Re: [Leica] Jonny Deadman real Leica print! :-)

[Johnny Deadman <john@pinkheadedbug.com>]

Wow, Ted, I wasn't expecting *that*! Thank you.

I have sweated blood & tears over this project, so this means a lot. I must
have made ten or twenty versions of it before I finally learned how to make
it look like I wanted. For those who are interested, the print in question
was of this picture:

    http://www.pinkheadedbug.com/humantraffic/portfolio_15/pages/010.html

The print was made using the wonderful piezography system
(www.piezography.com) favoured by our very own Tina Manley (BD just bought
one, too, I think), using an Epson 1160 to print onto Somerset Enhanced
paper with the Cone inkset. The neg (an extremely thin one) was scanned on a
Polaroid Sprintscan 4000, and pretty heavily corrected in Photoshop... I
think it had something like five or six layer masks plus a LOT of manual
burning and dodging... I cannot even begin to imagine how I could achieve
the same results in a darkroom. It would have been a real Eugene Smith
enterprise, certainly involving rephotographing the print on 4x5, bleaching
back the highlights, probably using a contrast mask... AKKKK!

Thanks again, Ted. I hope this will convince some people that inkjet prints
are just as much 'real photographs' as silver prints.




on 1/10/00 12:07 am, Ted Grant at tedgrant@home.com wrote:

> Hi folks,
> 
> This is in praise of one of the LUG's extra ordinaire street
> photographers ! :-)
> 
> Our very own Johnny Deadman!
> 
> The other day it was my very good fortune to receive a gorgeous B&W real
> live  11 X 17 print from his series ... "Human Traffic"  As many of you,
> I've looked at the various images Johnny has posted on this series, some
> blew me away, others  created questions, awe and, "well OK John, what
> the hell is this?"
> 
> Often I wondered how good they'd look on real paper, under daylight
> scrutinizing as a print and not an electronic image.  Trust me, if all
> his prints look anywhere close to the one I now have before me, they are
> the fine work of a talented artist!
> 
> The print has a tonal richness with a depth I've never seen in wet
> darkroom prints. Even prints of fine art shooters don't seem to have the
> same depth effect..
> 
> Is it the depth of the print tones ( ? ) the film developing (?) the
> printer combined with the Piezography (sp) inks?  Whatever, it's a
> wonderful new way to look at how to make ones prints. But it's the rich
> quality I'm amazed at!.
> 
> It's the same kind of rich depth I saw in "Mom" Tina Manley's prints at
> the Leica Seminar.  Many of us have admired her work on the screen, but
> in real prints her photographs take on a whole new meaning of richness
> and feeling, the likes no screen on earth can match!
> 
> B.D. showed me a portfolio of smaller prints on 8 1/2 X 11 heavy duty
> paper illustrating a similar rich depth of quality.  So what do we learn
> from these three fine photographers?   A new day has dawned in the world
> of printing where you don't have to turn out the lights and mix
> chemicals!  Gawd I'll miss it! ;-)
> 
> It's not too often I get wound up on new fangled photographic methods,
> however, in all seriousness those who've pooh poohed this dry print
> method, including yours truly, we might just take another look, as it's
> quite remarkable.
> 
> Now back to our Johnny Deadman....  Thank you for a wonderful photograph !
> 
> ted 
> Victoria, Canada
> http://www.islandnet.com/~tedgrant

- -- 
John Brownlow

http://www.pinkheadedbug.com