later,
> Katharine
>
> Jack Brubaker wrote:
>>
>> Katherine,
>>
>> I think you are right that one of the uses of a group of images of gum
>> errors would be to help beginners identify their problem and to be able to
>> look at how others have solved that problem. You're right that there have
>> been very different effects called speckles on the list. You have been very
>> clear with your illustrations on your site but others have different
>> parameters of paper and size, different techniques, and different
>> definitions of terms. Let's put some images together and see how many
>> specific effect we have and then worry about naming them. Speaking for
>> myself I'd be delighted to have you name the effects and then open it to
>> discussion. I hope you will contribute your images because you are most
>> likely the person who has done the most to document gum effects, most of us
>> have been throwing them away without a thought.
>>
>> You wrote
>> I mean, who
>>> would get to decide how to group the different examples and what they
>>> should be called? Since we seem to work in parallel universes, it's
>>> hard to imagine that we could come to an agreement on any of that.
>>
>> You may be right. But we won't know without trying. If we can do it we could
>> really advance the discussion by leaps and bounds. It may be true that some
>> effects are, due to multiple variables, will prove too inconclusive to
>> define (your parallel universe comment). If we only define some of the terms
>> and effects we will be better off for it.
>>
>> I look forward to the possibilities, and hopefully your help.
>>
>> Jack
>>
>>> From: Katharine Thayer <kthayer@pacifier.com>
>>> Reply-To: alt-photo-process-l@sask.usask.ca
>>> Date: Tue, 06 Sep 2005 09:11:27 +0000
>>> To: alt-photo-process-l@sask.usask.ca
>>> Subject: Re: "speckling" v "staining " (was New Orleans/glut)
>>>
>>> Jack Brubaker wrote:
>>>>
>>>> Chris, Judy, Catherine, et all,
>>>>
>>>> If we are to make real progress in understanding sizes, papers, and gum
>>>> methods it seems we will have to resolve the terms used to describe various
>>>> aberrant results. Clearly writing about it is continuing to be confusing
>>>> and
>>>> misleading. Remember the quote something like "writing about art is like
>>>> dancing about architecture" (at the moment I can't remember who wrote
>>>> that).
>>>> We need a visual reference for the terms and conditions we are referring
>>>> to.
>>>> Does someone have a site where images could be posted from various workers
>>>> where similar effects could be grouped together and given a clear name. I'm
>>>> sorry to be proposing such a thing and not offering to do it myself, but it
>>>> seems the time has come to have a visual tool to refine the discussion and
>>>> move us foreword.
>>>
>>>
>>> Hi Jack,
>>> As the one person in this discussion who has actually shown visually
>>> exactly what I mean by "speckling" and by "staining" I'm not quite
>>> sure why this admonition is addressed to me. But certainly I agree that
>>> we need visual aids to discussion, and that's partly why I put up my
>>> website, so I could point to various things there to help people
>>> visualize what I'm talking about in discussions here. I'm certainly the
>>> one regular contributor who very often points to a visual example of
>>> what I'm talking about.
>>>
>>> I think your idea is good in theory, and I certainly would like to see
>>> what other people besides myself mean by things they describe, but I
>>> find the thought of the idea in practice rather amusing. I mean, who
>>> would get to decide how to group the different examples and what they
>>> should be called? Since we seem to work in parallel universes, it's
>>> hard to imagine that we could come to an agreement on any of that. The
>>> speckling I've seen, I've seen enough times to recognize it and know
>>> what causes it. From the discussion, it sounds like the speckling Judy
>>> and Chris are talking about are different from mine and from each
>>> other. It almost seems like each of us would have a completely different
>>> set of speckles, with different perceived causes, none recognizable by
>>> any of the others. But perhaps this would be useful in creating a
>>> taxonomy of speckles, which beginning printers could compare their
>>> speckles to and follow the recommendations of the person who provided
>>> that particular speckling example. But I'm not sure it would achieve the
>>> stated purpose of coming to some agreement on basic terms.
>>> Katharine
>>>
>>>
>
>
Received on Wed Sep 7 08:58:09 2005