Re: Determining SPT with gum Was: Gums a la Demachy and Puyo

Hi,

I always thought that gum printing could be considered as most other
processes and the path usually taken for say iron based process could be
taken for gum printing as well. The main difference being with gum is that
practically every mixture you come up with is "printable" it as its own set
of properties and its own set of requirements for printing. This makes this
route kind of limitless in its possibilities, understandably I realise "the
just do it" advise I've been given many times becomes more and more
acceptable when face with a possibly endless testing process.

I have been laught at before for saying this and now I see Katharine and
others saying something similar. I admire those who can go at gum by just
doing it, though I'm still unconfortable with this idea of flying by the
seat of the pants, I find the idea more and more appealing but still scary.
As she also said, there are "many roads to the kingdom" and I'm sure I'll
find one I'm confortable with one of these days.

Those who have been doing various type of gum prints for years, may forget
some if not many of the bends they went through along there learning path.
Most process require some precise technique, a precicely weigthed mix of
chemical, a precise exposure time and development process and this without
speaking of curves. The "problem" or fun with gum is that every emultion or
combination of emultions you come up with, is printable and would require
some testing to find out those precise variables needed with other processes
but I understand this would make gum printing a lot less fun and deter many
from it, some would even say that it would be somekind of muffler to
creativity. So "je tire mon chapeau" to those who make gum prints using
techniques that seem to be a cross between photography and painting. In the
end, the path taken to realise a piece is irrelevant, it's the results that
counts.

The only suggestion I would make to those experience gum printers is this,
please don't say to newbies or want to be gum printers, just get some gum,
some pigments and a piece of paper and go have fun. Unless of course, you
want to limit the number of gum printer around the world which would make
your own work much more valuable. With gum printing, though it is time
consuming the photographic part is relatively easy but the "painting" part
well that takes years to master which ever way you look at it.

Just keep on doing this amasing work.
Yves

> I personally think that would be a hard argument to make, but the
> thing about gum is that there's lots of different ways to get to the
> same result. David was saying yesterday that his RH has gone up (I
> hope his power isn't still off) but he was dealing with it by holding
> the exposure constant and just developing longer. I deal with an
> increase in RH by shortening exposure. Either works. The point
> being that there are many roads to the kingdom, and maybe ultimately
> there's no difference in result between holding the exposure
> constant and making a different curve for every possible pigment and
> pigment concentration, and holding the curve constant and exposing
> differently for each emulsion. I don't know that I'd ever be willing
> to take the time to test that, but maybe someone will, sometime. In
> the meantime, it's a heck of a lot easier to take the second route; I
> haven't yet seen a lot of difference in the prints between the two
> methods, and so ... each to his own.
> Katharine
Received on 07/15/06-05:38:54 AM Z