Topic: Printing for my refrigerator

[Jeff Warden]

Do you ever make wet prints with specific lighting conditions in mind?

Once a year I take pics of my kids and a few of the neighborhood kids too, and give the prints to the kids' parents.  I keep copies of all the prints and display them on my refrigerator, just held by magnets.  The problem is that the lighting on the only side of the fridge that's available is very dim, and so the prints that look nice in your hand under proper lighting end up looking dingy and dim on the fridge.

This year I tried printing differently and I think it's helped.  I decided to try higher contrast, with lighter skin tones that go all the way to paper white (which I normally don't do).  Also I had the kids wear dark clothing for more contrast.  The difference on the fridge is dramatic, and the prints in situ look much better than last year's versions.  So the first image is some casual test strips trying to figure out contrast and exposure, and the second is the final prints.  Once set up these were easy prints to make, requiring only about a stop of dodging on the shadow side of the faces.  This was a fun experiment.

Hope you enjoy,

Jeff

P.S. The pics were made with a YachicaMat and Delta 3200

[Francois]

Light definitely plays a big role in how prints look.
For some time, I tried printing on satin finish paper and the prints looked fine in my dark basement. But as soon as I brought them to a brighter room, they looked quite soft. So now I print on glossy most of the time and it pretty much fixed the problem.

[Late Developer]

I know each of us has a different taste but, when I was learning how to print (and it's many years since I've done any printing) I always tried to get white and black and everything in-between.  These days, I realise that may not always be possible or even desirable but I still love to see a full range of tones in a mono print - especially towards the white end of the range. 

[Francois]

That's pretty much the hard thing about printing... Blacks are the easy part, but tonal range in the whites without making the print look dull or blowing it out is a whole other thing!

[Jeff Warden]

I know each of us has a different taste but, when I was learning how to print (and it's many years since I've done any printing) I always tried to get white and black and everything in-between.  These days, I realise that may not always be possible or even desirable but I still love to see a full range of tones in a mono print - especially towards the white end of the range.

Much agreement here.  I usually try to capture everything that I can from the negative, but I know that's not always right.  Recently I've been enjoying the excellent Multitude, Solitude from Dave Heath.  I walked the show in Philly and it was astounding; Heath is a master printer and made his own maquettes for his books.  He went through phases in his career, from the no-crop HC Bresson phase with minor darkroom tweaks, to his more mature style where he cropped aggressively and dodged and burned to great dramatic effect.  I'm under his spell a bit now I think, letting the whites and blacks through.

I highly recommend the book, btw.  A few examples here:

http://www.philamuseum.org/exhibitions/829.html

[Late Developer]

Jeff, that's a fantastic link. Thank you for posting it. I'll be returning to it time and again, I'm sure.