How to take my printing to the next level?

[stradibarrius]

I have decent print skills and can get "good" not "great" results in the darkroom. If you wanted to take your printing skills to the next level how would you do it?

[bob carnie]

Make more prints.

[Jim Noel]

Invest in an image you really like, not a reproduction or digital, and put it up where you can put your prints beside it for evaluation. It does not have to be a high priced image but can be one you pick up at an art mart, or camera show, or Goodwill store. It just has to be an image you like and can be comfortable with viewing it over and over. Then PRACTICE, PRACTICE, PRACTICE!

[paulr]

I think it helps to study the prints you consider great. Look at them analytically; try to figure out why they work on you the way they do. And how the printmaker accomplished it.

A great help for me was getting my hands on a copy of the National Gallery of Art Paul Strand monograph that came out sometime in the 90s. The plates were printed by Richard Benson, with multiple monochrome inks, tints, and varnishes. They were as good as any Strand darkroom print I'd seen, and very true to the spirit of the originals.

I spent a lot of time with that book under my print viewing lights, asking how'd he do that. The most specific lesson I learned was about handling bright highlights ... I was often amazed by how Strand did it, while rarely impressed by how Ansel did it.

All of this is about printing esthetics and decisions ... it's not specifically helpful with the nuts and bolts of how to get there. For the technical stuff, you just have to experiment and research and ask a lot of arcane questions in places like this ...

[dasBlute]

Make better negatives, and print print print.

Sometimes... work outside your normal approach, make a print a little
too light/dark flat/contrasty, let it sit for awhile and see how if feels a
week or two later...

For me, Larry Bartlett's 'Black and White Photographic Printing Workshop' showed step-by-step
not just the hows, but some of the whys as well when approaching an image...

And also I've read a lot of Bob Carnie's past postings Yeah, I'm a fan

[jnantz]

print absolutely anything and everything you can find

[ic-racer]

I have decent print skills and can get "good" not "great" results in the darkroom. If you wanted to take your printing skills to the next level how would you do it?

After I had been printing for about 25 years, in 2001 to 2007 I wanted to go to the next level. Some things I did (short of going to a workshop):

Join this forum and APUG.
Read all the posts of Bob Carnie (back then he had not so many as now)
Start enlarging large format negatives (4x5 and 8x10)
Upgrade darkroom.
Watch any Youtube video of 'famous person' darkroom technique. Actually watch how they hold the instruments, or cards and how they move them around etc.
View and read the technical info on Sexton's Listen to the Trees (I think that is the one that goes into some detail)
Scan Sexton's website (is it even the same now?) for tidbits of info
Scan Clyde Butcher's (and any other film printer's website with technical details) for technical tidbits
Join up with local film and large format photographers
Maybe most important of all...go back and print 'hard to print' negatives from my thousands of negatives. Ones I passed up first time around.

I found myself with the bad habit of not printing many of my negatives that would have required perspective control, complex dodging or burning, bleach, different contrast for different parts of the image, etc. So after 25 years I had refined my personal printing technique into lazyness.

[Daniel Stone]

I don't print a "lot" like some here do. I'm very selective of which negatives actually get printed(heck, even scanned these days, time is too short to waste on "mediocre" shots!)

Anyhow, I've found this short writing by Michael Smith to be a good reference to printers of any experience level:
http://michaelandpaula.com/mp/onprinting.html

And I'll echo what Bob Carnie said: "Print more"

cheers,
Dan

[brucetaylor]

Yea, "print more."

As I re-enter the darkroom after 29 years, it has been a challenge to make a decent print. I finally got ONE I was kinda happy with last weekend-- after many days in the dkrm and 120 sheets of paper. It's clear to me that it's about the doing. At 1200 sheets I'll be a toddler. I have to print print print every weekend.

[lfpf]

I have decent print skills and can get "good" not "great" results in the darkroom. If you wanted to take your printing skills to the next level how would you do it?

Who/What: A method for transitioning from personal "good" results to selected "great" results is:
1) defining your personal/selected "great" print expectation,
2) defining your "good" results and
3) identify/sort/select and change materials and processes (m&p) to realize the difference

Who/What: Which m&p produced that "great" result and which m&p are producing "good" results? Adjust as needed; any historic "great" can be difficult with unavailable m&p while current m&p can also be exploited for another "great." No sweat though, albumen printing (1850) and wet-collodion negs (1851) remain options. Current "alternative processes" are mostly historic processes. No-can-do are Super XX negs printed on Kodak papers because these and others are unavailable, while still others are available.

What (aka tools of trade): M&p aspects include system format, sensitometry, chemicals, film selection, lens selection, exposure, development method, post-processing and THEN comes printing the neg with aspects applied to printing.

How? Resources include your curiosity, this site, general browsing, classic pubs, patent lit, bibliographies, on-line searches, library, book stores, and esoteric pubs.
How/When/Where? Follow a hunch, form hypothesis/experiment, follow leads and take lots and lots of pictures in the process!

A system approach will produce "great" prints. Hone each aspect for ease-of-use.

Find a method that works for you, then pursue until your prints are "great."