Printing the Image - Mist and Clouds

It’s been a while since Ann and I printed images, too long in fact.  So it was time to select a few images, work on them and then fire up the printer.  The theme for the images was mist, which came from the image that was the basis of the “Developing Images” post.  Join us to find out which images we selected to print this time.

Of course mist comes in different forms, but regardless of how it appears on the monitor (or the negative), I’ve found mist, like snow, to be very difficult to print.  At least that was the case in the wet darkroom.  In real life, mist and clouds have a transparency and often a glow that all too often renders as a grey mush in print.  So despite the romantic nature of the subject we’d decided to focus upon, printing was not likely to be an easy task, and I was quite nervous about the results.  I shouldn’t have been.

As we warmed up the printer (and the basement as well) Ann said that this time I should print my images first.  Being in no mood to lose an argument (something I’m very good at) I decided to agree.  So we started out with my images.  

I’d been looking at a lot of images from my various Yellowstone trips, so when we decided on the theme for the printing session, I knew where to start looking.  I told myself that I wanted to start from scratch, so even if you’ve seen some of the images below (some of them you may have seen quite recently), these versions I worked on the past couple of weeks with printing in mind.  Call them a fresh interpretation of my original negatives.

The first one was from one of the last days of our last trip to Yellowstone.  Workin on the image involved trying to retain a sense of light and texture in the sunlit morning sky while also giving a sense of form to the landscape below, attempting to give a life-like quality to mist that sometimes was light and back-lit from the sun and sometimes darker and in shadow, and then working the reflection in the hot pool, sometimes obscured by mist and sometimes clear.

The print turned out surprisingly well.  I’d expected that there would be some problems with the darker areas, but we’d made some printing decisions that worked out well.  I decided I was going to do my prints on a very smooth matte paper we hadn’t used with this machine before, and Ann was going to print hers on a baryta paper, again that we had not used with the Epson P900 printer.  In this case, using the matte paper kept the dark values from getting too, too dark.  Maybe the dark details would have come out anyway on a glossier paper, but the matte paper kept the dark areas from looking “black” and the lack of texture in the paper (despite it being a matte paper) allowed the details to show even in the shadow areas.  And unlike some matte papers, the rich skies had that nice quality of light that can be so pleasing in a print.

The image for my next print was made just up the road from the first (but on a different day) and has very different qualities to it.  In some ways the image is a lot simpler than the first, with me only needing to convey the sense of lightness of the mist in the prints.  However, the big question was going to be how the matte paper rendered the details and the very subtle colors in the ground, rocks and trees.

Again, the paper impressed in the detail it conveyed and the ability to render dark areas very dark yet not an empty black.  It doesn’t quite match the dark blacks of glossier papers, but the image has depth (especially in the upper billowing mist flows) and distinct light and dark areas.  It’s hard to explain the three-dimensionality that one can get with a good print, but once one knows that it is possible, prints that don’t have it, but should, seem to be lacking something.

That contrast between lit areas and dark areas couldn’t be more evident than in the last image I printed.  I discussed this image recently, so I’ll skip that part of it to focus on the print. That sense of backlight shining through the rising mist is retained in the print, as is the clarity of the branches extending from tree on its side and their reflection.  What surprised me the most with this image is that, as I worked on it this time, I didn’t lighten the rust grasses as much as I had previously (i.e., compared to the recently posted image).  That didn’t matter though.  The print has these very precise, rich color gradations of rust and plainly shows the texture of the grasses.

It is indeed impressive when a print reveals colors in the darker areas where you can hardly see any color on a monitor.  In many ways, with respect to color, the prints are more revealing than the images on a monitor.

Done with my prints, we turned to Ann’s images  

Ann’s first image was from the same day at Yosemite when she photographed the image used in the developing images post, the one that led us to this theme.  Perhaps by lucky accident, Ann (or was it me?) inadvertently printed this image on matte paper (which she wasn’t planning on doing), so we decided to also print it on baryta paper to see how the two compare.

As one might have expected, the baryta paper (a somewhat glossy surface with super whites and the ability to hold deeper backs), has a bit of punch to it.  But as with the images I’d printed, the matte paper held its own, particularly with rendering the mist and holding fine details.  Both papers were able to convey the airiness of the foreground mist and the depth it added to the rocks immediately behind, and then to the falls.  And in some respects, I’d say the matte paper (the two papers are from different companies) did a better job of rendering depth through the mist for the wall on the very left.  Both images are lovely; distinct in very subtle ways, but both are lovely.  

We next turned to another of Ann’s Yosemite photographs.  Here the focus was less on the mist and more about how it helped focus the viewer’s attention on the real subject of the photograph - the trees.  We printed the image the same size as the other images (on 8.5” x 11” paper) and, well, were a bit underwhelmed by it.  Not that it wasn’t technically superb, but there was something lacking.  As we’d learned before (by practice, but also from St. Ansel’s writings), sometimes an image calls out to be larger (or smaller).  So I offered to pull out one of our older boxes of larger paper, a baryta but from another company, and  we printed it a bit larger on 11” x 14” paper.

The difference was impressive.  It doesn’t seem like the image is really that much larger, but the effect the larger size has was amazing.  There was a grandness to the image, conveyed in part by the details now fully evident in the trees and in part by the cliff that now seems looming in the background.  And the trunks of the trees are amazing!  I wonder what that image, and possibly others, would look like bigger?  Much much bigger!

Ann’s last print was a gem to behold.  And I do mean hold.  One of the nice things about prints is that so many of them are meant to be held at reading distance.  Close-up with your fingers feeling paper.  This was one of those prints, it wanted to be held in your hands.  It didn’t need to be big to draw you into it.  And while the image itself was cheating a bit on the theme (the morning’s mist had largely dissipated by the time the image was made), the mood and the clouds, and the mist far offshore, makes this a good candidate anyway.

At first glance, it seems like such a simple image, the mixed-lit clouds balanced by the large, dark looming rocks.  But pick the print up and get close to it and the image opens up its mystery like a good book.  The color and textures within the rocks, as well as the spaces between them seem to rise from the paper and draw you in.  

And  after you’ve visually climbed through the rocks, the light from the clouds draw your eye away.  Suddenly you’re exploring these layers of clouds, each layer subtly different not only in tonal values, but in color as well.  You’re faced with warm clouds, cool clouds, clouds that want to comfort you and others that want to instill fear in you.  You’re suddenly very aware of the chaos occurring overhead.  And then your eye drops to the brightly lit horizon to navigate the ocean surface.  Again again only to realize that the sea is actually no calmer than the skies.

Which ultimately brings your eye back to the shore thinking you’re safe on land.  But there, the  wave overwash is a reminder of the power that lurks out at sea.  The power that has hammered the rocks for centuries.  Which of course starts the visual cycle all over again - rocks, clouds, ocean, shore - each time ever so different, with new things for the eye to discover.  

Yes, it is a very deceiving photograph, and quite simply a stunning print to hold!

While we still have much to learn about our printer, how it handles certain types of images, and how well certain papers print (and that damn edge marking we keep getting), what I can safely say is that we are totally pleased with the quality of the images that it produces.  And the fact that, when we’ve calibrated our monitors and we’ve used the correct ICC profiles to make final adjustments to our images in preparation for printing, we rarely have to do a second print to adjust for a noticeable difference between the image in our hands and what we saw on the monitor.  In the end, that efficiency saves us money and indescribable levels of frustration.  

Perhaps the cost savings will be enough to tempt us to buy more large paper to make bigger prints!