Got back from Rochester around 11:00 last night. The workshop was an amazing experience and an incredible value. We didn't just get to do hands-on platinum printing, we got to examine many original platinum prints from the museum's archives. The real stuff: Emerson (an original print of "Picking the Reed", one of my favorites), Coburn, Steichen. Amazing. The archivist came in on Saturday , when he's usually off, just to bring out stuff for us.
The museum has two basement levels where all the research, restoration, etc. etc. is done and the facilities are pretty amazing, as is the knowledge of the staff. The workshop was taught by Ron Cowie (who, it turns out, lives in Rhode Island and teaches one day a week at the new England School of Photography - a few blocks down the street from where I now live!) and a guy named mark Osterman from the Eastman House helped with the lab and all the chemistry: Osterman has apparently done every kind of photographic process there is and teaches Daguerreotype-making and such. He knows... pretty much everything about photo chemistry and we got to try anything we could think of. Wan to finish your platinum print with a gum wash? Fine. Asphalt wash? Can do. How about two-stage development in a glycerine starting with ammonium citrate? Sure. The area I'm interested in, making large negatives from digital for platinum printing, wasn't covered specifically but they referred me to good sources for more information and it seems most of the people working in platinum are moving that direction - not that they all *want* to, but I learned that the future of film is even more grim than I'd thought so everyone's preparing to have to work with digital processes whether they want to or not. I made a few platinum prints from 8 x 10 negatives and watched a lot of the other participants try lots of different experiments. I learned a *lot* and brought home the official workshop package with a binder of material that'll keep me reading for weeks. This workshop as a tremendous bargain for $450.00. -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List [email protected] http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow the directions.
