Printing Black and White

Attended a Course in Black and White printing led by Paul Gallagher yesterday (21.11.13). Paul who learnt his trade in the darkroom and references most of his lecture to this base nevertheless works in the digital world. Most of the day was devoted to getting the image ready for printing and began with the most basic of introductions to Photoshop - particularly ACR (Camera Raw) - but gradually worked through Paul's workflow to reaching the final product ready for printing. A great believer in 'doing it yourself' and dismissing presets and software such as Silver Efex Pro as being limiting and not producing the best print possible. I am nor sure that I was entirely sold on this approach. Presets make for a good starting position and, when understood, can lead to very successful outcomes. As always the trick is to use the software as an aid rather than pressing the button and feeling that is enough. Having said that one cannot deny that the work Paul produced was stunning. I have very little doubt that I will be using the lessons learnt on the Course to improve my work.

I am not quite sure why but a small part of the time available was devoted to the tilt and shift lens with Paul eulogising about its ability, used properly, to ensure that everything between the nearest and furthest objects in an image were pin sharp. Paul is an excellent landscape photographer and apparently uses this facility in his work. I was left asking the question - Why? The viewer requires clues about the relationship of elements within the photograph. One of these is that distant objects appear less sharp than those in the foreground. To remove this element seems to me to be self defeating because it introduces a feeling of uncertainty - a feeling that may not be capable of expression just a sense of unease. One of the mantras of photography is 'pin sharp' or 'tack sharp' but if one isn't careful the end result can be seen/felt as false - it does not match with our expectations. The level of sharpness across an image may be important (not necessarily in all images) and lack thereof a sign of poor performance by the photographer but it should be tempered by what our expectations are.

It was a great day and I learnt a great deal.