Digital BW, The Print

Good sum-up Bill Kennedy. I think we are all a little way excited  
about HP and Cannon. No need to be. They are just adding to the soup.  
A few questions that I've been talking about with other people are:  
With new competition how will all of the inks shake out? Who's going  
to be a loser and who a winner?

I've been thinking about this issue since the print-off and I've come  
to realize that there's room to grow. I believe there is and will- 
always-be a place for true monochrome quad/hex/sept/etc ink even with  
Canon and HP running quad Ks. I think that the industry is currently  
modeled around a system of choice and that is healthy. Every ink will  
find its nitch just like the silver papers of yor. Agfa/Bergger has/ 
had the cream down. Ilford has/had that sweet warm and good neutral,  
etc. Now that  much of the longevity issues are figured out, each  
company that makes inks is able to expand and deepen its quality.

I think there are three large things that are currently hindering  
both the fine-art digital output market and user base.

#1. Quality control. There's a lot of great stuff coming out but it  
has a large percentage of error. This has been a problem with silver  
papers as well but not nearly as much. As the market matures into its  
second generation, I believe the companies with less quality control  
will begin to suffer.

#2. An over-focus on method and less of a focus on aesthetic.  To a  
certain extent, not consciously focusing on aesthetic actually helps  
it grow in a real way. Back in the day there were a lot of totally  
amazing photographers that called themselves scientists and had no  
articulated artistic pursuits. Today the weight of history in  
photography is always a pulling drag and a great re-source. But the  
truth of the matter is, we can't look at this new technology in the  
same innocent light of photo 1.0. We need to take it for what it is  
"a new way to print" and then we need to continue with our work:  
making good prints, making good photographs.

#3. True physical community.  We need to tie the full re-source of  
our great history of photography directly to the current technology  
and not quibble over the finer details. I hope that eventually we  
will begin to create a formal, cultural lexicon that will be neutral  
and varied enough to include the breadth of digital output. Currently  
we are getting so much stuff thrown at us that we are getting caught  
in the mud of description. Although this forum is helpful, we are  
still just looking at computer screens and not at each-other's  
prints. That would probably be way more fun because the truth of the  
matter is, we are all more fascinated by a beautiful physical print  
than an LCD screen. By meeting face to face and seeing each-others'  
prints in the light, we will over-come many of the arguments that go  
on on this forum about (for example) quads vs color mixing, etc.  
Hopefully we will see the strength and weakness of every medium  
(because every medium has both) and begin to each get a grasp of the  
over-all shape of the digital print world. We all have a sort-of  
built in idea of the general shape of the silver world because it's  
been around for over a century. But it's up to us to create the shape  
of the digital out-put world. And we can't build that shape without  
meeting face to face.

all right, now I'm going to go crazy mixing quads on StudioPrint v12  
(because you can do that now, finally).  I'll see you all after a  
couple of rolls of hahnemuhle.

Walker