Digital BW, The Print

Walker, this rocked.
Excellent, and a deserved slap ont he wrist for missing the shoot out
in person. Hopefully next time I'll have more freak flyer miles built up.
Tyler

--- In DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com, Walker Blackwell
<wblackwell@...> wrote:
>
> 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
>