TOP Platinum Print Offer!

Platinum/palladium prints by Carl Weese

The Pike Drive-in, Montgomery, Pennsylvania, 2001

The Bon-Aire Motel, Williamstown, OH, 2003

Rock in Stream, Steep Rock Reservation, 1998

Some things, you just have to see for yourself. In photography, several of the traditional "alternative processes" are best seen in person. This is certainly true of "platinum prints." (The real terms should be platinum/palladium, since virtually all modern prints use both noble metals.)

We've been trying to arrange this print offer for more than two years; I really wanted to give readers who have never had a chance to see a platinum print up close and personal (sans glass) the opportunity to do so without breaking the bank. All along, I had hoped that my friend Carl Weese could be the photographer, but he just never had the time to spare until now. Carl is deeply knowledgeable about, and experienced with, this venerable medium. He helped develop the modern Ziatype, a variant of Captain Pizzighelli's palladium POP process; he is the co-author (with Richard Sullivan) of The New Platinum Print (nla); and he has taught Pt/Pd printing in many schools and venues. (By the way, "Pt/Pd" is the proper and preferred abbreviation for "platinum/palladium," as "Pt" and "Pd" are the chemical symbols for element 78 and element 46 in the periodic table of the elements.) He is a platinum printer of long standing. In his modest workroom in Connecticut, he has crafted a dazzling array of different types and sizes of beautiful Pt/Pd prints.

If you're not familiar with TOP Print Offers,  what we do is collect orders in advance and then fulfill the orders already received. This allows photographers to produce the work as efficiently as possible, knowing each print has already been sold. This is what makes the very reasonable prices (typically half to a tenth of gallery prices) possible.

Three pictures are available in this sale—each as either a Pt/Pd print or a digital inkjet print. One, I'm happy to say, is from Carl's Drive-In Theater series recently featured on the New York Times' "Lens" blog. Tomorrow, Carl will write a little about each one to give you some background.

The Pt/Pd prints are 8x10 contact prints exposed from the original negatives. Image area is just under 8x10 inches (the film edges are masked by the film holder, as on all contact prints from sheet film) on sheets of Stonehenge paper with a generous border, signed in pencil on the verso. (Incidentally, the black areas at the edges of the image are the result of brushing the light-sensitive solution on to the sheet, and are a natural part of the platinum printing process—most people, of course, hide this with an overmat when framing.)

This sale will be open for this week only, through Friday, April 30th. No orders will be accepted past that day. PLEASE NOTE: It is possible that we will have to end the sale early if too many orders come in. This just can't be avoided; platinum printing, as you will see a few days from now here on TOP, is a very labor-intensive process. Even "mass production" can only proceed but so quickly.

Platinum prints above, digital prints below

The old and the new
A big part of our print sales is simply to make fine prints available to our readers for prices that are eminently affordable relative to the wider marketplace. However, as you probably well know, there's also a didactic component to our interest. For this reason, we're doing something here that has to the best of my knowledge never been done before: From each of three 8x10-inch original negatives, Carl has made both a Pt/Pd print, using traditional methods that go back more than a century, and also a digital inkjet print using a state-of-the-art HP Z3200 printer.

Why? This isn't a contest—there's no "best"—but we thought it might be interesting for you to be able to compare and contrast the old with the new, simply to better understand the visual differences. (Again, some things you just have to see with your own eyes.) Also, if you like the pictures but don't need to own a platinum print, it allows us to offer a less-than-half-as-expensive version of the print as an option for you.

Prices
Each handmade platinum/palladium contact print is only $180. Each digital print is $80. If you buy the pair of prints of any picture, the digital print is half price. If you order any combination of prints of any two different images, you get a further 5% off; and if you order any combination of prints from all three images, you can take 20% off the entire order. (We need Ctein to help calculate the number of possible combinations this results in...I can't do it!)

Ordering

[Content removed—sale ended 4/30/2010]

Delivery
Orders will be fulfilled the order the initial emails are received. Carl will be working full-time on this for at least the next three weeks. Periodic updates will be published here on TOP about how the fulfillment is going. If you order late in the week and are back in the queue, you can email him for a status update, but please wait until four weeks have passed before doing so. (He'll be busy!) You can also email me about the current status of fulfillment, if you think you might have missed one of our updates. My email address, as always, is in the right-hand column.

No better way
We're going to be keeping Carl very busy in the next few weeks, and I want to thank him sincerely for making this offer possible. I just don't know how you'd be able to get a full-sized 8x10" handmade platinum/palladium contact print for anywhere near this price any other way. Looking at original prints is certainly not the only way to enjoy photography, but I find it a great pleasure. And there is no better way to see original prints than to make or own your own.

Mike

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Original contents copyright 2010 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved.

UPDATE (Monday 10:30 a.m.): We're really delighted with the initial response to the offer. Sales are strong but not too strong, if you know what I mean (walking that ineffable line between success and too much success). Carl is feeling pleased and just a tad overwhelmed, and asks everyone's understanding that he isn't routinely responding to each order email. He says he's got his hands full just doing careful and accurate data entry for all the orders.

UPDATE #2 (Friday 4/30/2010, near midnight): Sale's over! Thanks to everyone who ordered.

Comments

[David A. Goldfarb]

Order sent. What a great offer!

[Gordon Coale]

Thanks to Mike and Carl for this great offer! I guess mostly to Carl since he will be doing all the work. My order is in. Pardon me while I go out to my mailbox to wait for it.

[Brian White]

Ordered. Thank you so much for this opportunity.

Brian

[01af]

Order sent! Still one question please:

When paying via PayPal, are we supposed to sent the payment immediately, or shall we wait for an E-mail from Carl approving the order?

[Mike Johnston]

O1af,
Please send the PayPal payment immediately. There's no need to await approval. When the sale ends, the order form, email links, and ordering information will be taken down. If you are able to order, you will get your prints.

Mike

[Jim Mooney]

Order sent! Many thanks for organizing these things Mike. These print offers are incredible opportunities.

Jim

[Doug Brewer]

Can't afford one of these, since I've just scored a signed copy of Democratic Forest (to tie several threads together), but I'd just like to comment that the Pike Drive-In photo is simply glorious.

[Christopher Lane]

Mike,

Wow! Your print offers keep getting better and better. My sincerest thanks for offering the "common man" the opportunity to own this artwork. This is a great service to your readers for which I am most appreciative.

Chris

[Michael]

Order sent - thanks Carl and Mike!

[ctein]

Dear Mike,

Sorry, the only lower math I'm doing today is figuring out that getting all three pt/pd prints will cost me $432. A bargain! Check goes out in tomorrow's mail.

pax / Ctein

[Andrea B]

Thanks for making this possible, Mike & Carl !!
I'm really excited about owning one
of these cool Pt/Pd prints.

[Dutch Slager]

This should probably go with the Pt history below, but that's several days old. I just got home from the Getty Center where there is an extensive exhibit of Frederick H Evans prints. It is mostly cathedrals, but there is a good representation of portraits as well. The shadow detail in those prints is amazing. The Kelmscott Manor Loft image you posted is a decent reproduction, but doesn't have the moody "spiritual" quality of the original. Anyone in the L.A. area should take the opportunity to see this large collection of Platinum prints. Runs through June 6.
Dutch

[Ari]

I'm very excited to see the prints - can't hardly wait! Question, though:
What are the dos and don'ts of storing and displaying platinum/palladium prints? Are transparent archival sleeves OK? Buffered or unbuffered mat board? Etc.?

[David Vatovec]

Hello.
Great offer. However I want a Pt/Pd print in my collection I am allways put back by the subjects in some prints. The style of such artisats is allmost allways dated like the process itself (no offense to anybody I hope).
So I have to pass this offer since the subjects don`t speak to me.
I assume the prints are wonderfully made - but the subjects are not something I wish to put on the wall.
Kudos to Mike & Carl anyway!
Keep it going.

[Player]

I was wondering if these lovely prints could be a profitable investment? :)

[Martino]

So, thanks to this great offer, I bought my first print ever, I can't wait for it to arrive! Now the next question is: how do I frame that. Is it possible as a DIY job, or is it better to have it done professionally? I have been looking around the interweb and the range of options is a bit overwhelming to say the least. Can anyone point me to a trusted ressource, or failing that, to an (affordable) framer in London, UK? thanks.

Martino

[Mike Johnston]

"Can anyone point me to a trusted ressource, or failing that, to an (affordable) framer in London, UK? thanks."

Martino,
In most cities there is at least one "discount" or "high volume" framer that serves the impecunious artistic community; usually these folks are used to dealing with original work and have very reasonable prices for custom framing. I suggest you check with a local photo school for possibilities. See if you can find out where "everybody" goes to get shows framed. I'd be surprised if there weren't a couple of places like that in London.

Mike

[Helcio J. Tagliolatto]

Regarding David Vatovec post: I, too, was expecting something different.
Something of incredible beauty like “ Rock Creek at Flood”.....but I’ll buy one as reference print to my own still poorly crafted platinum prints.

Which was the film developer used? I guess it was pyro.

Helcio
Bauru - BR

[Mike Johnston]

"Which was the film developer used? I guess it was pyro."

Helcio,
You'll be getting full information in the next couple of days. Carl has written a post with some background on the pictures, and created a step-by-step technical account of the process with a great slideshow showing exactly how the prints are made. All in the next couple of days.

Mike

[Matt]

What great timing. I am just getting into Pt/Pd printing, my first batch of chemicals will be arriving this week. Now I will have a print from one of the masters as which to compare all of mine. Hopefully I can get close some day. Anyways Thanks for this offer and I can’t wait and look forward to receiving my print.

[Ned Bunnell]

Greetings Mike and Carl,

I think this is a great offer. I'm sure a few of your readers don't fully understand that making Palladium prints is a labor of love, where you can spend a whole day on just a few prints.

It's been over 30 years since I made my last Palladium prints. Thinking back to this period, I must say that the whole process of coating your own paper and exposing the prints in contact frames by either daylight or sun lamp (which I recall was a tad faster and more predictable) gave me a much better understanding of the craft of photography!

Cheers,
Ned

[Tom Judd]

I agree with the comments about the subject matter. To me, that's the basic problem with large format work. It's so slow and cumbersome that people end up shooting static, mundane things.

But I applaud the idea of the print offering, especially with the inkjet prints. It would have been interesting if he had made an effort to emulate the platinum prints digitally.

[Alberto Castro]

I have seen Pt/Pd prints in person and they are truly beautiful. I am lucky enough that one of my own photos was printed in that process (barter, I cannot afford to order one) and let me tell you, I cannot produce a better digital print in a hundred years.

Unfortunately I cannot afford one now ... the Pike photo however ... hmmmm.

[Nikhil Ramkarran]

This is my first ever purchase of a print of a photograph. Thank you, Mike and Carl, so much for making it available.

I regret that I was unable to purchase one of Ctein's dye prints in one of the earlier sales. I will not miss another opportunity if it ever arises again.

[Ken Tanaka]

I wonder if my own reaction to this offer will resonate with anyone here.

I've long ago learned to recognize seduction when it's in progress. Not the "sexy" type but rather the romantic aesthetic type in which I can become induced into a maelstrom of desire for irrational, but perhaps deep-seated and not impulsive, reasons.

Set that observation aside a moment while I construct the maelstrom.

I've been a "classic" film enthusiast since I was 9 years old (i.e. a long time). But being an in-the-city kid nearly all of my life I never had the opportunity to visit a drive-in theater, although the notion of such an experience in a fictitious childhood/adolescence positively charms me.

So I immediately found Carl's "Pike Drive-In" compelling, particularly since it's abandoned, dilapidated, and impossible to visit...just like my adolescence! The added icing, like the classically effective come-on, "But wait, there's more!", that Carl is an experienced Pt/Pd printer and can render this antique scene in a lovely antique manner made the offer irresistible.

So I knew I was being seduced as I found myself swirling down the drain while gurgling my PayPal ID on Sunday.

[JonA]

Mike,

I could be completely wrong but I think the math on the number of combinations goes like this: You have 6 possible prints (counting Pl/Pd and digital versions as separate prints) and a binary option- you either buy the print or you do not. So there are 2 options with each of the 6 prints. That is 2 to the 6th power which equals 64 different combinations.

You could assign a 0 if you do not buy the print and a 1 if you do. So if you put each print in order and have first the Pl/Pd version and second the digital version you could create a binary number of each combination. E.g. if you bought only the first print in both versions it would look like this: 110000. If you bought only the third print in the Pl/Pd, it would look like this: 000010. Every possible version of 0's and 1's is 64.

I wish I had the money to buy the first print at the least. I'd like to see what a quality Pl/Pd print looks like. I don't even know what a quality silver or digital print looks like!

[Pavel]

Mike,

What are the shipping options for international orders? Is it possible to upgrade the shipping to avoid any delivery problems?

Thanks so much to both you and Carl for this incredible offer! Must be so much work just to deliver everything, I hope it's worth your while.

Cheers
Pavel

[Alec Myers]

I'll be the curmudgeon (as usual) it seems. I've been waiting for this print offer for weeks now, and I was really hoping for at least one image that would inspire me, particularly since I've been dabbling in alternative processes recently, and want to start work on Pt/Pd prints. Poop, I just don't like the pictures. Poop.

[ctein]

Dear folks,

My take on the work... I think this is a situation where the contemplative approach that Ken recommended for Eggleston's work is the appropriate one. As Tom pointed out, 8 x 10 view cameras don't lend themselves to a dynamic style of photography (it's been done, but it's swimming against the rapids). Some would consider that a feature, some a bug. It simply is what it is.

I think that's what works with Carl's selection. Understand that I was pre-decided to buy whatever he put up (a case of spreading around some of the generosity I've gotten from the TOP readership) but I do think the three photographs work well as platinum prints and especially well as a set. My first reaction to them was that I was much more drawn to the two architectural photographs than the one of the rock in the stream. I've seen an awful lot of rocks in streams.

After looking at that photograph several more times, I found that it kept growing on me. The stream was actually doing something *interesting* with the rock. And even if it hadn't, I also realized that the first two photographs didn't make half so strong a presentation without the third one. Kind of like a multi-course dinner where you need something very nice but different that will refresh the palate next to the fish and the meat.

On the matter of presentation, I'll have to take Mike's word for it that the norm is for people to mat the photographs to hide the edges of the emulsion brushwork, but it's not my inclination, and it's not what I've seen in the very limited number of platinum's I've seen on display. I consider the border to be part of the work, the same way the indentation of the plate into the wetted paper is with an etching. It's a component of the composition. In fact, one of the ways I distinguish between the merit of different platinum printers is how well that edging is done. Chris McCaw (he prints platinums of Jim Marshall's photographs) is just brilliant at this. His brush work makes me think of the finest of Japanese watercolors. It truly enhances the loveliness of the photographs in the same way a perfect frame will.

Just my $.02 worth.

~ pax \ Ctein
[ Please excuse any word-salad. MacSpeech in training! ]
======================================
-- Ctein's Online Gallery http://ctein.com 
-- Digital Restorations http://photo-repair.com 
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[Mike Johnston]

Alec,
That's not actually such a big problem. Remember you can buy any of the other pictures on Carl's site. You'll just have to pay full price, is all. (And maybe wait a while for fulfillment....)

Take a look at the "Twenty Photographs" set, I really like that.

http://www.carlweese.com/twenty/index.htm

Mike

[Bernard Scharp]

Ordered. Had a hard time deciding between the last two, both had something special. Interestingly enough, unlike most readers, the `Pike' picture didn't do anything for me. Tastes differ I guess...

Can't wait for pictures 2 and 3 of my `collection' to arrive...

[Alec Myers]

Mike,

I think I might do that. I'd rather have a print that I love, though I pay more. (Although looking at Carl's website I can't see any costs, and you know what they say about "if you have to ask the price...")

Thanks!

-Alec

[Gavin McLelland]

Well, I could only afford one, I picked "Rock in Stream" I liked the way details of the water structure around the rock was picked out but still retained a sense of movement. I think the patterns running above to the left of the rock are a vortex street but I'll check with my brother he's a fluvial geomorphologist.
The others didn't involve me as much - perhaps because drive-ins and motels aren't seen to much over here in the UK
Thanks for the chance to own one of these prints

Gavin

[Eric Hancock]

Damn! I'm just catching up and it appears I missed this. Great prints.