Sometime in January, or February if I’m being lazy, I take all of my sheets of negatives from the previous year and put them into an archival plastic box for storage. I load a 3 ring binder with empty Print File sheets, label an acid-free cardboard box for smaller prints, and set up a portfolio folder for larger prints. Normally, these are all of the photography-related chores that I do when I start over for a new year.
This year, I also started again in how I make my digital negatives. The old method that I used was based on trial and error and simply trusting my eyes. There was no curve building software or measuring tonal values from prints. It was just plain old winging it until I came upon a print that looked good. And I was pretty satisfied by the results.
Then I watched this video on YouTube. The Digital Negative – Part One – Introduction. There are five parts to this excellent series by Bill Schwab and if you are the least bit interested in alternative process printing, especially platinum/palladium printing, then watch them. You will not regret it. Bill takes a complicated process and goes through it, step by step, making it understandable and accessible. His videos are what caused me to go down this road and I am so happy that I did.
Here are images of the first real prints made from the new negative process. They all highlight at least one problem area that I was encountering with the old negatives. These issues include poor rendering and contrast between the middle gray areas, losing detail in the lightest of the highlight areas, slight stepping in what should be a smooth gradation between lighter tones, and too steep a falloff in shadow detail. The new negatives have gone a long way towards solving all of these issues.
I haven’t re-printed any of my old images for comparison and I may never do that. Since I rarely sell prints I probably won’t have any reason to revisit the old images. If I do sell or make a gift of any of the older images I’m certain I’ll make a new negative, with the new process.
Now I just need to get out there and make new images to print!
