Don't Forget

Just a reminder—this weekend is the last opportunity to order a dye transfer print from Ctein if you want to.

The demand has been really pretty astonishing—much more than Ctein or I foresaw. One consequence of the high demand is that this will definitely be the last such offer Ctein will ever be able to make. When dye transfer materials were discontinued by Kodak, Ctein literally mortgaged his house to buy a large supply of materials—what he hoped would last 20 years. He virtually filled his basement with supplies. He says he has managed to locate a source for some more small dye transfer paper, which will keep him from having to cut down more of his big sheets to do these prints, but, even so, this print offer will exhaust nearly half of all the paper he has stockpiled.

We were originally thinking that if this offer were successful, we might be able to do another one six months or a year from now. But because of the high volume of the sales this time around, that won't be possible. Ctein can fill all of these orders, but after that he will need to reserve his remaining stockpiles for making full-sized, full-cost prints of the rest of his life's work.

Orders close on midnight Sunday, two and a half days from now. He really cannot accept orders after that, for the reasons we explained last time around.

The original sales notice is here, and Ctein's explanation of the dye transfer process is here. Here again (below) are the buttons for ordering [since removed; sale has ended]. If you previously placed an order and need to contact him, you can email Ctein directly.

{SALE ENDED MIDNIGHT U.S. CENTRAL TIME, SUNDAY, OCTOBER 19th}

______________________

Mike

Featured Comment by Carl Blesch: "I'm pleased that I got my order in last weekend; had some Christmas and birthday money stashed away and was thinking of buying a photo book or two per this blog's recent recommendations. But when I saw Ctein's offer, I pounced. I was a real photo geek in high school—tried all sorts of films and papers, even considered blending my own developer at one point (but never got that far). Tried color slide developing (anyone remember Anscochrome?) and color printing (I tried Beseler's Unicolor, which was supposed to be way easier for home darkroom printing than the conventional Kodak processes). Sad to say, many of those Anscochrome transparencies and Unicolor prints sit faded in my photo cabinet. My ultimate challenge was going to be trying dye transfer printing. Had no idea how I was going to do it, but I figured I'd be able to take a crack at it someday. Talk about ignorance being bliss. Reading Ctein's description of the process and watching Michael Reichmann's video make me realize what a mountain that would have been to climb. So buying these two prints of Ctein's will be a small way of fulfilling my unfulfilled dream.

"Trouble is, if I like these small prints as much as I think I'm going to, I'll have to find a grand or two to buy some of his big ones. And I don't think birthday or Christmas money will quite cover those...."

Mike replies: I know what you mean, Carl. I've always had my eye on this one—I've seen it in the original, nearly 16x20, and I find it very powerful. But I have to face the fact that I'm never going to have that kind of money for discretionary purchases. You know what they say: Oh well.

Comments

[Christopher Lane]

Thanks for the update Mike. I bought mine, just in time.

[Carl Blesch]

Mike,

My favorite is one of his lava flow pictures:
http://ctein.com/Fresh_Pahoehoe.jpg

What incredible texture. And I'll bet the lava glows as a dye transfer print.

Carl

[Ctein]

Dear Carl,

Oh yeah, it glows!

It's one of my very favorite photographs, too. It was the very first photo I made on that trip to Hawai'i. Took that roll into a custom lab the next day, to make sure all my gear was working properly. When I looked at the neg on the light table I said to Paula, "OK, we can go home, now. I have my photo for the trip."

'Course we didn't! [s]

pax / Ctein