Last time I promised you my take on producing negatives for silver printing on an inkjet printer. This is quite a challenge, because silver gelatin prints are so crisp and subtle that they reveal tiny flaws in the negatives. Roll up your sleeves, and prepare to get some vicarious ink beneath your fingernails, ‘cause here… [Read More]

Last quarter’s column produced the biggest reader response so far. Not that I was overwhelmed; I needed both hands to count the emails, but I didn’t have to take off my shoes. Still, at least a few of you think combining digital imaging with traditional photographic printing is pretty neat. When it comes to the… [Read More]

Last time I wrote about improving color image permanence through digital imaging. I wish I could report similar good news for black and white. Our standards are higher for black and white images, since we the standard techniques yield images with prospective lifetimes measured in triple digits. Much of the slower progress for black and… [Read More]

Some photographs ought not to last. I’ve made my share. How convenient it would be if they slowly faded away to nothingness. I’m in good company: when Edward Weston decided that he didn’t like some formerly-loved images, he scraped the emulsion off the negatives and turned them into windowpanes. I bet he wanted the prints… [Read More]

Measured against the standards of the times, photography has always been a high-tech activity. Practice even preceded science in the early days: photography predates the periodic table by thirty years. As in other technology-based endeavors, over the years practitioners of the art have become more and more dependent on others for their technology. In the… [Read More]