Bringing my Printing to the Next Level

To The Next Level? 

I have been spending the last several months thinking about how to bring my photography up to a new level. I could be accused of being somewhat lazy in my photography. I used a meter to set the exposure of the scene, I developed my black and white film using Massive Dev Chart. I worked on focus, composition and basic exposure to achieve my results. Over time my photography has improved but in some ways I reached a plateau. I think this happens with everyone and one needs to motivate or be motivated to swim out of the stagnant Sargasso sea of complacency. I have embarked on some improvements which I can roughly outline below.

• Better exposures in color and black and white.
• Improve color workflow especially color negative film.
• Understand and embrace the zone system more.
• Think about the creative process more intentionally.
• Understand the roots of aesthetics.
• Improve my darkroom practices to make better prints.

Improving Exposures

I have always liked chrome film but often been stymied by difficult exposures. This I helped by studying better a limited zone system and putting it into practice with a spot meter. This gives me a lot more confidence and has already resulted in better exposures. Discussed here.

Improving Color workflow

Still much work to do here but purchasing a better SW package (Colorperfect) seemed to help. It is not easy but I am now getting better results. I outlined some of this experience here, and here.

Understand and Embrace the Zone System

My blog post on Ilford FP4+ development was created in this vein.

Think about the creative process more intentionally.

Understand the roots of aesthetics.

I will update on these previous topics later. A work in progress right now. 

Improve Darkroom Practices

The biggest revolution in this area for me was the move to split-grade printing a few years ago. As I have written before split grade, for me, seemed a more natural as a way of evaluating and capturing the right level of contrast and exposure. I have lost track of where I learned about split grade printing originally but there are boundless sources of information on the web mostly being introductory tutorials.

As with most online content I find there are lots of people like myself willing to impart their experience but few that I would trust with enough experience to really learn more than the basics from. There are lots of new practitioners, like myself, but I try and find the old-school folks who did this in the heyday of so-called analogue photography.

So I have a short list perhaps of people who I don't know personally but seem to have a resume that would indicate they have something to teach me. This list is by no means comprehensive just those I have run across.

David Kachel

David Kachel has some good writings on making a fine print and something I try and follow. Alas his monographs are hard to find on his new website. His monograph Fine Print-Making Secrets is worth a read. I downloaded a copy from his earlier website. He has strict instructions on copying which I of course respect. I suggest you contact him directly for a copy. Below is a summary of his precepts. I cannot pretend to understand or implement them all.

I find I am at most able to hold 2-3 new concepts in practice at any given time. My brain cannot balance everything at once. I therefore try and concentrate on a couple items in a session in the darkroom where I am trying to improve my skills. Over time these concepts bed in to the brain and I can layer additional techniques or ideas on these fundamentals.

A warning, what David recommends involves a lot of prints and thus lots of time and expense. I can see as many as 12 to 20 prints are required.

A few of his premises summarized below.

Always Get Local Contrast Right First

Most prints have one or two areas of important interest. Identify these and make sure the contrast is right for those areas.

Always Go Too Far

I really like this advice. We often have preconceived notions about what exposure or contrast looks best. By going too far in terms of over or under exposure or soft vs hard contrast you might see the print in a different way or see how to print it differently.  This applies to dodging and burning as well. David's thinking is you can't know what is right until you create what is wrong.

Base Exposure on Shadows not Highlights

This is important in David's view as you always want to add exposure to a print not take it away. (Burn don't dodge) Starting with shadow exposure is the basis for this.

The Contrast and Exposure Masquerade

This is very true for me. How to differentiate between the two is difficult sometimes!

Always Assume You Are Off–Target

Here he assumes you are doing a lot of burning and dodging and as a result you build up unintended exposure and also risk losing contrast. When you think you are done you will in fact be off target. Since the accumulations are gradual you will become accustomed to them. Reassess the print by printing lighter and darker and with more and less contrast to assure yourself you remain on target.

View Prints Under Different Lighting Conditions

This I have learned the hard way. In my darkroom the lights are quite a bit brighter than what I would display the prints around the home. My darkroom lights are ceiling down-lights and so when I view a print I hold in my hands it is bright and evenly lit. Very good for judging exposure and contrast but not representative of how they will be viewed. The consequence of this, I am embarrassed to admit, is that I have few prints displayed on the walls that thought I was pleased with in the darkroom are much too dark. Indeed one 16" x 20" print I made from one of my brother's negative I decided to reprint with less exposure. The others are more complex though they too deserve to be redone.  As a result of this I follow David's instructions and also assume any print I like in my darkroom lighting will probably be too dark when hung on a wall.

If You’re Dodging a Lot, Something is Wrong

This is a great philosophical point. Dodging is the removal of unnecessary exposure. As David points out, 'If it is unnecessary why is it there?' Also the limits of dodging are that you can't dodge longer than the base exposure. You can burn all day long! The lesson here is dial in the base exposure and burn your way to the best overall exposure.

Burning adds to the base exposure

Finally realize that burning adds to the base exposure especially if you do a lot of it.

Les McClean

The Online Darkroom has a good guest column by Les McClean here. I reviewed his tutorial and there is much to recommend the concepts here. There is always a problem with trying to follow more than one ideology as they often diverge even on the way to producing similar results. However I also find that one person's methods resonate or are easier to understand than another's. Alternatively one set of techniques my work for one particular problem and not another.

With this in mind I decided to try Les' technique. I first made a full size 8x10 print (Ilford Warmtone RC paper) test with only the #0 soft filter. I ran the strips horizontally due to the differences on the right and left side of image. The times run from 64 seconds at the top and lower going down in 1/2 stop increments. This is below...

Soft filter test strip

Initially I judged according to Mr McClean's article that 23 seconds (4th band from the top) had the right amount of tone. He states...

"When assessing the soft test strip, I look for the first sign of photographic tone in the highlight. At this stage I am not concerned with seeing contrast or tones anywhere near approaching a full black. Contrast and rich blacks are produced when the hard filtration is introduced."

This meshes with David's philosophy of building up the exposure though is not quite the same.

The next step is expose at the soft filter exposure and then run a hard filter test strip across the image.

Hard filter test strip (horizontal) against a soft filter exposure at 23 seconds

Here it is hard to see the hard filter gradations. I also see that I am not going to have enough base soft exposure. So I ran it again with a soft filter base of 32 seconds. This time I did the hard filter stripes vertically.

Hard filter test strip (vertical) against a soft filter exposure at 32 seconds

This looked like a better base to build on. Next I made a test print at #0 32 seconds (same as the base above) and #5 at 45 seconds (just to the right of the dark strip on the far left above).

Test print at #5 45 sec #0 32 sec 

 This is meant to give a view of the overall exposure. It makes apparent the lightness on the right side of the image. Now I can see where to burn. My next print is to burn some of the areas on the right with the #0 filter for 19 seconds.

Print at #5 45 sec #0 32 sec burn right #0 19 sec

 The light areas are coming up but not enough. Next I decide to increase the overall soft exposure at 38 seconds (1/4 stop) and same burn.

Print at #5 45 sec #0 38 sec burn right #0 19 sec

This hardly moves the needle. So I 'go to far!'. More soft filter base and more burn.

Print at #5 45 sec #0 54 sec burn right #0 26 sec

This is good I think. Good detail in the shadows around the waterfall.

So I got a good result. But I have to say that the day before I printed a similar crop, though somewhat easier as I cropped it further to the left thus avoiding the brighter right side of the scene above. Never-the-less my normal process of small test strips made independently in soft and hard filtration allowed m to get to a similar print in just 2 tries. Below is that result. Not sure what to take from this.

Earlier result using my conventional small test strips.

In the end I think I conclude it is worth considering how these different techniques allow one to think about how a good print is constructed. Certainly there is an appeal in thinking about building a base of exposure and/or local contrast and then layering  burns in different filtration to achieve a great result. I believe that my ability to understand and exploit burning and dodging is probably what limits me in this regard. Something to think about and work on.