wet darkroom vs. inkjet

[paulr]

The biggest difference I have found is that a wet-print even with repeatable steps is one-of-a-kind. Digital is endlessly repeatable without change.

This is an idea that's interested me in photography and in other fields where there's been a move toward more automated processes.

In darkroom printing, as in ceramics, it's long been a kind of holy grail to be able to produce identical multiples. This is how you proved your craftsmanship.

Curiously, the same people who are proud of their ability to make a set or edition without variation will turn around and criticize a mechanical process for ... making multiples without variation. Somehow, inconsistencies that were once the hallmarks of poor craftsmanship now get heralded as the benefits of a kind of craftsmanship.

I wonder if this comes from genuine changes of values, or if it's just bad rhetoric that rarely gets noticed.

I can personally say that I put a lot of effort into making identical prints when printing editions in the darkroom. My toning process made it really hard, which is why some of my editions have just four or five prints in them. One of the things i welcome with inkjet is not having to think so much about this kind of thing. Uniformity took a lot of energy that i felt could be better applied elsewhere.

[rdenney]

Most probably think I am a fool....

That's enough statement by itself to reveal motives for doing something ostensibly irrational. Those who do something without caring that others think they are a fool are investing in something internal, it seems to me. Those kids buying the instruments used by high-end pros because they think doing so will make them a high-end pro are explicitly concerned that others will think they are not a fool. Not looking like a fool is often a key part of that buying decision. It isn't what we buy, it's why we buy it.

The best among us can argue all they want about the marginal differences of this or that. But would we rather a new guy work with an inkjet printer and actually do it, or remain committed to a wet darkroom and never do it? Would we rather he be out there making large-format images and printing them on his 3800, or be shamed into letting an expert do it, and never doing it because it just doesn't interest him to work that way? Of course, this argument works just as well for defending those who partake the goofy process of converting part of a perfectly good house to a smelly chemical plant. They are also answering an internal call, and that is all the justification required. But I wonder if there are those who work in chemical darkrooms just because they think of themselves as keepers of a sacred flame.

Rick "a fool who's just happy to be here" Denney

[paulr]

Those who do something without caring that others think they are a fool are investing in something internal, it seems to me.

Interesting point. Also interesting, i suspect that the internal thing can have similarities with the external thing: they are often about identity.

If your identity is wrapped up very tightly with a particular activity, or even a particular process, there's a strong motivation to keep it safe from questioning. It's too personal.

I used to identify myself as a black and white large format photographer. This was great for my focus, but it also meant that it was near impossible to entertain other kinds of projects. It also meant that external threats (like materials being discontinued) and internal ones (like artist's block) felt like death sentences.

Some friends inspired me by example to loosen up, and since then I went from that identity to just being a photographer, to just being an artist (vaguely definied), and will likely some day just be a transient organism who spent some time on earth and made some pictures along the way.

I feel less grounded than I used to, and often have a more annoying time describing what I do—but the freedom this has allowed my imagination has been more than worth it. And little things like materials being discontinued now seem like what they really are: little things. They are no longer instigators of identity crises.

If inkjet printers get discontinued tomorrow, I'm pretty sure I'll figure out some new way to do my thing. Or maybe even some new thing to do.

[lilmsmaggie]

The best among us can argue all they want about the marginal differences of this or that. But would we rather a new guy work with an inkjet printer and actually do it, or remain committed to a wet darkroom and never do it? Would we rather he be out there making large-format images and printing them on his 3800, or be shamed into letting an expert do it, and never doing it because it just doesn't interest him to work that way?

I've just spent the last 10 years of my life and $80K, getting my ex-wife out of my pocket; the past 18 mos., getting a 15% haircut (aka pay cut) from Arnold Schwarzenegger.

As I see it, whichever path I choose whether it be the traditional darkroom or the digital darkroom is gonna be an expensive proposition considering I'm knocking on retirement's door.

Am I glad to have a job -- you bet. Am I a bit frustrated that I find it difficult to pursue my artistic endeavors?

Maybe I should take up a much cheaper hobby

[Mike Anderson]

I shoot my own pictures, development them myself (colour & B&W), scan them myself, adjust and print them myself. I make my own frames (from rough wood, though cut down and dried by someone else) and mat my own prints...

You don't cut down and dry your own wood for frames? I guess some people like to take the easy route.

...Mike

[rdenney]

I used to identify myself as a black and white large format photographer. This was great for my focus, but it also meant that it was near impossible to entertain other kinds of projects.

Such as urban "gardens", heh.

My own self-identity as a photographer has wandered to and fro, and always extended beyond the limits of what I can deliver within the context of my life.

I did commercial work as a sideline for a while, even to the extent of doing custom color processing for a couple of local pros, but photographing weddings and burning up Unicolor kits was no place for a part-timer. I quit that job; I already had a real job. Then, I started traveling, and I have made thousands of 35mm slides from the Colorado Plateau--a place that always fascinates me. But I never seem to move on the idea of editing them down and doing something with them. There are perhaps a few good photos in that mass of work, but they are hiding still.

I decided to make my Adams odyssey (don't we all have to attempt that at least once?) and focused more on large format and black and white. I built a darkroom, and spent some years trying to get good at it. But it was always in the context of being busy with work and with other pursuits, including music, and I always felt like my color work was more interesting, or at least could be done in more interesting places. I moved to another city, started but never finished a new darkroom because my new job was too demanding, and quit again. I just could not sustain interest at that time. I moved again, met my wife (who also loves photography), and came back into it again, continually looking for a way to do it that worked for me.

Why the story? What brought me back each was the ability to control the process, somewhat within the context of my life. In San Antonio, I could own my own darkroom and control the process, but that was a capability for that time and place only. During my second return, it was digital capability that again provided that ability to control the process. I wrote an article for second-world camera equipment collectors on low-cost digital darkrooms over 10 years ago, and that capability has kept me doing stuff at least at some level ever since.

I honestly don't know how to define myself as a photographer. I think I've done a little bit of good stuff, but I'm not sure anybody else thinks so, and my recent prints decorate the inside of a drawer in a map case. I expect they will end up in the dumpster. I'm not sure I can even tell whether I like what I do, though it is usually what I meant to do (sounds like a Vaughan Williams quote). But I know this: Without inkjets and computers, I would not be doing it at all.

I'm sure all that will cause those dedicated to 12 hours a day of craft to look down their noses at me, but there is nothing I can do, or care to do about that. They at least have nothing to fear from me.

Rick "just another middle-aged fat guy who takes pictures" Denney

[Paul Kierstead]

You don't cut down and dry your own wood for frames? I guess some people like to take the easy route.

...Mike

Not only that, I don't even coat my own plates! I totally wimp out and purchase pre-sensitized negative/positive materials. Not that I haven't thought about it

Aside ...

But I do enjoy 'owning' the process, and I definitely don't buy the 'difficulty' of maintaining an ink-jet setup, unless you are trying to use custom inks such as Lenny does. As to profiling and all the difficulty in 'colour management', it is hogwash; you most certainly *don't* need your printer or monitor profiled; you can inspect and correct the prints exactly the same way it was done for decades in negative printing. Profiling will (should) just get you closer on the first pass. I have both profiled because when your doing a print at a time, the down time during the printing is a PITA so I like to make less correction cycles. When I printed in a lab it was no big deal since you continue working. It baffles me when people who happily print, look at it and dial in a correction and print again then insist that digital printing requires a fully color managed flow, etc. when they could do the exact same process for digital. Of course, if you outsourcing your printing it gets more complicated.

[Drew Wiley]

I have often milled dried and milled my own mouldings, to get exactly the frames I
wanted. Hard way to make a buck, but it has been satisfying in terms of the end
result. If there were much more volume involved, I'd sub the moulding out to a trusted
hardwood specialty co; but in the past have found that many picture frame moulding suppliers per se don't cure the wood properly (that's why they generally use only the
most cooperative kinds of wood like ramin or poplar). One can take this kind of thing
as far as one wishes, and make whatever parts of the presentation one finds rewarding.

[Lenny Eiger]

I've made my own frames from boards as well. (I draw the line on cutting mats. I simply refuse. I have an associate in town who has one of those computerized cutters and just let them do it.) The frames were a lot of fun. My favorite wood ended up being a spalted maple. I found that I made about 7 frames in about 7 days. I did plenty of other things while the multiple coats of finish were drying. But that's about a day per.... As much as I enjoyed it I could never get my money back at that rate... few people wanted to pay me $500 or more for a hand made 24x30 frame. I don't know what I will do next.....

Lenny

[Brian Ellis]

This is an idea that's interested me in photography and in other fields where there's been a move toward more automated processes.

In darkroom printing, as in ceramics, it's long been a kind of holy grail to be able to produce identical multiples. This is how you proved your craftsmanship.

Curiously, the same people who are proud of their ability to make a set or edition without variation will turn around and criticize a mechanical process for ... making multiples without variation. Somehow, inconsistencies that were once the hallmarks of poor craftsmanship now get heralded as the benefits of a kind of craftsmanship.

I wonder if this comes from genuine changes of values, or if it's just bad rhetoric that rarely gets noticed.

I can personally say that I put a lot of effort into making identical prints when printing editions in the darkroom. My toning process made it really hard, which is why some of my editions have just four or five prints in them. One of the things i welcome with inkjet is not having to think so much about this kind of thing. Uniformity took a lot of energy that i felt could be better applied elsewhere.

Exactly. I always figure that anyone who thinks a darkroom print is unique has never seen or, worse yet, had to print a limited edition portfolio. There's nothing inherently unique about a darkroom print. The only difference in terms of uniqueness between multiple ink jet prints and multiple darkroom prints made in close succession is that one is sheer physical drudgery and the other is no physical effort at all, freeing one up to spend one's time on more creative endeavors than making multiple identical prints in a darkroom.