The Technological Barrier.

Going Backwards
Two months ago, I bought a pack of Kentmere 5x7 glossy VC fiber paper. I printed in the darkroom for about a week. Oh how simple and easy it seemed to be to get a decent print. No lines. No pizza wheel tracks. No clogs. No funny colors. The paper itself is a joy to hold. The surface is perfect. The blacks shimmer. I haven't found the digital equivalent for this process yet.

Process
Only photographers care about process. We lecture each other at length at how we arrived at the final image. Everybody else just wants to see the print, the Flickr page. In a couple seconds, the image content moves them or it doesn't. Trudging all day out in rain? Five hours to make a print? Who cares - the content sucks. I've been thinking more about my process. Making color prints seems easy to me. I suppose I'm not so picky with the color. The black and white inkjet prints have been very unsatisfying. Part of the problem is technological, the other is concentration. I've been hung up on equipment. I couldn't quite find the right printer. R220 is too small. 2000P too slow. Now I'm working on the 2200. Then I had to find the right ink. Went through MIS UT-FSN, Paul Roark's carbon 6 and now using MIS UT-3D. Then all I could do was print a warm tone on cold paper - I didn't know how to adjust the photoshop curves to cool down the prints. At 2:00 am, I think I'm about to make a break through with working with the curves. I've achieved a fairly neutral print and a cool print. What I really needed was a block of time to concentrate on the curves process. I'm finally getting the hang of editing curves to control print tone with UT-3D.

A small sampling of test prints.

Simplify. Simplify. Simplify.
I currently have four inkjet printers. I have three different inksets. I probably have about eight different papers. I would like to have one printer, one inkset, one paper. The path forward is very clear when you only have one choice (That really isn't a choice, is it? Simple. No choices, nothing to think about, just doing.) My studio has become an inkjet printer workshop. I spend more time fooling around with printers, syringes and ink and clearing clogs than I do taking, editing or printing photographs. The prints I make consist of step wedges and a standard test print. So, most of the printers need to go. Most of the papers need to go. The various inksets need to go. I think the idea printer is the 13". The 17" is nice, but I rarely make prints that large and I'm unwilling to change the 17" to a dedicated black and white printer until I'm totally comfortable with editing curves. Switching over the 17" is no small feat.

What to do
Chuck it all. Fooling around with all this equipment is laborius. I need to go out and shoot some photos...