Inkjet and Hunington Witherill

[Jorge Gasteazoro]

the one person who cares about this stuff is the photographer who poured all of this sweat

I even disagree with this. No picture should need to be explained and in fact there are times when any photographer knows the picture could have been better but given the circumstances and the likelyhood the same wont be repeated the picture is good enough to show and requires no explanation. In the end darr very conveniently forgot to mention those comments of people who liked the picture as it was.

While the tech, darr and quinn have their opinion I have to trust the opinion of the museum curator over theirs. This museum has shown work by Juan Rulfo, Alvarez Bravo, and many other photographers. It actively promotes photography of all kinds and in fact has 8 photography exhibitions a year, he liked my work enough to be one of the shows will be up for two months instead of one...so really, the explanation was just to show the tech how dumb his cropping suggestions were, and I was sure someone would come up with the "just because a picture was difficult to take does not make it good".....

[Paul Butzi]

you must be thinking since we dont like each other I always dispute what you say. I have never disputed your price comparison between ink jet print and silver.

Gee, that's weird. You should know, then, that someone else has been posting claiming they are you.

An example can be found in this thread, largeformatphotography.info/lfforum/topic/501802.html#549596 where someone writing in a good imitation of your writing style and posting as if they were you wrote:

As to your chemical prices, I dont know where you got them but they seem awfully inflated. I come up with a $1.5 amount which will process at least 10 11x14 prints, making the cost of chemicals negligible or pennies when you take into account that those chemicals can be reused.



I hope you'll take care of this right away, Jorge. If it continues, it might damage your credibility.

[Jorge Gasteazoro]

I said I thought your silver prices sounded to me somewhat inflated, I never said I did not beleive your cost comparison with ink jet printing. You know if I thought you were wrong I would have said so.

In any case, you are still avoiding responding to my question put to you above. If what you want is to trade jabs at each other I can do that too, but I thought for once we were conducting a civilized debate. Dont go crying foul if I respond to your snide remarks in kind.

[John_4185]

Jorge I really, really like the way you have succeeded into making the buildings fall away from each other....Good job!

What? The buildings are perfect. Look at it again with vertical guides: elearning.winona.edu/staff_o/jjs/okay.jpg

Glad I could clear that up for you, Jorge. The effect you resent is just, plain perfect vertical convergence correction. Maybe you don't like it, but that's the way it looks.

(Out of respect for the original photographer, I will take the image down in a day. Fair?)

[Jorge Gasteazoro]

Good try John but they are not perfect. Some of the lines you drew are cutting off parts of the buildings although very slight the cutting off the small portions of the buildings give the illusion of being straight. Without them the falling buildings are apparent. BTW, this is not only my assesment but one of another member who actually e mailed me the links.

[Jorge Gasteazoro]

Forgot, glad I could clear that for you John.

[David Luttmann]

Sounds good jj.

I have the original uncorrected version as well. Jorge's assessment is flawed regardless. And considering it was not taken with a view cam, I think it does pretty well. Enough to sell just over 80 prints.

I was mistaken though, the flower shot with my name on it below was taken with my 4x5 and Ilford FP4, processed using the stand method in PMK. So, in fact, there is one shot from LF. But then again, who cares....all the images posted have sold in 8x10 and larger. If my clients like them, I'm happy.

[Paul Butzi]

But you are not answering my question. You have stated that the cost of making a silver print in the darkroom is higher, thus the higher price irrespective of quality, if so, doesnt this mean that a hand made print has an intrinsic higher value just because of the virtue of being hand made and the time spent doing it?

The silver print will have a smaller potential supply (because the photographer cannot spend his/her entire lifetime making time intensive silver prints) and a higher replacement cost to the photographer (because it takes more time to make one) and thus the optimum price point will be higher.

You seem to want to equate the optimum price point and some abstract concept called 'quality' or 'value', but even if we could agree on measuring 'quality' or 'value' there is no reason to believe the two are even positively correlated.


I really think you are avoiding the question, but even so, why price them higher. If as you say we have to look at supply and demand then the price of the print should reflect the cost of making it. Lets say an ink jet print costs $1 to make, and a silver print a $1.5 after all the accounting is done. One would think that pricing them at $50 is an outrageous markup, if all we are looking at is economics, then no print, regardless of beauty, content, or who made it are worth more than $10 each. The fact that the silver print cost 50 cents more is irrelevant, both prints are in fact really cheap to make, so there must be another reason why one is priced higher than another one.


I really think you are deliberately evading understanding, but even so.

The relevant issue as I see is it is not the materials cost for making a silver print versus the inkjet print, which are, as you point out, very small relative to the selling price.

The big issue is that if I sell a silver print, to make another one to sell, I must go into the darkroom, set it up with a tray line, mixing chemicals as needed, dig out the printing notes and the negative, put the paper in the easel, make the exposure, process the paper, wash the print, tone it, tear down the tray line and wash up, put the printing notes away, put the negative away, put the print on the drying screen, then later take it off and flatten it.

That effort is usually amortized over several prints - that is, to make it even halfway economical, I set up the darkroom and make more than one print. But the time it takes, even spread across a lot of prints, is still substantial. And, now I have to pay the cost of the space and materials needed to maintain an inventory of prints - along with the time and effort that takes. Even worse, I must take some capital risk - I make prints (and incur both time and materials costs) speculating that I will eventually sell them. I still have quite a few such prints in boxes - so it turned out that speculation definitely incurred a cost. In fact, at one point, I started to track this, just to see what the right number of speculation prints to make was.

By comparison, if I want another inkjet print, I open up the relevant file, put the right roll of paper in the printer, and hit 'print'. Often I don't even have to change the roll of paper, so it boils down to opening the file and hitting print. No storage space. No inventory tracking.

The real cost of the print I sell to a customer, regardless of whether it's a silver print, an inkjet print, or any other process, is the TIME it takes to make the print after I get the first print done.

[Jorge Gasteazoro]

but even if we could agree on measuring 'quality' or 'value' there is no reason to believe the two are even positively correlated.

I think you are the only who cannot understand the correlation between quality and value.

I really think you are deliberately evading understanding, but even so.

Well, I tried, but you seem to want to trade jabs so here goes.

The big issue is that if I sell a silver print, to make another one to sell, I must go into the darkroom, set it up with a tray line, mixing chemicals as needed, dig out the printing notes and the negative, put the paper in the easel, make the exposure, process the paper, wash the print, tone it, tear down the tray line and wash up, put the printing notes away, put the negative away, put the print on the drying screen, then later take it off and flatten it.

Exactly and this in turn results in a higher price thus giving the print a higher intrinsic value, pretty much like a hand made car as opposed to one made in a production line, hand made shoes as opposed to those made in a line, hand made wrist watches as opposed to digital quartz. I think the one deliberately evading understanding a simple concept is you.

By comparison, if I want another inkjet print, I open up the relevant file, put the right roll of paper in the printer, and hit 'print'. Often I don't even have to change the roll of paper, so it boils down to opening the file and hitting print. No storage space. No inventory tracking.

Right again, a mechanical reproduction which has a lower value, seems we both agree. The fact that you can sell more cheap prints for a greater profit is irrelevant, it has always been like this. I assure you that Bic selling their 1 dollar pens make more money than Mont Blanc selling their $300 pens. But then, since you dont see a correlation between value and quality I am sure this is a mystery to you.

I think we are done here.

[Jorge Gasteazoro]

Jorge's assessment is flawed regardless

Not just mine but that of an architectural photographer......oh well it figures you would say that.