I have been holed up in my basement for the last two weeks, coming up for air only occasionally. I’m pretty sure my wife has forgotten what I look like by now. I’ve been hard at work developing my process for palladium printing with digital negatives. It has been hit-or-miss so far: these test charts represent only about half of the total work I’ve done in the darkroom. Some of the charts are getting close, but I’m still not really happy with any of them.

I am printing my digital negatives on Pictorico OHP using the QuadTone Rip software I discussed in my post on inkjet printing. Ron Reeder has written a good how-to guide on using QTR to control the ink deposition and contrast settings for digital negatives. The problem is that QTR isn’t very well documented and testing is very much a trial and error process. As I get closer to correcting one variable, all of the others seem to move around. Like herding cats, as they say.

In a fit of desperation, I went ahead and bought Mark Nelson’s Precision Digital Negatives e-book. It was not cheap, but I have read some of Nelson’s articles in various books and magazines and have gotten recommendations from other alt-process printers. PDN seems like a more systematic approach to calibrating the digital negative process. I have learned a lot in my first few weeks of printing, so even though I am starting out with a new calibration system, at least I am not starting from scratch. I think I will be producing my first palladium prints by September.

Oh, and I broke my first Puddle Pusher last night. Doug warned me that would probably happen, I should have ordered more than one!

Thanks for your interest in my “Taking a Picture” series. Just as a note, I have continued improving my digital workflow and some of these notes are now out-of-date. Feel free to drop a line in the comments or contact me directly if you would like more information on my photographic workflow.

I’ve been planning to sit down and write this for quite a while, but I’ve been keeping very busy with other things. The fact that it is currently hailing outside has given me the chance to spend some quality time indoors, though. Much like my previous post on scanning, I am going to try to avoid going into excruciating detail on every step of my digital printing workflow, because I don’t think it will be worth reading for most people. The general ideas are more important, and I am glad to answer any specific questions in the comments or offline. That’s not to say this won’t be a very technical post, and a long one at that. Please remember that I am giving this final print away to someone who has commented on one of the posts in the series, so feel free to drop a line even if it’s just to say hello.

Black and white inkjet printing felt like a very daunting subject when I first approached it. Two years ago, I had a low-end HP inkjet printer which made acceptable 8×10 color prints, but was absolutely lousy for black and white. It was impossible to get profiles for non-HP papers, and there was practically no information about archival permanence for the paper and inks I was using. In short, I wanted to create black and white prints on matte paper that looked as good as or better than what I could produce in the darkroom, and I wanted them to last a very long time. So I took the plunge into the deep waters of selecting a printer and building a solid black and white digital printing workflow.
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I have been a fan of images printed on platinum and palladium for quite a while. A well done platinum image seems to float right off the paper; it’s some sort of magic having to do with the physical characteristics of the materials along with the slightly modified contrast (especially in highlights and mid-tones) that gives platinum images a very special look. As with most everything else photographic, you have to see the original prints, as reproductions tend to be a bit more flat and lose that 3-D effect.

Norwest Center, by Keith Taylor, platinum print, 2006.

Unfortunately, I haven’t been able to see as much original work on platinum as I’d like. It seems that most gallery shows I go to these days are all about BIG! COLOR! photos with very little new black and white work and only a tiny percentage of that being printed with platinum. Because of it’s dreamy and somewhat “old fashioned” look, it often appeals to sentimental types, and it’s not hard to find really overdone work in platinum as well. But there are a few contemporary artists who really nail it, and it’s exciting to see.

I bring this up because I am finally going to take the leap and start printing some of my own photographs in platinum/palladium. I am doing an independent study with Doug Schwab at Brooklyn College in the fall to learn how to make platinum/palladium prints from original 4×5 negatives as well as digital negatives from scanned medium format film.

I’m going to Sicily for a couple of weeks in June and I should be taking a lot of photos. I’m hoping to get started on a small addition to my darkroom for the necessary supplies and equipment when I get back, and after that, we’ll see what happens!

Links to a few contemporary photographers who are working in platinum and palladium:

Beth Dow
Keith Taylor
Craig Barber
Ronald Cowie
Alejandro López de Haro

Scanning and enlarging Polaroid photographs is fun. It’s been a long time since I did any color printing, too. I seem to have gotten the knack for it again.

This one is going to be for sale at the Brooklyn Indie Market tomorrow. How much should I charge for it?

That’s right, it’s prints! I spent all weekend cloistered in the apartment working on prints for next Saturday’s Brooklyn Indie Market spring re-opening. It’s been a lot of work so far, and I’m still going to try to print up at least 15 more unframed prints before the end of the week.

So, did I learn anything?

Well, printing this much in such a short time really tested my workflow, and I’m happy to report back that it held up pretty well. This is the first time that I’m printing many of these images, and I’ve had to do relatively few test prints to get exactly where I want to be. This is a testament to the amount of work I did this winter really nailing down my calibration, workflow, and printer profiling. I am going to go out on a limb here and say that they look really, really good.

The downside is that I tried to print a few color images (this one and this one, specifically) and was not really happy with the results. I think I have tweaked my workflow in favor of B&W at the expense of accurate color reproduction, which isn’t a bad trade-off for now. Someday I would like to dedicate some serious time to a color workflow, but I’m doing much more work in B&W at the moment.

So things will be quiet until after this weekend, as I finish up this print run and get ready for the sale. I may have one short tutorial coming up this week (not the printing tutorial, just a simple Photoshop video). In the meantime, please stop by and visit me at the Indie Market (at the corner of Smith and Union in Carroll Gardens) if you happen to be in the neighborhood on Saturday.