On 2/2/2016 12:10 PM, Mark Roberts wrote:
I need to get back into shooting and developing my own B&W film. Even
if I just scan the negatives and print digitally.
My department is considering adding a Photography Minor to our
program. As far as I can tell, having a B&W film photography course is
pretty much standard for a Photography Minor, but some schools are
actually skipping darkroom printing and just teaching the processing
of negatives along with scanning. Anethma to me (and still not viable
for a Photography Major, thankfully) but it's probably the way of the
future.
Scanning and printing digitally offers tremendous control over how the
print looks but a digital print will always lack the "hand crafted"
aspect that a wet print has. People seem to like darkroom prints in that
each print is uniquely prepared by the photographer. You can limit the
edition size of a digital print, but they will still be more or less
exactly the same and lack the panache of a hand pulled wet print. I also
think that there is a perception that there is a lack of authenticity
when digital processes are used to mimic analog processes (a notion that
I personally reject.)
That said - I go all all out with digital processing of scanned film,
including DOF / focus stacking, hdr toning, micro contrast adjustments,
etc. I enjoy the process of shooting film, making creative decisions in
terms of how to develop film and like the tonality of a well developed
negative. A well exposed, developed and scanned negative is a great
starting point for creating a digital print. So far in 2016 the vast
majority of my shooting has been B&W. I'm guessing about 40 rolls (some
120 but mostly 35mm) thus far. I would argue that hybrid processing -
analog captures with digital processing and printing - is a distinct
category of photography.
Learning wet printing would be really interesting but considering the
time it would require and all the other interesting things I have yet to
do, I doubt that I will ever engage with it.
Mark
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