Making many bad negatives...

You should not have to be a master printer. Simply make good negatives
and you'll have an easier time of it. Nobody cares how much or how
little work it takes, it's the results that count. If you can make a
great print right off the bat because you have a good negative, well,
that's just your secret.

hugoamt wrote:
"Here's a question that I haven't seen asked on the internet:  how does

one become a master printer?  I'm not looking for a quick recipe, but I

want to know what it takes.  Is it a matter of getting a good
background in photography at a school, landing a job in a lab, honing
your craft for years, and building a reputation?  I'd really appreciate

it if the printers out there could share how they did it.  How did you
become a master printer? "

You said it yourself, honing your craft and building
a reputation. UC also had it right. By learning to
make a good negative in the first place it becomes
easier to make good prints. Also learning to
make good prints from crappy negatives will
allow you to improve your printing skills.

Keep working at it.

Draco

Getting even isn't good enough.

I am probably going to get blasted by somebody for this but I would
recommend doing some playing of the images with a program like
Photoshop. Getting a feel for the range of densities in the negative
and what it takes to translate these into a print will help when doing
optical prints.  This will also help show you what negatives there is
simply no hope for making a good print from.  If there is too small a
density range in the negative it is going to be very hard to make a
good optical print from it even using high contrast paper.

It would also help to bracket your shots for a while to get a feel for
what exposure will produce what kind of print.  I have seen more bad
prints from underexposed negatives then over, some experimentation will
give you are feel for this.    For my own part when I see a light
negative I know it is going to be a problem getting any kind of good
print from it.

It has been a while since I have done an optical print but the
fundamental problems remain the same.  Most of the poor prints I have
seen are missing either the full white or good blacks.  It can be more
then a little tricky to get the shadows exposed far enough to get good
blacks and yet keep the highlights white.  So what is the definition of
a master printer, one who can take a negative that has highlights that
are not nearly dense enough and still get a good print using burning
and dodging or someone who only prints from negatives that have a good
range to start with?

There is a lot of science and math to really understanding the whole
photographic process, it is well worth while learning it well.

On a business aspect of it, I believe you are going to have a hard time
finding a good client base that wants prints done from a "master
printer".   I assume you are thinking about making prints from others
negatives.  Most of the people I know that are still having optical
prints made are doing so themselves.   I think you are looking at a
very small market.

Scott

My short answer to this is always:  buy a bigger garbage can.

Practice, try new things, read.  There are a lot of alternate processes out
there and techniques that are in danger of becoming obsolete since the
sources for the materials are disappearing, so try them now.

Good to retain finished copies of all your "experiments" and keep a good
Daybook or Journal so you can recall what you did (also good).  I tend to
write my notes on the back of my prints.  Parker ball points write well on
RC prints, and RC is plenty good for experimentation (possible exception for
RC and the next thing on my list to explore is lith printing).  Film notes
in 3x5 spiral notebooks that are transcribed to the back of contact sheets.
I don't obsess in the Zonie fashion about every frame but will take general
notes, filters used, times and type of developer, etc. (I don't mean this in
a bad way, I'm not trying to knock their methods,  but I learned early on
that I'm not disciplined enough to take notes on every exposure.)

I also print model releases on the back of contact sheets for models to
sign.  I get a release when I shoot and then get the second release signed
when they prick up their copies.  The release then gets filed with the
negatives (almost like a system).

Ansel Adams used to call it practicing the scales, he was also a very good
pianist and made the analogy to music frequently in his writings.  Good
teacher, excellent photographer, excelled in the darkroom, but the last
exhibit I viewed I was surprised at the sloppy way he spotted prints (may
have been the "help' but I was tickled to know there is one-and only
one!--area in which I consider myself at par with the master).

Vestal also goes on at length about ways to explore our medium, film
exposure and darkroom testing are very much center to his books.

Ralph Hattersly is another, much of his "avant garde" work looks pretty
dated now but he had a really big bag of darkroom techniques, even if you
never print anything that looks like his stuff he had some pretty slick
tricks.

I think it's good to hang your work on the wall but hang some of the
"failures" as well as keepers, you may figure out what it was you didn't
like about a "bad" print or you may change your mind and decide you want to
explore that technique later on!

That and 20-30 years will make almost anyone a "master".

darkroom.  I was ordering 3 1/2 by 5 then 4 by 5 paper a case at a
time.  This was so I could keep the same emulsion number.  During that
time I used about 250,000 sheets of regular prints.  I have no idea how
much large paper I used.  I started doing darkroom work in 1967.  I
worked for a man that had taken classes from Ansel Adams.  I printed
and developed negatives from 110 to 8x10.  I enlarged everything from
110 to 4x5.
I AM NOT A MASTER PRINTER.

Good luck trying to become a master printer.  The only thing I can
recommend is roll your sleeves up, get busy, and lose any thought of
having a social life.

Master printers usually get where they are by trial and error. It's
usually a deeply underexposed or overexposed negative that *has* to be
printed. Most master printers have switched to digital - the learning
curve is not any easier, but it's a bit more comfortable, instead of
standing for hours in pale yellow light, you're stuck in front of a
monitor.

I remember using my Hasselblad to make a copy of a photograph. I took
the best negative and made a copy of exactly how I wanted the 16x20 b/w
photo to look like. Unfortunately I didn't have my darkroom available
or I would have printed it myself (if you want it done right you've got
to do it yourself).  The print had white highlights and black shadows.
What did I get? A flat print with gray highlights and very muddy
shadows. This was supposedly from a very reputable lab in San Francisco
that had "master printers." Of course I was at a loss when I saw the
finished product considering they had 5 days to print the thing. I
couldn't throw it back in their face and say "REPRINT IT!" I needed it
for a party that was happening the next day.

So, you don't need to be a master printer print. You just need some
common sense and a sense of pride in your work. Two things the printer
of my print didn't have.