Background: building excitement for my summer trip to Scotland, I've been looking at (B&W) pictures others have taken of the Hebrides, Orkneys, standing stones, and so on. I found one site I really like (https://tomrichardsonphotography.mypixieset.com) whose Scottish gallery has many dramatic images that I would have been proud to make. We exchanged emails, and while Tom started in film, he has switched to digital for the options in printing which I don't think can be duplicated (at least by mortals like me) in the darkroom. Then while considering buying a print to use as a "target" for my own printing, I took a volume of Paul Strand photos off my shelf, turned to his Hebrides section, and was struck by the complete difference in the images. Photoshop allows for super dramatic skies, increased internal contrast, a lot of the "edge effects" some of us try to approach with pyro. Strand's classic images are wonderful, but don't use what I think of as Photoshop effects. So I wonder whether our "targets" for our prints have changed due to our exposure (unintended pun) to the huge number of Photoshopped images.
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