post alternative techniques

[Jim Fitzgerald]

Experiment like all get out first -- then stick with a particular process. Otherwise you won't know what the possibilities are.

Yep, thanks to you I have done nothing but print carbon for 10 years and I'm still trying to master it. Slow learner I guess.

[Jim Fitzgerald]

Experiment like all get out first -- then stick with a particular process. Otherwise you won't know what the possibilities are.

Yep, thanks to you I have done nothing but print carbon for 10 years and I'm still trying to master it. Slow learner I guess.

[koraks]

I hear you on specialization, but I'm not there yet (and probably will never get there). All these processes complement each other; I can't imagine sticking with just one. I practice with one process until I get bored, move on to another, and then another, and after a while I get back to the first one to make some progress, and so on. I suppose we all have our individual ways to learn things. If my career depended on it, I probably would go about it in a different way.

Thomas, you're absolutely right about not only learning the technical aspects but also the match between the image and the process. This is often the trigger for me to move back (or onwards) to another process, as I feel a articular negative requires a particular approach. This was also the spark that led me to 'rediscover' salt printing a little while ago. Previously I didn't get usable results, but a particular negative triggered me to get better at it and I have made significant progress as a result. The images all of you post here and my initial experiences serve to remind me of the unique capabilities of each process. Based on that, I will at some point go back to a process I've put in the fridge for some time.

[Robert Brazile]

I practice with one process until I get bored, move on to another, and then another, and after a while I get back to the first one to make some progress, and so on. I suppose we all have our individual ways to learn things. If my career depended on it, I probably would go about it in a different way.

This describes me as well, almost exactly. I bounce amongst carbon, salt, and albumen (with the occasional foray into cyanotype) as the mood strikes, and while I'm sure that my progress is much slower and rather crab-wise, it keeps me fresh and much more interested in what I'm doing at the moment. And I do make progress...eventually.

Robert

[Vaughn]

I was happily carbon printing and then I became a stay-at-home dad to our set of triplets. Carbon printing could not fit into that sort of schedule, so I taught myself platinum printing.

Two very different processes - love them both. I am very glad I made the effort to learn platinum.

Jim -- ten years?! Holely banana peels.......

[sanking]

Yep, thanks to you I have done nothing but print carbon for 10 years and I'm still trying to master it. Slow learner I guess.

Jim,

No, it is not that you are a slow learner, just that the carbon process itself lends itself to a much wider range of results than is true of most other alternative print making, and all of those results require a rather specialized approach and new learning skills. And carbon is inherently difficult to master because of the tricky wet transfer procedures that depend on sticking a relief to another surface by suction in warm water. People sometimes think that the image sticks because of gelatin to gelatin, but in fact the major mechanism is thermo-coupling and suction. When you try to do this there are way more things that can go wrong than right so beginners experience many failures.

I have been printing with carbon since the early 1980s and constantly find new challenges, which to me is one of the greatest attractions of carbon printing because I too am easily bored with consistency. And if printing carbon in monochrome is not sufficiently challenging, you can always make duotones or tritones, or indeed full color prints.

There is, however, one fairly great risk with carbon, and that is the expectation that the print will be aesthetically beautiful and unique. And so any flaw in technique is magnified, leading to disappointment. Unlike some other of the old processes, like wet plate work, where lack of technical proficiency is actually celebrated and applauded, in carbon a lack of technical proficiency stands out like a sore thumb.

I have also printed with a number of other printing processes, including kallitype, vandyke and pt/pd. But my approach was not to bounce between one and the other, but to fully explore the potential of each until I felt that I had achieved a fairly high level of mastery of the craft. That usually involved learning as much as I could about the history of the process and the best practices to avoid as much wasted time as possible that sometimes results from rediscovering the wheel.


Sandy

[Jim Fitzgerald]

Sandy, well said. Thanks to Vaughn (yes brother 10 years ago) I found carbon transfer monochrome printing and as they say life changed for me as an artist. Carbon is all I do and I love it. The challenges are great but the rewards are awesome. I've seen the color work ( Sandy, bravo BTW on the print you posted) but I'm so in love with the monochrome work and how one can tweak it that I don't think I'll ever do anything else. A decade of printing and I'm still curious and asking myself what if? I feel one must devote a lot of time to master carbon printing and then if you are satisfied and curious about other processes by all means go explore them. I have more history to explore about carbon so I'm in for the long haul and love every minute.

[Emil Schildt]

played a little with liquid emulsion - (approx 50x70cm)

4x5" neg

[Andrew O'Neill]

If carbon printing was easy, I'd probably get bored and do something else. I became curious in carbon printing in '08, and a serious printer in '09. Before carbon, I was doing mainly gelatin silver and a bit of kallitype printing. Since '09, it's been 90% carbon and 10% kallitype. Some images just look better in kallitype than in carbon and versa visa visa versa. Fall, winter, spring is carbon printing season for me. Conditions are more favourable (cooler, lower humidty). Summer is better for kallitype printing. Last summer was the first summer I was able to print all carbon. I'm hoping for another cool summer.
Like you, Jim, I love monochrome printing. I have no desire to work in full colour. I just don't "see" in colour. My hat's off to those that do, though.

[Emil Schildt]

Just been interviewed to television - he wanted to make a "portrait" of me, working from exposure - to darkroom work and ending with a final image.... lots of fun...
here are three versions from simple B/W (liquid emulsion) - to melted/manipulated and brown toned to my final favorite (using cyanotype chemistry / soda)