The Artistry Formerly Known as Prints
Yesterday at 4PM, I followed a hashtag on Twitter, #printchat. It was basically a bunch of tweets discussing the printing industry amongst people who you could call industry insiders. The main subject of conversation was drupa, a recently completed conference and trade show dedicated to advances in the printing industry. It’s held every four years in Düsseldorf, Germany, and it’s goddamn massive. I didn’t even hear about it until this year, but as Wikipedia says, “390,044 visitors attended drupa in 2008, and 1,953 exhibitors from 54 countries covered a total of 17.9 hectares of space.” That’s insane. More noteworthy, it’s astounding that such a big event is dedicated to an industry that I would bet the average person would suspect is on the decline.
A lot of people like to talk about how more pictures have been taken lately. And we’re not talking about a simple percentage increase, either. More pictures get taken every two minutes than were taken in the entirety of the 19th century. (This is, of course, on average. Actually, do yourself a favor and read Jonathan Good’s original article here.)
One of the things Mr. Good’s article touches on is the increasing rarity of the printed image. This is definitely true as a percentage—that is, of all photographs taken, the percentage that are being printed is in sharp decline. But that could be true even if the rate of image printing is increasing. But what I imagine (with no evidence apart from my own to back it up) is that fewer and fewer photographs are being printed to paper. When I was a kid and you got film back from the lab, you got a copy of every frame as a glossy 4×6 print. And most of the time they stayed that way: slightly curled prints from a machine in a photo lab branded envelope in a shoebox in the closet.
Now that I consider myself a photographer (an amateur still, but working towards being a semi-pro… let’s talk if you want to buy my work), I’m visualizing prints a whole new way. You shouldn’t print everything, and if you do, those prints should be a bit bigger. Personally, my ideal size is an 8″ by 10″ print, which strikes the perfect balance between decorative artwork and a requirement for intimate examination. I know a few photographers who prefer shooting large format and contact printing their 4×5 negatives to force viewers to get in close to examine the photographs. I want to try this soon. Because on a computer or iPad, you zoom in. With a print on a wall, you bring your face in to really look at a print.
Anyway, even though you should only print a small percentage of what you shoot, the average person prints relatively nothing. How many prints of your photographs do you have, and how many digital files (from a camera or from a film scan) occupy your hard drive?
Ansel Adams’ well-known book The Negative (one of the best instructional photography books ever) was the second in a trilogy of The Camera, The Negative, and The Print. Unlike the first two, I’ve never seen the latter on the shelves of a bookstore. It’s all about making a traditional print – using silver gelatin photographic paper with a negative in an enlarger to make a positive image. (The paper is a negative-producing material, so projection of a negative film image will result in a positive print.) I’ve made a series of YouTube videos (crappy ones, I must say) that give an overview of darkroom printing.
However – and this is the point that I originally wanted to make when I thought of writing this blog post – is that darkroom printing isn’t a simple “there, I did it” process. Or at least, it doesn’t have to be (you can choose to make “straight prints” if you choose to.) There’s an artistic opportunity there that you can choose to work in. From the choice of your paper and developer to the dodging and burning you apply to specific areas of the print, there are tons of ways to affect the final print. Elements like composition and focus are present in the negative, but things like tonality and contrast are only affected by how you print the image (even if you never choose to print it).
Ansel Adams’ most famous photograph, Moonrise, Hernandez, New Mexico, exists in a variety of different forms (see below). This is because Adams went back to the darkroom with the original negative and reinterpreted the final print a number of different ways throughout his life. So even though he was working from the same original negative, each print was, in its own way, unique.
Example #1
Example #2
I was recently watching a documentary about the great Japanese street photographer Daido Moriyama, and I learned that a great deal of what you see is not just due to the camera, but how he chose to print the photographs in the darkroom. For example, one of the interviewees was recalling how they were trying to recreate a particular print of Moriyama’s, and the lab had to give up because it was too difficult to recreate. Indeed, even Moriyama couldn’t recreate his original print. What was the epitome of a reproducible medium had become a one-of-a-kind.
An example of a Daido Moriyama print
I hope this helps you to begin to appreciate the value of a printed photograph, as well as the opportunities that exist in making a print. That photographic printing is such an important art is such a personal revelation to me over the past year or so that I’m now planning on a photo book that will feature scans of finished darkroom prints instead of scanned negatives. With that change, I’m not just showing you where and when I held a camera. You’re seeing the exact image I wanted you to see.
If you have a darkroom, go in there and make some prints! If not, at least send your scans off to be printed. I’ll even forgive you for dodging and burning in Photoshop. Just as long as you have something you can hold in your hand and hold up to your face, because whether you know it or not, your brain is getting tired of looking at pixels. And hey, there’s a reason that drupa is such a big deal – printed material matters.
Review: HP5+ in 35mm
My friend Neal Thorley recently published a review on Ilford’s HP5+ film in the 120 format on his blog (read it here) and I chimed in with a comment about how it’s also fantastic on 35mm. He wanted to link to me, and I realized that for all my complaining that I never have any good content for my blog, I never thought to do a film review. So, here goes.
Ilford’s HP5+ was my first black-and-white film. It’s ISO 400 (which used to be considered “fast” in the old days, but by now is “normal” speed…) and gives a classic tonality that’s similar to Kodak Tri-X. In fact, from what I can tell, HP5+ and Tri-X are very nearly (say, 95%) the same exact film. Some people claim that Tri-X is a little bit better at push development, but I have yet to test the limits of HP5+’s capabilities. I enjoy it so much at 400, and if I’m ever in low light, 1600 gives me no problems. I doubt that it would fail to hold its own against Tri-X though.
There are a lot of reasons I went with Ilford. First, most people start off with Tri-X as their general black-and-white film, and I wanted something just a bit less popular. Second, a 50-foot roll of HP5+ was cheaper than a similar roll of Tri-X. Third and most importantly, Ilford remains a small, purely film-photography company while Kodak is shrinking and has a lot of their fingers in digital pies. Since I started film photography in early 2010, they’ve discontinued Tri-X 320 (the supposedly ‘professional’ version of the film) and have begun to kill off various formats of Plus-X, the ASA 125 sister of Tri-X. While the film market is now only starting to stabilize, I’m fairly sure Tri-X will not be going away any time soon, but I’ve got even more faith in HP5+ sticking around. Besides, since I do both color and black-and-white work, Kodak has plenty of new color films (Ektar 100, Portra 400, Portra 160) that they can use to get my money. I have no problem sticking to Ilford for most of my black-and-white work, only occasionally trying out different film manufacturers for comparison.
One of the things I love about Ilford HP5+ is its versatility. I’ve already discussed its ability to be pushed at least up to ASA 1600, but it also does a great job no matter what developer you chose to throw at it. I started off my photography hearing great things about Kodak HC-110, following it up with the evidently stellar sharpness of Agfa Rodinal. A few months later, I was reading great things about Kodak XTOL—especially if instead of dumping it after development, you re-used the solution with a portion replenished with fresh stock. I’ve tried all these developers with Ilford HP5+, and I’ve gotten great results every time. There doesn’t seem to be a developer for which it’s ill-suited. Furthermore, the only time I’ve noticed results that weren’t sharp, it’s been thanks to my poor focus or unsteady hand. HP5+ has never let me down when it comes to sharp photographs.
Of course, since a picture is worth a thousand words, why not show you some? From my entire collection of photos that were shot on Ilford HP5+, here are a few samples from my 35mm cameras. I’ve tried to mix up the cameras and developers a bit to show what the different developers do to the film. All were scanned by me on my Epson V700 scanner, and please forgive any dust I didn’t bother to clone out.
Camera: Nikon FE2 (w/ 24mm lens)
Developer: Agfa Rodinal, 1+50 dilution
Camera: Konica Auto S2
Developer: Kodak HC-110, dilution B
Camera: Konica Auto S2
Developer: Rodinal 1+100 followed by Kodak HC-110, dilution B [I used two-bath developing to both stand-develop (tame contrast) and push the sensitivity up to ASA 1600. This is the most I've abused the film and you can just start to notice the grain.]
And of course, I saved my favorite sample photo for last…
Camera: Olympus Trip 35
Developer: Kodak XTOL, replenished stock
So, long story short, Ilford HP5+ is my go-to black-and-white film and a perfect alternative to Kodak Tri-X.
Home Black and White Developing 101
I put together a very long and hopefully detailed primer on what you need to do if you want to develop black and white film – 35mm or 120 – by yourself. This is meant to be a pretty straightforward guide that will lead you developing your first roll of black-and-white film successfully
Brace yourself for a long read after the cut…
(more…)
How I Screwed Up and How I Fixed It
I screwed up my first roll of B&W film since I started developing. And that’s been almost a year, so at least I had a good streak going.
So what happened? I bought some new Rokunar reels. I felt like more plastic reels were in order, since they need to dry completely before you can reuse them, and you never can tell when I’m going to want to do a marathon developing day. OK, so that’s unlikely, given how much I love developing. Odds are that sensitized but unprocessed film rolls aren’t going to stay around for very long. But maybe someone will want me to shoot an event or wedding someday, and I’ll have to plow through several rolls of film. Anyway… for whatever reason, I wanted more reels. Well, just my luck that my camera shop had some Rokunar reels in stock. These are different than the Patersons that I have, but they have the distinct advantage of having big thumb rests or tabs on one part of the reel, meaning it’s easier to find out the point where you start loading the reel by touch.
So, I loaded my Kodak Plus-X Pan in the reel, put the reel in the tank, and started developing. Well, once I was done with the processing, I got shots like this:
What caused this? My educated guess, though I’ll never be 100% certain, is that the reel wasn’t at the very bottom of the tank. Instead, it must have gotten lifted up so that one edge (the dark one) progressively got more and more elevated out of the developer. This could be caused by the rotating motion of the agitation wand that I use in the Paterson tank. The Paterson tanks have a tighter grip on the center post, so they don’t slide up and down very easily.
So, the most logical thing to do would be to always use two reels so that there’s no room to slide. This is absurd, because if I had two different films, I’d need to use all four of my reels – two for developing film, and two “spacer” reels. And then, my purchase is nullified.
So instead, I noticed that the diameter of a plastic 35mm film canister is slightly larger than the diameter of the Paterson center post, and a bit taller than the height of a plastic reel set to accept 35mm film. It makes sense, right? It’s got to be at least as tall as the film cartridge, which is of course wider than the film. So, I measured how much I would have to cut off the end, and I made a hollow cylinder. Once the reel is loaded on the center post, this spacer goes on top so that the reel stays on the bottom, in the 300 mL of chemicals. I may make a tiny ring for 120, but I think the weight should help hold it down.
Future crises averted!
