Digital BW, The Print

(NOTE: This should also probably be labeled a Rant, but I 
haven't written it yet, but it's early, and I'm hung over, and I just got 
back from a long road trip and I've been shooting in a 
MaxSecurity prison, so I'm feeling pretty raw and 
impatient.-MT)(But not "raw" like "that"...)
-----

Road trips are good. Especially road trips away from computers 
and television. For me, I tend to get back into the big picture, and 
stop micro-managing so much.

What's hit me about this list, and about the Epson9000 list, and I 
guess the Piezo list too -- EVERYBODY just wants to know if their 
prints are gonna last (not fade). They also want to know if they're 
gonna shift color.

How many months (years) have we spent on these lists trying to 
figure this out? And in my eyes, we still don't have much of an 
answer. Wilhelm has flown the coop, or he's sitting in a 
mountain bunker somewhere with a window, a flourescent bulb, 
a tungsten bulb, and some ozone -- who knows? And what about 
these supposed tests at RIT? Does anybody have any info on 
those?

Personally, I'm ready to get on with it. I'm just at that point in my 
life where I'd simply like to start making and selling prints, and I'd 
like to shake a customer's hand and look them squarely in the 
eye as I receive their check, and send them on their way feeling 
solid and confident. (Right now, I honestly cannot do that). It 
seems like for every positive post about a certain paper/ink 
combination, there's another one a month later refuting those 
results.

I understand that quote that Clark Thomas published (4099), but 
at the same time, there's a point when you've got to stop testing 
and start printing. That time, for me, is now. I am prepared to buy 
almost any printer, if I can only be assured with some sound 
backup that the prints are chemically stable. Hell, I might even 
take the grandest leap of all, and get a PC machine to run my 
7000, if it turns out that Piezo is the most stable.

In my (uninformed) eyes, the two finalists right now are:

* Piezo inks on (?) paper.
* Color Pigment inks on (?)

I may be wrong. If I am, please correct me, and fill in the blanks 
for the papers. I have tried to start databases on this list, to try to 
get feedback from people on their success stories. That 
information never comes -- that leads me to believe that damn 
near everybody on this list is sitting on the sidelines, with that 
same puckered-up feeling that I have, wondering to themselves, 
"will my prints fade in five years?"

I am looking for hard facts. Solid information. I guess sticking a 
print in a window is OK, but I'd also like to hear from a chemist 
also about chemical reactivity between certain inks and certain 
paper coatings.

I like this the people on this list and all, but kinda like AA -- at 
some point, you just feel like you ought to be ready to "graduate" 
from it, and get on with your life. I'd say our goal, as a group, 
should be to some time get together for a beer, but NOT to have 
to talk about anything related to print permanence.

Restless,

Mark Tucker, http://marktucker.com

One of my clients is a huge foundry that makes cast iron industrial
products for the plumbing market. They have an artist residency
program that essentially lets artists apply for grants to use the
foundry for fine art pieces. They get nationally 
known artists from all over the world who are grateful to have a huge
foundry at their disposal. I was photographing a piece of artwork that
was of course a cast piece of some kind of 
iron and it was very colorful. I asked the artist if she used some
sort of glaze like a potter may use. Her response was "it's rustoleum
spray paint". It was a beautiful piece of 
artwork. She was not concerned about what reactions the paint may
have with the
iron. It will undoubtably not have the same permanence ar a fired
glaze made of titanium or some other 
metal oxide, but the art looks good and the artist was unemcumbered
by all this archival stuff. Sometimes we just have to take a chance
and go for it.

--- In DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@y..., "Mark Tucker" <mark@m...> wrote:
Couple of quick comments-
snip
...I'd 
> like to shake a customer's hand and look them squarely in the 
> eye as I receive their check, and send them on their way feeling 
> solid and confident. (Right now, I honestly cannot do that)

And you haven't been able to do that ever, I don't think it's gonna haapen anytime soon. I'd make a commitment now to 
something anyway, and get on with it. 

Snip...
I am prepared to buy 
> almost any printer, if I can only be assured with some sound 
> backup that the prints are chemically stable.

I just don't think there's anyone out there willing to assure anyone of any particular longevity.

> In my (uninformed) eyes, the two finalists right now are:
> 
> * Piezo inks on (?) paper.
> * Color Pigment inks on (?)
> 
For the toned monochromatic look of the images on your site, it seems to me you're stuck with color inks. If you switch to 
pigments like generations you'll be back into the metamerism problem, though people who insist you get on board with 
pigments will be happy. Cone's pigs supposedly don't have the problem, but do have others. The Indelible inks just never 
seem to actually come out, or no one is buying them and reporting, or their results aren't very good and they aren't 
posting, and we don't know if they have metamerism or clogging. The only post I've seen says the black is only slightly 
denser than Piezocolor black. Someone said they dipped a Royal Plush print in saltwater and hung it out in the hot sun for a 
long time before any fading showed up, so they might last, but you still don't have any  hard info.

> ...that 
> same puckered-up feeling

I've had that since I first got a computer, or did Mom do it?
> 
> I am looking for hard facts. Solid information.

It's not there.

> I like this the people on this list and all, but kinda like AA -- at 
> some point, you just feel like you ought to be ready to "graduate" 
> from it, and get on with your life.

And your printing. At a certain point when everything starts working, I do tend to just get on with my work and post less. I 
think it's only natural. I see issues come up I may have an opinion to offer, but someone will ask the same question again in 
a week, or some post will be made that indicates the same info needs to be restated. I think or hope new "old" people will 
help new people, etc..
I honestly think, you have to make the best choice you can and get on with it and simply tell your customers what you can, 
keeping your eyes open for something new to come along. You'll keep changing inks and paper with testing, it becomes 
totally comsuming, and you have a worldwide group of people affirming that behaviour right here on the net.
What threw you off, I thought you were happy with the prints you were getting?
Tyler
on the road, but unfortunately with a computer

There's an easy way around that problem.

Offer a lifetime reprint guarantee, stamped or printed on the back of each 
print.

This won't affect the exclusivity of limited edition prints as each one 
has a number and you can ensure that the original is destroyed.

mark@... (Mark Tucker) wrote:

> (NOTE: This should also probably be labeled a Rant, but I 
> haven't written it yet, but it's early, and I'm hung over, and I just 
> got back from a long road trip and I've been shooting in a MaxSecurity 
> prison, so I'm feeling pretty raw and impatient.-MT)(But not "raw" like 
> "that"...)
> -----
> 
> Road trips are good. Especially road trips away from computers 
> and television. For me, I tend to get back into the big picture, and 
> stop micro-managing so much.
> 
> What's hit me about this list, and about the Epson9000 list, and I 
> guess the Piezo list too -- EVERYBODY just wants to know if their 
> prints are gonna last (not fade). They also want to know if they're 
> gonna shift color.
> 
> How many months (years) have we spent on these lists trying to 
> figure this out? And in my eyes, we still don't have much of an 
> answer. Wilhelm has flown the coop, or he's sitting in a 
> mountain bunker somewhere with a window, a flourescent bulb, 
> a tungsten bulb, and some ozone -- who knows? And what about 
> these supposed tests at RIT? Does anybody have any info on 
> those?
> 
> Personally, I'm ready to get on with it. I'm just at that point in my 
> life where I'd simply like to start making and selling prints, and I'd 
> like to shake a customer's hand and look them squarely in the 
> eye as I receive their check, and send them on their way feeling 
> solid and confident. (Right now, I honestly cannot do that). It 
> seems like for every positive post about a certain paper/ink 
> combination, there's another one a month later refuting those 
> results.
> 
> I understand that quote that Clark Thomas published (4099), but 
> at the same time, there's a point when you've got to stop testing 
> and start printing. That time, for me, is now. I am prepared to buy 
> almost any printer, if I can only be assured with some sound 
> backup that the prints are chemically stable. Hell, I might even 
> take the grandest leap of all, and get a PC machine to run my 
> 7000, if it turns out that Piezo is the most stable.
> 
> In my (uninformed) eyes, the two finalists right now are:
> 
> * Piezo inks on (?) paper.
> * Color Pigment inks on (?)
> 
> I may be wrong. If I am, please correct me, and fill in the blanks 
> for the papers. I have tried to start databases on this list, to try to 
> get feedback from people on their success stories. That 
> information never comes -- that leads me to believe that damn 
> near everybody on this list is sitting on the sidelines, with that 
> same puckered-up feeling that I have, wondering to themselves, 
> "will my prints fade in five years?"
> 
> I am looking for hard facts. Solid information. I guess sticking a 
> print in a window is OK, but I'd also like to hear from a chemist 
> also about chemical reactivity between certain inks and certain 
> paper coatings.
> 
> I like this the people on this list and all, but kinda like AA -- at 
> some point, you just feel like you ought to be ready to "graduate" 
> from it, and get on with your life. I'd say our goal, as a group, 
> should be to some time get together for a beer, but NOT to have 
> to talk about anything related to print permanence.
> 
> Restless,
> 
> Mark Tucker, http://marktucker.com
> 
> 
> 
> Please visit the Group Homepage to check the Files, Bookmarks, Polls 
> and other resources as they are often being updated. The page is at:
> 
> http://groups.yahoo.com/group/DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint
> 
> Please follow these basic guidelines:
> - Include your full name with your message.
> - Include the address of your website, if you have one.
> - As threads develop, trim off excess portions of earlier messages to 
> keep them short.
> - As the topic of a thread changes remember to change the subject 
> header.
> - Good manners are required at all time. No personal attacks or 
> "flames."
> - Complete your Yahoo profile.
> - Before posting a question, search the message archives and the 
> various resources on the homepage. 
> 
> 
>  
> 
> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to 
> http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/ 
> 
> 
>

I agree that it's a serious problem, made worse by various reports, 
some widely accepted and some constantly argued, about fading and 
color shifts; even on this list and in the past couple of days, we've 
had discussions about whether Piezo prints are brown or neutral or 
oyster. We've had things like Epson's 200-year color turning out to 
be more like four to six weeks if you have any ozone around, or maybe 
it's fly-spray or something else in the air. To have people say that 
this can be cured by a committment to reprint doesn't solve the 
problem: a lot of collectors buy only "vintage" prints, because that 
reflects the state of the artist's mind at the time he or she made 
the original photograph; anything printed years later is not only 
essentially different, but (and this is important to many collectors) 
worth less. There's also the problem that a collector might wonder 
whether he can even *find* the photographer two years later, when 
he's looking at a badly faded photograph; why should he have to pay 
good money to go through all of that? I think it's essential that the 
Piezo folks and the people at MIS hire a serious independent or 
university lab to do some serious, extensive *scientific* testing 
using *serious* equipment and rigorous, repeatable procedures, to 
tell us what we have, even if it's done only with a limited range of 
papers and for very specific formulations of ink. At least we would 
have a baseline. People have noted that some Piezo looks brown and 
other people have complained about "getting the greens" and we don't 
know if this is actually happening, or if somebody had a four 
martinis last night and is looking at the prints through bloodshot 
eyes, or, for that matter, if the Piezo people have quietly 
reformulated the ink or the ink factory may have had some quality 
control problems. For amateurs (and I'm using this in the best sense 
of the word, recognizing that some amateurs do exquisite work) it may 
not matter, and some may make print after print of one neg, over may 
years, and enjoy the evolution of the work. Professionals don't have 
the same luxury; if you're trying to make a living selling fine-art 
prints, you oughta, as the man says, be able to look the buyer in the 
eye as you're taking the check, knowing that you've given them a real 
piece of craftsmanship that will last a while. You can do that if you 
make a good silver print or platinum print, and follow established 
procedures. In reasonable conditions, the print will last a century 
or more.

JC