Printing the Image - 2018.07.15 - Ann - Bryce Canyon
Last weekend we were back to printing images. This time I’m going to include the image that we were most focused on - Ann’s photograph of Bryce Canyon!
As I mentioned in the previous printing post, we’d printed this black and white image much smaller during our last session. While you could see the pleasant glow of light from within the image, Ann felt that it was lacking something. She was right.
One of the things that you learn about when printing images, is that some images “want” to be a certain size. Yes, some images look great whether they’re printed small or large (though even then, they look different and have a different impact). But most images have a size where they seem right. Surprisingly, many images have their greatest effect when they’re relatively small - capable of being held in the hand - and lose something when printed larger. And I’m not just talking about the potential loss in image quality due to enlargement. A 4x5 contact print, or an 8x10 print from a large negative has a certain quality to it that is, for lack of a better word, intimate. Even when I’d print images on 11”x14” paper, often the image size was closer to 8x10, with the remainder to act as a frame and a place to hold the print without touching the image. Some images just need to be at that smaller size.
On the other hand, some images beg to be printed large. This is particularly true of grand landscape images where there is a wealth of detail that the eye wants to explore. Hard to do when an image is printed small. But the hard part about printing large is keeping the subtle qualities of light in the image (if there are any) at the larger size. At least, that was the problem when printing with an enlarger. Ink jet printing could be somewhat different - though plenty of authors have said that you can’t just insert a larger print size and get the same effect - you still have to tweak the image to get it to look the same as it did smaller. The tonal relationships visually change as the size of the image changes.
So that was the “problem” with Ann’s image - it wanted to be bigger. So we printed it 12”x15” on 13”x19” paper.
It turned out as stunning on paper as it does on screen. The bright lit hoo-doos in the upper center of the image simply glow. And the solitary bright hoo-doo just left of center is a beacon. And then the eye begins to roam and discovers a stunning range of light/shadow conditions that seems to cover the full range of lighting techniques. Rim lighting, shadow work, back lighting, high key imagery and low key imagery. And at that size, the eye can fully explore the image in a way it couldn’t when it was smaller. As for detail, the quality was equal to what I could do with a 4x5 negative in the old days. Today’s sensors and lenses are amazing, not to mention the printer.
We also experimented a bit. The printing controls in Lightroom allow you to have Lightroom control the black and white conversion for printing, or to let the printer do the job of conversion. We’d read several photographers who suggested allowing this Canon printer to do the B&W conversion. So we tried both. We agree with the writers’ suggestion. Interestingly, the Lightroom print was a bit warmer in color, the Canon print a bit cooler in color - similar to the difference between using the Kodak Multi-Grade Fiber papers versus my old favorite Oriental Seagull printing paper back in the darkroom days. I prefer the more neutral, cooler appearing print image. I think we know which setting we’ll use in the future.
We also worked on a couple of my images, though to be honest, they paled in comparison to the lovely print we did for Ann. Still, I printed the images for a purpose and I learned what I wanted to from them.
The first image was from our recent trip to Brice Creek (oh, but to live an hour’s drive away from the other Bryce . . .). My focus was on the proper image sizing and framing for square prints on letter-sized paper, and to see how certain images look at that size. The reason for that is I’ve been thinking of creating a couple of folios, collections of images, that will fit in pre-sized paper print holders that we can purchase. Nice thing about these folios is that you hold the prints themselves as opposed to flipping through them like a photo album. There is something very different about holding a nice print in your hands compared to looking at a book.
Anyway, the image I had chosen was one of the more intimate scaled images from our trip. You can see, it’s definitely not a grand landscape and is the type of image that is simply lovely at 7” square.
I’m sure you can guess which setting I used for converting the black and white.
Still, in soft proofing the image I wound up lightening it a bit and learned a cruel lesson - the print does not retain the very subtle differences in the highest white values that a calibrated monitor will display. I’d assumed that as the print dried it would darken ever so slightly. Well, it does, but very, very slightly and it didn’t darken enough. Lesson learned for future prints - make sure you’ve got your whites right if you want any texture. It wasn't as bad as printing with a condensing enlarger head versus a cold-light diffusion enlarger head back in the film days, but in this case it was bad enough. The print turned out nice, but not perfect.
The next image was one from our very short trip to the Santiam River. I’d experimented with how colors reflected on water might look with the old fall-color prints from a few sessions ago. That was the first test towards my ultimate aim, which is to print a series of these Santiam photographs.
The reason I picked this image was the complexity of the lighting on the water. I wanted to see if the print could retain the mix of reflected light and color on the water surface you see not only in the upper right of the image, but (even more difficult) the bright surface highlights of the lower left of the image. If the print could reveal both the surface coloration as being on the surface of the water and the light rock color as appearing below that surface, there was no reason not to try to print a collection of these images.
Long story short - it printed beautifully, capturing the delicate play of light on water that I was hoping for.
I think I have a print project for the winter months!