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The Digital Fine Print Course
Refining a Fine Print
Print Luminosity
A fine print is the fine transformation
of subject that matters.
Copyright Les Walkling 2012
22/50
Four thoughts on foundations.
A print is more than the sum of its
parts.
However each of its parts must be
treated as their own image.
Each image needs to be rendered
according to its own demands.
A foundation print harmoniously rein-
troduces these images to each other.
Four thoughts on subject that matters.
If we can not name our sources that is
not too bad a thing. That only means
we have not been paying enough
attention to the things we have come
to rely upon. It is an insensitive form
of indulgence. But if we can not name
our materials, we have no family left in
this world.
The photographic process looks after
itself when its natural inheritance is
honoured. It can not understand any
other way of working. But when what
is passed on represents a loss, the
process collapses.
We can learn more from our failures
than anything else. That is why
despite failure, we need to return to
the studio to renegotiate our options.
We have to investigate our materials
and befriend our processes otherwise
we will always be a stranger in their
presence.
Feelings which aren’t expressed aren’t
forgotten. They remain latent images
lost to the world.
Four thoughts on luminosity.
The inherent luminosity of the subject
is more richly photogenic than the
imposed luminosity of sun and shade.
If we expand inherent luminosity in
the negative we are multiplying an
already richly distributed resource. If
we expand imposed luminosity we are
only expanding an already reduced
range of options.
In a negative of expanded values, each
part of the image will have been tonal-
ly relocated some distance from where
it was found. The first task in printing
such a negative is to globally redistrib-
ute these values while preserving their
local inheritance.
It is a mistake to think that print
luminosity comes from extremes of
values. While differences in the subject
may attract us to the site in the first
place, in printing, the similarities are
more revealing of human difference.
Four thoughts on structure.
Structure is the backbone of our
desires. It is the bringing of things
together in a print that builds struc-
ture. Preventing collaboration between
friendly areas of a print destroys
structure. Without structure we have
nothing except spectacle or artifice to
carry the weight of our concerns.
The emotional logic of a print is hinged
to its structure. Balancing weights and
fulcrums compete for our attention. A
print becomes self sustaining through
the poetic resolution of its structure.
A self-sustaining print sustains us.
The heart of a print doesn’t escape our
attention when its structure doesn’t