Re: [APML] Adding contrast to prints

[Chuck Vaughn <aa6g@aa6g.org>]

Hi Joe,

I think you're just facing the modern version of what so many skilled 
people have gone through in the past. Changes in technology make some 
skills obsolete. It happens so fast now that one can't rarely count on 
one skill serving him for a lifetime.

>         Three thoughts;
>         1) our prining poress was over 100 years old, worked fine.  
> Printers, scanners and related computer hardware  - for *commercial * 
> use - I am not talking about home hobbist - you need to replace about 
> once every three years;

Hopefully you're getting better value and efficiency from your new 
investment each time.

>         2) since it seems every ten year old kid in North America has 
> a colour scanner and a colour printer, the "percieved" value of your 
> work by the general public is very low - at least what it used to be 
> like say 15 or 20 years ago.  Not sure if any of the new people to 
> publishing & printing know that anymore;

Even though the skilled hate it, this is the upside and downside of 
technological advances. The more people who can do something, the lower 
the value of the skill. The upside is that something that was 
unavailable to all but a few is now available to many more. This is 
just the free market in play.

>         3)For what it is worth, a year ago, at my local well  stocked 
> newstand, there used to be one magazine devoted to collecting 
> traditional B&W prints.  Just yesterday, downtown to pick up my 
> monthly copy of S&T, there are now THREE different magazines devoted 
> to collecting fine art "tradiational"  B&W photographs/prints.  
> Hmmmm..., could there be a trend here?  :)

Maybe they recognize that fewer people will be producing them and they 
hope the value of the existing work will rise. :-)  The free market in 
play again....

>         Do not get me wrong, for commercial use, digital is the way to 
> go.  Period.
>
>         But after all day in front of a computer monitor, I go into 
> the wet darkroom the same reason my mother still uses a spinning wheel 
> and spins her woll by hand.  One - it is very relaxing; two - you can 
> still do certian jobs by hand a computer or a machine will never 
> reporduce (be it furniture, photographs, hand sewn quilts, etc, etc), 
> and three - when you actually sell the stuff - what do you think goes 
> for more money - a hand sewn quilt or a machine ewn one.  or in this 
> case - " a hand archivally processed silver rich gelatin print" or and 
> injet print?

There will always be a market for handmade items but the price will be 
very high. Some will desire those items and fewer will be able to 
afford them. When this was the only way to produce these items most 
went without. We are made richer and our lives are made better by mass 
produced, decent quality merchandise.

>         Yep, sometimes it's all how you label it and package it.     
> All I can tell you is I bust my but in Photopaint for an hour and a 
> half to bring out an image to it's best, and and sometimes people just 
> shrug and say something to the effectwhy isn't it nicer, or my kid 
> could of doen the same for less money, etc, etc.

Astrophotography is something I've done only for personal satisfaction 
and never with the idea of making money. The market just isn't there.

Chuck

-------------------------------

>         I do a traditional print in the darkroom, even one i basically 
> sleepwalk through, and people go -wow, look at that."  Like I said, go 
> figre?
> joe
>
>
>
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