Traditional Darkroom, A Dying Art?

[Tom Borello]

Thirty years in the photo industry...from photographer to photo shop/lab owner to Photo Marketing Association certified photo consultant...I've met and have been schooled by many of the greats...I've build and operated many darkrooms...I've spent the last four years as photo Industry specialist to the Photo Waste Recycling Industry...It's time to get your head out of the vapors, your fingers out of the chemicals...visit www.piezography.com and www.cone-editions.com...the future is here...Adams would be all over this, if he was alive...on a visit to his home in Carmel, I noticed he had three different prints of Half Dome...same image in three different rooms...they were all different renditions...I asked him why...he said he felt different each time and used different materials, each time...Adams was a trained musician, he said, " The negative is like the score and the print the performance!" More dynamic range, longer life, environmental savvy process...Piezography...anyone want to buy an enlarger?

[Don Welch]

No thanks, I have an enlarger that I'm enjoying just fine. I also use my computer for printing color. I don't have to turn my back on one to enjoy the other. They are not the same thing at all. I can print three versions of any negative I have but that doesn't mean that I should "get my head out of the vapors" like that is something bad. The future has ALWAYS been here, so I don't have to make a daily habit of turning my back on the past just to feel OK. Please understand that I'm not speaking from an anti-digital point of view. I use it a LOT. Piezography is great, but as many people have pointed out in this thread, the comparisons are always between what digital is becoming or can be, and what conventional photographs have been for decades. I'm not looking to replace what I already derive pleasure from as if it were outmoded. It's not.

[Kaatharine Thayer]

Grey Wolf's rhetorical question about having a presentation document or a spreadsheet crash at a crucial moment reminds me of a time when I was a statistician for a large school district. I was running late for a board meeting, and there were documents ahead of mine in the print queue for the printer I ordinarily used, so I stopped at the board secretary's computer and printer to print out my overheads on my way in to give my presentation. Imagine my surprise when my charts and tables flashed on the screen: the printer had used some novelty font and all the numbers and text had been transformed into cute little pictures of forks and knives, palm trees, wineglasses....

But what I really came here to say was that for the last several weeks I've had two photo magazines lying open on my desk, to two similar, but very different, color "photographs" of white-trunked trees in autumn color: one a photographic print by Christopher Burkett, the other a photoshopped digital print by a photographer who will remain nameless. I used quotes because one I would call a photograph and the other I would call digital art, and I have been studying them very seriously to try to understand what the difference is: why the one looks so full of life and light, so real and inviting, so naturally and reverently beautiful, and why the other looks so artificial, so inert, so flat (I mean two-dimensional, not lacking in contrast, unfortunately!) and so... digital. What I've decided is it has a lot to do with not being able to leave well enough alone. Just a little too much unsharp masking, probably... definitely too much color saturation, too much contrast-- the whites too white and the darks too black, making the tree trunks look pasted onto the picture instead of growing within it.

I keep hearing that the new digital printing methods make photographs realer than real; I've even heard that they will revolutionize vision! I have yet to see a digital print that makes me gasp, at least not in an admiring way. If this is what "realer than real" means, Christopher Burkett has nothing to fear.

[Jonathan Brewer]

You cannot master Photoshop until you learn one thing.....'quit while you're ahead'.

[Gary L. Quay]

They can have my film cameras when they pry them from my cold, dead fingers.

[John Kasaian]

The Dark Room stuff is fun stuff. The Dark Room stuff incidentally is dirt cheap with people coming down with "digitalitis." People leave you along when you're in The Dark Room. Music sounds better in The Dark Room. Stuff that come out of The Dark Room makes me smile. The Dark Room is The Good Room(even if it's my 7 year old daughter's bath room in real life!)

Cheers!

[Bill_1856]

Spend your time and money learning digital printing. Right now it is better for color, and it will soon be (if not already) better than B&W silver. I've been printing since 1951, consider myself a master printer of every commercial color process including dye transfer, and I'm here to state that I can easily do work with Photoshop that I never dreamed of doing in a real darkroom. I still enjoy working with B&W in my own darkroom, but have no illusions that I'm really wasting my time in terms of quality.

[Gary L. Quay]

This is probably the most important debate in photography today. I use a computer to augment my photography, but not to replace it. I do not own a digital camera. I scan images into my computer to use them for marketing. I can put images on the internet, or give a digitized portfolio to a gallery, or zap off a few postcards to promote a show, but I can't see a day where digital will replace my darkroom. My 1962 Linhof, 1975 Hasselblad, and my 1990 Pentax 6X7 (I mention vintages to underscore the fact that age does not hamper performance) run circles around digital cameras in terms of image quality. I live near the Columbia Gorge in Oregon, and the abundant waterfalls make spetacular pictures. I can get that milky water effect in a half a second in my camera, whereas someone would have to spend a half a day in photoshop to get it.

And, like someone mentioned before in this discussion, I had to learn about light. That's the key. I have to be there when the light occurs, or know what circumstances create it, so that I can put myself into the position to catch it. I've seen so many sunrises, sunsets, and storms that I would never have seen if I could just go into Photoshop and click on an icon and get something that approximates that light.

Since Agfa filed for bankruptcy, and Kodak announced that it will discontinue its photographic papers, I have become even more worried that the artform that I love will slowly go away. For there to be continued innovation of films and papers, there needs to be a market. How do we keep that market alive?

[Wayne]

How do we keep that market alive?

First and foremost, obviously, keep using it.

Second and foremost, at every opportunity dispel the nonsense and marketing lies that obscure distinctions and have brainwashed the masses.

If I were you, I'd be thankful if things simply remain available. Continued innovation is too much to hope for at this particular time, but the materials we currently have are might fine as it is.

[Wayne]

Here's another idea: Show a kid how B&W prints are made. Am I wrong that even some of today's kids would be wowed by the magic of the image coming up under the darklight like so many of us were? I know there at least some kids who would still be interested. We can buy all the stuff we want to, but if today's kids dont learn to do it then it will die out with us.