civilized ku # 2212 ~ how this became that
Saturday, May 26, 2012 at 01:46PM ;)
This ~ Au Sable Forks, NY - in the Adirondack Park • click to embiggen;)
That / hummingbird feeder ~ Au Sable Forks, NY - in the Adirondack Park • click to embiggenIn the fairly recent past, Ctein, a regular contributor on Mike Johnston's The Online Photographer site, wrote about What Does It Take to Be a Good Printer?. Ctein is considered to be a "good" print maker (as opposed to being a good printer, which could mean that he's been reincarnated as an Epson 7900 Wide Format printer). In fact, some consider him to be an exceptionally good print maker, if not one of the absolute best. Even though I have never viewed a Ctein made print, I don't doubt those evaluations of his print making stature.
So, I read Ctein's article with more than a passing interest, especially so since, as it turns out, my print making workflow / procedure is nearly identical to his. Some of tools and techniques may differ, but in either case, we both work toward the same end results. About the only area where his workflow / procedures differ from my own is in his (as I understand it from previous articles) relentless pursuit of "perfect" printer/printing profiles.
According to Ctein's workflow / procedural standards, I am a "good" print maker. In fact, IMO and that of many others, I am an exceptionally good print maker, if not one of the absolute best. But, that said, here's the interesting thing ...
... in the old days of the wet darkroom, not all print makers needed to be tremendously expert in all of the technical areas of print making. In some professional color labs (which were very capable of making exceptionally good prints), they did not necessarily have to have a great eye for color / the need for burning and dodging - the primary corrective measures which could be made in those days. In the good ol' days, those judgments were made by other individuals (in the color vieing area) who were expert in such matters. Their determinations were passed on to the print maker, who did need to be skilled in burning/dodging techniques, via marked up test prints which would indicate the color adjustments to be made and which areas of a print to dodge/ burn.
Of course, in the case of some very serious amateur print makers or small volume (very) custom and expensive labs, a single individual might be responsible for all of the aforementioned capabilities and skills and then some - color and contrast masking, global or local, most prominent amongst them.
All of that said, to a significant extent, what a finished print looked like was, in large part, "imbedded" in the negative to be printed. Other than extraordinary darkroom measures which were/are very time consuming and precise, i.e. "demanding" and therefore very expensive at a custom lab, there is little that can be done, other than global color adjustments and bit of discreet burning / dodging, to alter the basic "build-in" information contained in a frame/sheet of color film. However, even conventional burning/dodging techniques had fairly limited capabilities - too much dodging could produce localized "washed out" / "ghosted" shadows (loss of D-max) and too much burning could, conversely, produce localized "blocked up" shadow detail which was visually inconsistent with the rest of the print.
In today's digital world, all of that has changed. In addition to a zillion possible global adjustments / corrections, localized adjustments / corrections of any kind - color, contrast / tonal values, sharpness, noise reduction, to name just a few - are as easy to do as making a selection, AKA: mask, and going to work. And, just to make making a selection / mask easy, selection tools are many and they are also (seemingly) infinitely variable. Then, of course, there are Layer / Blending techniques which can be utilized for a wide variety of adjustment / correction purposes.
All of that (and more) might seem to be very intimidating to some but, I'm here to tell you, if you can get a grip on only those tools / techniques which suit your picture + print making druthers, you'll most likely become a good print maker. And getting a grip on tools and techniques, which ain't rocket science, can be had by WYSWIG experimentation, made easy with the myriad undo / go-back options available in PS - if you don't like what you did, just delete it /go back and try it again.
However, I'll let you in a secret .... the actual making of a print requires nothing more than pushing a button. Well, maybe 2 buttons - the power button on your printer and the "print" button on your computer screen (OK, OK, I know ... you will also have to set a few printing parameters in the Print Dialog box). But, in a real sense, it's that easy. All of the "hard" work to be done is to be found in the making of a good file for printing.
Once you have a good file, you can email it to Timbuk 2 for print making and as long as the printer (the machine) is properly set up and operated, you will get back a very nice print. A print that is virtually identical to one you might make yourself on your own properly set up and operated printer.
That's because, a color printer (the machine) is nothing more than a "garbage in, garbage out" or, more hopefully, an "excellence in, excellence out" computing machine.
All of the preceding stated, I would suggest that, in today's digital domain, there is no such thing as a good print maker, there are only good file makers.
BTW, re: how this became that - The scene: late one recent evening, I was sitting at the kitchen table - not in my usual head-of-the-table position - eating dinner when, looking up, I my eye was struck by the brilliant red hummingbird feeder on our neighbor's house. So I grabbed a camera with the 45mm f1.8 lens and made a number of exposures with different focus, knowing full well that I would not be able to capture sharp detail both inside and out at f1.8.
The processing: in addition to my usual corner vignette and black border, the making of the original file into the final file fit for display and/or print making involved - the conversion of 2 RAW files to 2 different WB points, one for the tungsten lit interior, one for the daylight lit exterior; minor highlight recovery; focus stacking / blending to create an in-focus door and an in-focus exterior view* (the exterior view is not tack sharp because of the intervening window screen which acted as a soft-focus filter of sorts); localized color and tonal adjustments; minor localized noise reduction; minor localized sharpening.
*since I was not using a tripod, I used the transform tool's distort function to register the exterior view within the window frame in the interior view
Reader Comments (3)
Seeing the before and after right next to each other, the thing that surprised me the most was how much of an effect the border has on your pictures! I've always thought of it as being a very subtle border - at least compared to the ugly "mock film perforations" Hipstamatic effects - but it makes the images "distinctively Mark" as much as the square shape and the vignette. Do you include the borders when you make physical prints too, or are they only for the web?
After 40 years of darkroom printmaking I decided I would have prints made to order when I went digital 4 years ago, for several reasons. Equipment, paper and ink used to produce a very fine print from a file was expensive and space consuming, especially now that I am downsizing. Also, there are other professional printers that can produce these fine prints on a wide variety of surfaces for a reasonable price with quick turn around. As you say, these are all "machine prints" now but the files can be very easily manipulated to produce a type of "custom print" we used to know. I don't miss the control of printing at all.
your reflection series is becoming more and more interesting composition of this piece almost turn of the century poster and the previous lavender/pink stripe w reflection almost abstract I see another exhibition theme developing going back to the montreal street reflections