Has Digital Changed Darkroom Printing?

[jnantz]

Sounds like a fun trip!
Isn’t looking at printed matter in books &c deceiving? It’s not really a good comparison point for darkroom prints cause the printer tweaks them just like someone these days. I’ve seen some really poorly printed darkroom images made stellar by mid/late 20th century publishers…
That said I think digital has allowed for hints to be made that would have been really $$$ or time consuming.. enlarged digital negatives… internegatives used to be a real PITA …
<...> added later:
I think good photographs, whether they are digitally made or helped or manually made raise our own personal bars. it's amazing to see in a book or in person something someone conjured, and a great way to reimagine our own work ..

[xkaes]

This is really a moot question. With AI, you don't even need to take a picture (film or digital) of anything. Just ask for it, and the computer will generate it. But it's not real -- it's really just like any PS modified image. The real question is "Do you want to capture reality or just fabricate reality"?

[Tin Can]

I love making internegatives will real film

My best work is done that that way

My Avatar to the left didn't POP for me until I reversed and enlarged it to 16X20

Took me a year to SEE IT

[Ulophot]

My view coheres with that of some others here. I am neither a Pre-Raphaelite desiring a return to the Middle Ages, nor an advocate of all the wonders of digital imaging. I realize that I can mistake a digital image for a film-paper one, though how often that happens, due to the above-mentioned over-sharpening and related seductions of digital manipulation so prevalent, is an open question. I am reminded of all the formative years in my photographic development, during which I was frequently beguiled by an effect or technique, imagining that if I applied it to my own work, I could thereby excel. It's a sort of variant on the magic camera or lens that will make one's compositions better.

My choice, to apply my efforts within the realm of film and paper, and to accept 11x14 as my limit, came about in significant part as I looked back over the history of 19th- and 20th-Century photography, finding an abundance of work that continues to set a high bar for me, in concept and execution, composition and craft. Countless images were made before ISO speeds or light meters, with less reliable equipment and emulsions. I have all of these and much more at my disposal.

For me, the limitations of the medium (and I work only in B&W now) provide an adequate framework of necessity in which I am free to create fresh images as enduring as any before me; whether I am up to the challenge is the only question to be answered. For me, the feeling of accomplishment within these constraints, when I produce results with which I am pleased, is far greater than I have experienced in the virtually boundless opportunities offered by digital processing.

[h2oman]

I think many of you have strayed far from the OP's question.

[jnantz]

This is really a moot question. With AI, you don't even need to take a picture (film or digital) of anything. Just ask for it, and the computer will generate it. But it's not real -- it's really just like any PS modified image. The real question is "Do you want to capture reality or just fabricate reality"?

sorry to sound like a problem but all photographs are fabricated reality. manipulation starts as soon as the tripod is set down or film is wound. agree film or chemical photography captures reality ( so does a digital camera ), but people have been over manipulating chemical based darkroom images to create something that wasn't infront of the camera but an interpretation of what was in front of the camera for a long long time. I agree that AI is something unphotographic but IDK. some photography is unreal..

[Peter Lewin]

If you haven't looked at them already, two photographers whose British Isles work you might enjoy are Fay Godwin and Dick Arentz.

I already have two books of Fay Godwin photos on my shelf, but had never visited Dick Arentz's website until your suggestion (thanks!). He brought my original question into sharp focus. In his "thoughts" section he has one titled "Subtlety" which argues in favor of his classic style of platinum/palladium printing, which encourages closer viewing over dramatization. My basic question was not whether digital photography, or even AI, allow approaches which are hard or impossible to achieve in the darkroom, my question was whether our exposure (another unintended pun) to the drama of stormy skies, super sharp imagery, etc. (which I associate with Photoshop) has changed our aesthetic in the way we print in the darkroom. As a life-long (I'm now 76) B&W film and darkroom photographer, whose approach to printing was formed well before digital existed, I print, let's say, "more quietly," but am beginning to wonder whether I should go for more contrast, more burning in of stormy skies, i.e. more "drama." So what I was really asking was if others of you have asked the same question of your printing, whether your own definition of "a good print" has changed.

[Tin Can]

My actual vision has gotton very poop

these typ[os are hard for me to see

[Merg Ross]

As a life-long (I'm now 76) B&W film and darkroom photographer, whose approach to printing was formed well before digital existed, I print, let's say, "more quietly," but am beginning to wonder whether I should go for more contrast, more burning in of stormy skies, i.e. more "drama." So what I was really asking was if others of you have asked the same question of your printing, whether your own definition of "a good print" has changed.

No!

Scotland will provide plenty of "drama" without having to change your technique. "Quietly" is fine, you will stand out from the crowd.
Wish you a wonderful and productive trip.

Best,
Merg

[Tin Can]

What I mean is

DIGI SCTEENS aer bad for eyes

Trad DR is far less strain