Category: dye transfer

Masking Ignorance

Posted on Posted in da net, dye transfer, overnight notes, the fora1 Comment

among the drewids

some names are changed to protect the foolish from direct embarrassment
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// post of equipment available for sale by friend and expert//

// then Call
I’ll try to keep my ears open. I am frequently in correspondence with young folks wanting to learn general masking, either b&w, or now, color neg. Condit gear was the best, and with some patience, someone will need it. I’ve successfully turned some of them on to similar offerings.
Getit while you can! Might be a good idea to note general condition, since matched, clean gear
is what one needs. Are the various punches and registration pins all matched? Drew

// then Response
Dear Drew,

Forgive my obtuseness, but I’m not sure what “matched” means. I can
tell you that this is all gear I was using to make 4 x 5 separations
for the past 20 years, so if that answers your question, good. If
not, you’ll have to put in terms I understand.

Clean? Of course it’s not clean. It’s darkroom equipment that’s been
in use for two decades by me and who knows how long before that (I
got it used). It works just fine, but cosmetically? It’s used. So
far as I could ever tell, nothing is damaged, save for the broken end
on one of the four glass inserts (two duplicate sets) that I
mentioned in the original e-mail, which doesn’t intrude into the
working area for 4 x 5 seps.

Again, though, I may be misunderstanding what you’re concerned about.

If someone is seriously interested, I can make photographs and send them along.

I’d much rather sell it through our circle than put it up on eBay.
Much less hassle, and I prefer to deal with friends rather than
strangers (or, at least, acquaintances of friends).

——– added edits from notepad.

 lookers lurkers
 zombies
 

 ratio: 178 / 20
 atLuLa claim 1.2 mm  yet most onlin 750 in 2008 april 07
 

 all about camera
 

 abstraction:
 What lens mostly used for abstract or macro with LF?
 
 he first one reminds me of an astro-photograph, a nebula or some-such.
 ==============
 Ultrastable color system of Charles Berger, and about Tod Gangler of Seattle, and perhaps John Bentley
 ============
 ///
 why they resist change
 sunk cost. lost opportunity. failed skillset.
 location dependent subjects
 opposed to loud space. eye movement
 Lik Briot LuLa style is a shock to their reverence. closet conservatives
 

 Re: Ansel Adams: Do you fight or embrace his influence on your landscapes?
 As I think Robert Adams said somewhere (might be "Beauty in Photography" or it might have been in personal correspondence), photography is always new because the world we photograph is always new from moment to changing moment. But he was big on the idea that photography should be about the world and not our own petty preoccupations.
 Thanks,
 Kirk
 parulr
 My bigger point with all this ... that the more you're aware of your influences, the more choice you have in how to respond to them. 
 One choice is to actively expand the sphere of your influences. Which I think is called education.
 — early(iest) post
 aug 2004 about schneider 210mm lens
 and the only active “expert” merg ross
 aug 2002 begins with request for shopping source

Expert seeking sales counter job.

doormouse retires. the pela fella

All Work Begins with

Posted on Posted in A Symbol Life, dye transfer, picture post

work begins with wondering about something.

In most fields, it means wondering about that field itself. We speak the language we hear. We see what we are shown.

film on lightbox got me moving into work from another way of working. The positive and negative images add to a completely other image thought.

40 years ago, these would have had only one way of being printed. The negative being fairly strait forward; the slide could be printed more ways. Two simple, the other time consuming. Both could have been printed using dye transfer. That was my preference.

I preferred dye, not because it was ‘better’, ‘truer’ color, but because it was assembly — many ways to prepare those items.

Today as tea brewed:

It began with the lower right one

In the days of Dye, my first set of masks wouldn’t be dry. Sigh.

Language is a skill requiring practice. Immersive. Recurrent. True of words as well as, perhaps even more, of images. The picture mind is hard to imagine.

Try. Please.

Buying Dye Transfers

Posted on Posted in da net, dye transfer, meaning, minimum daily requirement, old bones

The big sale is over. It was last fall: M. Johnson and Ctein held another going out of business sale. The inventory just keeps taking up space. After 5 years, it hasn’t gone down enough. And we need to flog something, so… Like Mad Man Muntz ( an original TV discount sales store) we go out of business until we pay off the electric bill.

Why does this matter to me? The same reason weeds in the garden do: what you feed grows; if it takes over the garden, there is no garden.

Why Buy Prints?

I buy art because it satisfies my expectations. It does this by challenging me; brings me to another set of expectations. The more the work feeds my work, the more likely I will buy. I do collect. I don’t invest.

should you buy because it is a dye transfer?

I ask myself: is it immediately useful, instructive, completing : will it continue to enrich me; provide more questions, motivations for my work.

Am I buying out of fear of missing out? If yes, then I’d skip it.

The Pitch

The pitch is the alert. The premise of the sale: act now, act fast, this is a limited offering, this is rare, this is worth much more than you will pay.

How many times do you go out of business .. for as many times as there are buyers at the gate.

  • the online adographer.
  • the ad before the ad.
  • a memo to announce the forthcoming memo
  • colonel blimp reporting
  • ctein being, blimpishly ctein..

Prestige of Process –

Self promoter who has become the big name by writing about. You are collecting a one time sale. There is no after life for this work.

The Ctein shelf: these are souvenirs. Souvenirs of someone else’s vacation trips.

Buying An Example

A mature artist has an after market. ctein doesn’t. His sales are to aficionados, so are of value only among themselves. They are scraps, examples. He isn’t placed in the conversation in any way other than that of the tech writer— a long way from meaning, but very close to standard commerce.

You Could Have Bought

During the month long sale what else could you have bought around that price ($700)?

How about — Barbara Morgan original print sold for $900; William Eggleston chromogenic sold for $790; Jerry Uelsmann sold for $1085.

These were auction prices with buyers premium.

However, Jim Marshal sold for 781 w/bp. A Steichen for Vanity Fair sold for $535 w/bp.

If you wanted it because it was a dye transfer, you could have bought a dye transfer off eBay for less than $150 — from proctor & gamble, reader’s digest, or similar publication art departments. You will even have a good example of commercial art retouching from decades past. You would have a reference document demonstrating why dye transfers were the mainstay of advertising — easy to retouch.