Print Offer: Two Large Original Platinum Prints by Carl Weese

Carl Weese, Dixie Milling, Easley, South Carolina, 2000

Carl Weese, August Morning Fog, Eggleston, Virginia, 2001

From time to time we hold print sales here on TOP, to help put beautiful original examples of fine photographic printmaking into people's hands at reasonable prices.

For the next five days, until Friday at 8 p.m., we'll be taking orders for Dixie Milling and August Morning Fog by our friend Carl Weese. Both are 7x17-inch large format photographs expertly printed in platinum-palladium (Pt/Pd), often called "platinum printing." Both prints will be signed and dated.

Here's how our sales work: In a standard bricks 'n' mortar gallery, sales are customarily made only one at a time, and the gallery typically keeps 60% or 70% of the sale price. Hence, the prices have to start out much higher for everyone to make money. Our sales are specifically designed to make the price low for buyers while maximizing the profit for the person who did all the work, i.e. the photographer. (We're all photographers here and that's how we all wish it always worked!)

As most of you know, making many prints at once is much easier than making one print every now and then. So what we do is take orders for five days only, and at the end of the five days, close the ordering window. Carl then knows how many prints he needs to make, and can "mass produce" the prints specifically to fulfill the orders already received. (With platinum/palladium prints, "mass produce" is the wrong term...each print still has to be made carefully and one at a time. Carl can make approximately nine prints per day during a six-hour working session, which he finds is his limit for this painstaking work.)

Plus, with TOP sales, 80% of the sale price goes to the photographer.

Being able to make many prints at once, knowing that each one has already been sold, and then being able to keep the lion's share of the sale price all enable the photographer to sell the prints for much less than they would have to sell for in a gallery. (Carl's standard gallery price for a 7x17 is $2,000, which is not at all atypical for a large original platinum print.)

The downside is that you can't see the print in advance, so you have a guarantee: If you don't like your print after you see it, you can return it within three days for a full refund, minus shipping.

We'll have several posts later this week about the pictures and the prints and how they were made, but let me just remind people that with platinum prints especially, little JPEGs are only distant approximations of the beauty and presence of the original prints themselves.

How to Order

Carl will be taking and tracking the orders manually. The price is $375 for one print and $100 off if you buy both. (Important! New York and Connecticut residents must add the correct State sales tax based on where they live. These rates vary, so you need to do this yourself.) You can pay either by PayPal or with a mailed check or money order (the latter saves us the PayPal fees. Carl will let you know the address if you want to send a check). Don't include notes or details with the payment, but make sure your name appears on it.

[Sale has ended 9/16/16 at 8:10 p.m.; if you have ordered and need to get in touch with Carl, you can email him. Thanks to everyone who participated! The sale was a success. —Mike]

Orders close Friday at 8 p.m. Eastern U.S. time.

We hope you like the photographs! I think you will be impressed with the prints. More about them later in the week.

Mike

Original contents copyright 2016 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

(To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below.)
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Comments

[k4kafka]

As impressive as the platinum-palladium technique is...disappointing subject matter.Good luck with this sale.

[With all due respect, you haven't seen the pictures. I keep trying to explain this, but some people won't take my word--or anyone's word--or any "words" at all--for this. --Mike]

[scott kirkpatrick]

I'm happy to mail a check, but that requires a snail mail address. Do you want to post it? Or link to it?

scott

[Hi Scott, when you send your email to Carl he'll give you the address. --Mike]

[Alan]

Mike, is it $100 off per print if I buy both?

[No $650 or $100 off the the total (2 x $375 = $750 – $100). --Mike]

[Gary]

The P/P printing must add something wonderful, I'll take your word on that. Can't say I'm wowed by the images, though. De gustibus non est disputandum and all that.

[Michael Kellough]

How about uploading a higher resolution photo of the prints? As mundane as the subject is I doubt there is much risk of someone stealing the image.

I am curious to see a platinum print in person. I expect a contact print from a 7" high negative to be spectacular but the photos of the prints look more like APS film enlargements.

[Craig A. Lee]

The Dixie Milling image is from my neck-o-the-woods as they say. I think this is the first print from my local area that you've had on the site.

[Greg Brophy]

Looks great, I can't wait to get mine. The palladium prints have such a wonderful glow to them.

[Sophia]

I like both photos and would have a hard time choosing between them. Unfortunately, I am not ordering because even at these nice prices, I just can't afford them. But I wish I could see them in person anyway. I've always liked the look of platinum palladium prints, even if I don't really know what that entails. Any chance of a fuller explanation for those of us who've never printed before digital?

[John Krumm]

Even at this tiny size I really like the fog image. Looks like something I would stop to stare at a lot. I suspect the print looks great.

[Roger Overall]

Someone gifted me one of Carl's prints from the previous sale here on TOP. I'm so glad to have received it.

It is, without doubt, a thing of immense beauty. There is something delicately luminous about a Pt/Pd print that is unlike anything else I've ever seen. It makes the print fragile and alive. Paper and chemicals, yes. But I swear it has a soul.

And the detail of the large format is exquisite. So fine. It mesmerises me.

Although I haven't seen them in the flesh, I think the prints selected are well chosen. They will give you a first-rate feeling for the process. Full of detail and texture and depth.

On top of which, I think both photographs on offer here are gorgeous.

[Jim]

Is digital involved in these prints at all?

[Carl]

Jim, yes. The pictures were made with a 7x17 inch camera. The prints are made from digital negatives from scans of the in-camera film. That's because only an idiot (me in 2010) would commit to making a large number of sold in advance prints from an irreplaceable in-camera negative. Also why the next Pt/Pd print offer took four years to happen. That's how long it took for me to have a digital negative that I found sufficient. Two years on, they're even better.

[Jim]

Carl, thanks for the details. Shame to have to scan and deal with it digitally, it seems like a contact print would just be so much better. Is the neg at a large risk when printing this way? Normal b&w printing in a darkroom doesn't really risk a negative getting damaged, that I can recall.

[Clyde Rogers]

Pt/Pd does risk the negative if you're going for the best possible result.

Pt/pd is a contact process on hand-coated paper, and the paper needs a moderately high humidity level. If humidity is too low, you get uneven, spotty blacks. If you run the moisture too high, the best case is a muddy gray black. In the worst case some part of the negative sticks to the paper, is baked on by the UV exposure unit, and the pair is tossed in the trash.

I have several of Carl's prints from the last sale, and they have an outstanding pt/pd black, so he is running at humidity levels that require a great deal of care. If his darkroom is off by %10 humidity, or he coats too heavily (or even just unevenly) one time, he very well could ruin his negative.

You can put a thin sheet of acetate between the negative and the paper to protect the neg, but then you have two more dust-gathering surfaces, and have moved the neg a bit away from the paper, visibly reducing sharpness. I love the very slight softening provided by pt/pd interacting with a handmade paper surface, but find the additional softening of the acetate to be too much.

Add to this zapping the negative with somewhere from 6 to 10 minutes of high-intensity UV for each print. Some folks who print one negative many times have reported some degree of either fogging or fading from all this UV.

Finally, you're handling a large bare negative at least twice for each print.

So, yes, pt/pd definitely does put the negative at greater risk than typical silver printing.

[Clyde Rogers]

When looking at these sorts of images, I look at the qualities of the light, and particularly at the highlights. I see if the print has any of that glow (not all prints do, and it isn't required for a good print, but I like the way it happens in pt/pd more than any other process). I squint at a distance where I can see the whole print, trying to blur the image and see how light, dark and line play in the composition.

I'm really looking for great light, patterns of light and dark, and interesting lines. For me, the things in the images don't matter until I have that context. Recall Weston's pepper; the context can elevate most any subject.

Based on Carl's past work and what Mike is saying, I bet these are beautiful photographs.

[John Sarsgard]

Jim, these ARE contact prints, using a digitally created negative. I print platinum/palladium this way and printed silver gelatin in the old world b&w darkroom. With the digital controls available today, just speaking for myself, I can make a better pt/pd print this way than I could using a film negative directly. Making contact prints on hand coated paper, as Carl will here, is much riskier for the negative than conventional b&w contact printing on factory coated paper.

[Carl]

Clyde, thanks for that great explanation of the dangers (to the negative) of platinum printing. Watch for some interesting news about humidity issues in a technical post tomorrow morning.

I only use the term "contact print" to refer to something made directly from the in-camera negative. There are a few photographers who only work this way. Kenro Izu with his 14x20 (that's not a typo) Deardorff comes to mind, and, well, me until two years ago.

However, platinum prints from internegatives are more the norm than the exception. The platinum printers to the stars like Martin Axon and Sal Lopes work from internegs. Paul Strand made most of his platinum prints from enlarged negs, and so did Richard Benson when he printed for Strand at the end of his life. Most of the George Tice Pt/Pd prints I've seen at AIPAD booths were enlarged (I could only tell because they were bigger than 8x10). Expert printers using analog internegs often made multiple masks to gain extreme control of the tonal scale. Now of course we can get the same kind of control with even more precision in Photoshop.

[Jim]

Thanks for the clarifications re: risks to the negative. Learn something everyday!