The Digitally-generated Negative
Options to reproduce and enlarge a negative for platinum printing dated to the 1960’s with the work of Irving Penn. He mastered the use of photo-mechanical enlargement. In the 1990’s, pioneering work was done using digital techniques. Most common was the use of an image-setter, an in-house mechanism designed to expose film to a digital file. Dan Burkholder followed with the first method to use a common ink jet printer. A form of transparent material coated with an ink-holding surface was needed. This was eventually solved with the use of Pictorico and similar substrates originally used for overhead projection.
Mark Nelson, in 2000 defined the intricacies possible to the custom making of negatives allowing the photographer complete control of the process from digital capture to the final print. This is the method I use.
Those familiar with my work may notice a stylistic change in vision. I consider palladium prints made from film and those from digital techniques to be distinctly different media. Therefore, I adjusted my vision to accommodate those different characteristics. The print size is approximately 8 x 10.5 inches printed on 11 x 14-inch platinum rag paper. Larger sizes are available.THE
Turkey 2004
In 2004, I was invited by a Danish company to visit Turkey for one month, to give lectures, workshops on the Pt/Pd process, and to tour in the company of five Turkish photographers. This was at the time when non-silver processes were transitioning from using in-camera film to the making of digitally generated negatives. Digital cameras were in their infancy. Therefore, I used two film cameras: a 5×7 inch Deardorff view camera and a panoramic 6×17 cm Fujica roll film camera. It was the month of July, and it was hot. One of my big problems was to convince my hosts to forgo their two-hour ritual morning coffee and make photos while the weather was tolerable. For the most part, I succeeded, and during the hottest times we photographed the interiors of mosques.
When I returned, I developed and contact-printed the images. I later scanned the film to produce larger prints. This put me into a steep learning curve, as I was accustomed to my ultra-large Korona and Folmer Schwing cameras. I found that entry from analogue to digital photography was to provide many challenges, visual and technical. It would be years before I was able to transition my seeing and composing and an image to, what was to be, and totally different process. Many of the images that did not meet my standards and were retired.
I sent the prints, measuring 12×16 and 16×22 inches, to Turkey and in December 2004, they, along with those of my companions, were exhibited at the Rahmi M. Koç Museum in Istanbul.
