Originally Posted by
Wayne Lambert
I've been twice to the show that includes Kirk's photographs. It's an excellent show in a large space in a very prestigious venue---the Palace of the Governors in Santa Fe. Kirk's prints are just inside the door---the first photographs you see when you walk in. They are large prints and are memorable for all the right reasons. Congratulations, Kirk! My favorite of the five is "Private Altar" which seems to glow with an inner light.
My aesthetic experience with digital prints is similar to Kirk's---I have come to admire them. It took me a while because earlier (as some of you may recall) I had concerns about wholesale retouching of images in Photoshop. Now I see that most LF photographers (all of us, of course!) adhere to some kind of code of ethics and pretty much limit Photoshop manipulations to contrast adjustments, dodging, and burning.
Last year I wanted to print in platinum/palladium some 4x5- and 8x10-inch in-camera negatives that I had originally made for gelatin-silver printing. The contrast of the negatives was just too low for pt/pd. To increase the contrast I intensified some with selenium toner and some with the silver intensifier sold by Photographers' Formulary. Both processes worked well. The silver intensifier is especially good for adding considerable contrast. However, I overdid a couple of negatives in the silver intensifier and got nervous about continuing with some favorite negatives. So I thought I would see what I could do with these weaker negatives and digital printing. I scanned the 8x10 and 4x5 negatives with an Epson V700 scanner and made some prints using Cone Piezography K7 inks (sepia) on various matte papers and some prints using Epson Ultrachrome K3 inks on Epson Hot Press Natural paper. With the Epson inks I used ABW to adjust the ink color to a "palladium brown" which I like. I didn't enlarge the prints; all were printed at a 1:1 ratio. I was amazed at the print quality, both the prints I made with the Cone inks and those made with the Epson inks. All of the digital prints are sharper (bare tree branches against the sky kind of thing) than pt/pd contact prints on smooth Weston paper and the tonal quality is excellent---for example, very smooth skin tones. I attribute (with no furthur experimental evidence) at least part of the excellent print quality to the fact that I scanned large negatives and printed at a 1:1 ratio. Personally, I admire those made with the Epson inks more than those made with the Cone inks probably because of the ink color and the smooth surface and warm color of the Epson Hot Press Natural paper.
Finally, for the past couple of months, in my new gallery, I have had the opportunity to view the Epson ink prints and a group of palladium (Na2 process) prints side by side in good lighting (about 25 of each type). My considered opinion is that the two types are virtually indistinguishable (behind acrylic glazing) at normal and extended viewing distances. Viewed close, the digital prints are sharper. Virtually indistinguishable, with one caveat: As one of my visitors (a non-photographer) remarked after viewing the prints, "The platinum/palladium prints just seem to be...um...um...a little "richer". I agree, it's very subjective, indefinable, but the platinum/palladium prints do seem to be a little...um..."richer." I'll leave it at that.
Wayne
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