The Online Photographer

Strand/Friedlander Book Sale Starts (not Friday) TUESDAY

The news: all the ducks are in a row, all the systems are go, and we're ready and set to start the next book sale on Friday Tuesday. That's May 26th 30th. It'll be the first post I put up before after the holiday weekend.

We'll be offering three books courtesy of the good people at Yale University Press, our partners for this sale. One volume of the work of Paul Strand, and two by Lee Friedlander. Quite different photographers. All three books are beautiful.

I love these book sales because I truly love photobooks. They've always been a source of pleasure for me. As I've said before, these sales are a "win" for everybody—I make a little money, a publisher finds good homes for some orphaned overstock, and you get great books for a lot less than retail. Not necessarily in that order. (In this case, you'll be able to get $225 worth of books for $79. The only less expensive way to acquire them would be to steal 'em).

If you have any questions please ask, but I'll put all the details in the announcement on Friday Tuesday. Please check back with TOP then, or on the weekend.

Mike

Original contents copyright 2017 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.

Book 'im, Danno
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Next Book Sale Will Happen This Month

Time to announce that I've been working with the prestigious Yale University Press for our next book sale. They supplied all the prospects pictured back in March in this post. If all goes well we'll first be offering three superb recent high-end books. As with the books we offered from the Nelson-Atkins Museum, the exhibitions theses books celebrate are over, sales have slowed at the Museum Stores where they have mainly been offered, and Yale has overstock and wants the books to find good homes where they'll be appreciated—which is where you come in, of course. Two are a matched pair and are cooperative publications, so we've still got some details to iron out with them, but I can tell you about the third.

It's special. It is Yale's reprint of the superlative retrospective of Paul Strand published in 2014 to celebrate the acquisition of the core of Strand's own archive by the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

It was edited by Peter Barberie, Brodsky Curator of Photographs at Philadelphia's Alfred Stieglitz Center, with Amanda Bock who was the Assistant Curator for the project. An expensively produced, deluxe hardcover, it's the best single volume on Strand published up to the present moment, incorporating the most recent scholarship and including more than 250 illustrations. The scholarly apparatus is first rate (including an edited transcript of a roundtable discussion among leading scholars, which is unusual), and the excellent reproductions capture some of the magic of original prints and are cumulatively quite moving to look at in my opinion.

Even if you have only one book about Paul Strand in your library, this should be it—I think this hits on all cylinders. So the fact that we'll be offering it for less moolah than you could get it for up till now doesn't even need to enter into your calculations.  ;-)  Overseas shipping will be available and will not be as dear as last time.

Supplies will be limited (but not severely) so I'll give you plenty of advance warning about the start of the sale later this month.

Something to look forward to.

Mike
(Thanks to Jim S. and Keith D.)

Original contents copyright 2017 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.

Masters of the past and more
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Dave: "Looking forward to it! Awesome!"

MikeR: "The Paul Strand volume is excellent. We already own a copy, from the 2014 show, which itself was an eye-opener. I do believe he would have loved Photoshop!"

Fulvio Senore: "I have that book and I can confirm that it is an excellent one. The image quality is very high and the book contains a lot of interesting information about Paul Strand."

Prints Ship

The prints from our last print sale have begun to ship.

If one is coming to you I think you're in for a treat, and I'm eager to hear what you think. Although my guess is that this is a picture you'll like better after you've lived with it for a while than you will when you first see it. If it occurs to you, in the future, let me know if I'm right about that. John even said he likes it better after printing it for a week.

Thanks again to John Lehet and everyone who participated.

Mike

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'Beautiful Bokeh' Print Offer

[JPEG of] photo by John Lehet

During 2017 TOP will be offering four single prints, one per season, all from experienced master printmakers, all reasonably priced. I'm happy to announce our Winter season print sale, the first of 2017. [UPDATE: Sale ended 1/9/17 at noon.]

For John Lehet it's not about the JPEG; it's about the print. A perfectionist photographic printmaker, he studied under John Sexton and transitioned from large- and medium-format darkroom printing to digital printmaking many years ago now. He's a very serious, engaged printmaker with a large body of work and many exhibitions to his credit.

The picture is "Morning Glory Bud In Rain, 2016." It is large for a small print, 13.5 by 20 inches on 17x22-inch paper. The print will be signed on the the front at the lower right; no signature on request.

The cost is only $160, shipping inclusive for domestic U.S. orders and $35 extra for non-U.S. orders. Vermonters will need to pay sales tax. It was pretty nice of John to "go low" on the price for us; helps make a purchase pain-free. This is really not much more than you might pay for a poster of the same size.

Same picture, two different papers

A new wrinkle for TOP: you can choose the same picture on your choice of two different papers, Canson Edition Etching Rag or Canson Baryta Photographique. The differences are subtle yet significant: Etching, a textured matte paper with less tooth than watercolor paper, emphasizes the smooth areas of the photograph, with the paper texture coming forward subtly in the soft washes of bokeh color. At first we were only going to offer the print on this paper. However, John decided to also offer a version on Baryta Photographique, a paper that faithfully echoes the feel of fiber-based black-and-white darkroom prints of old but without the curl. On Baryta Photographique some of the detailed areas of the print render a little more assertively, shifting the emphasis a little more toward the texture of the wet leaf above the bud. Both papers show the pop of detail against the smooth bokeh equally well, and produce clear and real color.

John has recently been obsessed (if that's not too strong a word) with exploring bokeh with his high-end full-frame mirrorless camera, using a variety of older lenses famous among deep connoisseurs. We'll have more information about the equipment used, as well as a fascinating post about meditation and its relationship to photography, as the week progresses.

As always with our sales, we take orders for five days and then close the ordering period so the photographer can get to work on fulfillment. We do not take any more orders once the ordering period has closed. No exceptions (but not to worry—if you miss the sale, you can still order the print from John at any time at the regular price of $475). The "Beautiful Bokeh" sale ends next Monday at noon, Eastern U.S. Time.

I hope you will love this! It really is exceptionally pretty. (Very safe to give as a gift, I might add.) And thanks much for looking.

Mike
(Thanks to J.L.)

Original contents copyright 2017 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.

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Michael Kellough: "Re 'Both papers show the pop of detail against the smooth bokeh equally well, and produce clear and real color.'

"Echoing Dave, in his comment, all we can tell from the photo of both prints side by side is that the color saturation is different in each print. The texture you discuss in describing the difference is not visible in the photo so how about some other clue to distinguish the two papers?"

Mike replies: Actually you can't quite tell that, because you can't see prints in JPEGs of prints. Especially iPhone snap JPEGs that have been reduced to 800 pixels in width and mushed and squished by the blog software. Just sayin'.

My clear favorite between the two papers is the Etching. It's John's preference too. This picture is gorgeous on it. John created an array of tests on a number of papers of various softness and a variety of textures, looking for the perfect match for the image. He tried some papers that were even more matte and had more texture than the Etching paper, but liked them less. He arrived at Canson Etching as having the ideal balance.

We're also offering the Baryta because we know some people have a strong affection for those types of papers (I love them too), and feel "allergic" to papers that are more matte. My experience over many years is that a small minority of people just really don't care for matte papers. The Baryta paper has more gloss and looks more conventional. The picture looks beautiful on that paper too, and, honestly, the differences are pretty slight (and will probably be more so once they're under glass). But if you lack any strong allegiance to traditional Baryta "air dried F surface" type papers, and you're in doubt as to which to get, I'd say go for the Etching. It's amazing.

And finally, if you receive the print on the Etching paper and don't care for it, you can return it to John and he'll send you the more standard Baryta print. (Or your money back, your choice.)

Does this help at all?

Solving Problems

A few brief followups:

• Re "Things Go Wrong," the washing machine repair cost $397.48, more than half the price of a new one; the water heater, replaced under warranty, cost $468.83. My butt hurts like somebody gave me a swift kick in the wallet. Hence....
• B&H sends me a holiday gift card every year to thank me for being an affiliate (thanks B&H!), so I solved my problem of needing IBIS because of my "yips" by putting this year's gift card toward a used Fuji XF 18–55mm OIS lens. Not IBIS, but rather in-lens IS, but I can't afford a new camera right now. (My X-T1 is not even three years old yet and works fine.) 
• Re "The 2017 Novel," I finished Heart of Darkness in 2016 with a little over two hours to spare! However I did not enjoy it. Have decided I do not actually like Conrad, much as I would like to. Went to the attic of the barn and, until my hands got stiff with cold, rummaged through boxes. Found one of my two editions of Moby-Dick; ordered two more...despite the fact that I'm reading an online version (cf. Mrs. Wittig, "all you book collectors are insane").
• To solve the computer problem, I'm using my 13" 2014 MacBook Air as my main computer. I may have already mentioned this. Seems to be working okay, except that not infrequently it makes a giant industrious whooshing noise like it's hot and its fan is blowing, despite the fact that there is no detectable inlets or outlets for air to pass and, if it actually has a fan, I have no idea where they put it. This bears more discussion, but I'm not going to post my thoughts about Apple right now because the new Print Offer starts in the morning and I don't want the Comments to be inundated with talk about computers.

Did I mention the Print Offer starts in the morning? It does. This one is going to be special; I adore this print. I've already found a frame shop in Canandaigua and I've been Scotch-taping John's proof up to the wall here and there in the house to help me decide where to hang it.

More in the morning. Noon actually, to be precise.

Mike

Original contents copyright 2017 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.

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Featured Comments from:

Jim in Denver: "Earlier this year my mother had to replace her GE clothes dryer, which she bought new in 1967. To say that 'they don't make 'em like they used to' seems accurate in this case."

Rob L.: "The 18–55mm ƒ/2.8–4 is a great lens, that I don't use often simply because the 16mm is so amazing. It's not as great as the Nikon 17–55mm ƒ/2.8, but close, and in fairness about 45 lbs. lighter.  :-)  "

Manuel: "Curiously, I felt a strange lack of attachment when I tried to read Heart of Darkness. It just didn't grip me. When a book doesn't rivet me by page 28, I usually give it up, but I made an extra effort with this one. It didn't work. It's weird that, while being quite straightforward and short, the narrative is boring. I read behemoths like Magic Mountain, with its thorough character and environment depictions—I could actually see Hans Castorp in my head!—and I never felt tired as I did with Heart of Darkness. At least now I know it it's not a translation issue, nor a lack of comprehension."

Mike replies: It might be one of those programmatic novels that's supposed to be one big extended metaphor, so maybe it's gripping to those who know all about the subtext. A novel like that is Andre Dubus III's House of Sand and Fog—supposedly the story of the Middle East conflicts recast as an epic real-estate squabble. I mean the characters are contending over a house. That novel, which I read all the way to the end, infuriated me—the whole programmatic premise seems utterly disreputable to me. I felt betrayed that the author wasn't true to the humanity of his characters, but had made them into straw dogs in his programmatic agenda. This I suppose is a matter of taste. Or ethics, or something.

Kev Ford: "The MacBook Air vents out of the gap between the main body and the screen. There is a fan that pushes air out that is a little like a water-wheel. It's normal for the fan to come on occasionally; the fan will lower the temperature quite far below where it needs to be before turning off and allowing the heat to build up again."

Upcoming Winter Print

John Lehet by MJ

Please put aside a little of the money you get for Christmas or Hanukkah for our Winter-quarter print offer!

I've been living with all of the proof prints for six days now, and it took John (the photographer) and me four days to sift through the possibilities and make a decision—he sent many variations of several prints on many papers, which were virtually all "good but different." After considering many options, we went in the direction of simplicity and purity: we'll be offering only one image at one size on one type of paper. A rather radical choice in certain ways, as you will see.

Vermont photographer John Lehet would never say this about himself, I'm almost sure, but, knowing him, I feel comfortable saying that photographic prints in his case are just the visual manifestations of his spiritual voyage—he's a longtime Buddhist who has been deeply involved in meditation practice for many years*. Accepting his work this way opens it up for me.

John is deeply into process, which I would define as the methods used to sort, clarify, and redact one's work into final form, and we'll talk about that—John is unusually insightful on that subject. The equipment he used will be fun to discuss, too.

Although of the highest possible quality in every way, the Winter Print will not be expensive, either.

That's all I'll say for now. We will offer four single prints in 2017, all by different master printmakers—one during each of the four seasons**. As for John's photograph, we won't decide on the date of the "reveal" until after Christmas, but it will be in the first few days of January.

Mike

*When I asked him if it was okay if I said this, he said yes, but added a paragraph explaining with uncommon thoughtfulness why he doesn't care for the word "spiritual." I should see if I can get him to write a short post about meditation—that would be very interesting.

**Also, I'm discussing bargain photo book sales with other publishers, too. More fun in the New Year.

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.

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Beautiful Bokeh

...And now for something completely different, as Monty Python used to say. TOP's own Print Sale for this season will feature two absolutely lovely color prints, quite different from each other, that both have a radical amount of bokeh.

Bokeh as many of you know is a term derived from the Japanese that means "out-of-focus blur" but is shorter to say and easier to write. Many photographs do not have any out-of-focus blur; many photographs have a little; a few have a great deal, and, in a very small percentage of cases, photographers deliberately use bokeh as a creative element.

As is the case with our two sale pictures.

The prints are made by a master printer who has been refining his printing techniques, skills, and style since taking a workshop from some guy named Ansel Adams a number of decades ago. He also loves to experiment with a variety of fine and expensive papers to get just the right effect...

...And that is where we are right now. John is experimenting with papers, FedEx is en route to me with proofs; the process continues.

Much to be done. It's a several-week-long process with many steps to present a print sale. As you might imagine, though, this one is close to my heart. I love these. I am trying not to suggest print sizes based on where they will go in my house.

More news about the beautiful bokeh print sale soon. The pictures are quite different from anything we've ever offered before. And yep, the lenses used were chosen for their bokeh properties. Of course we'll eventually fill you in on all the geeky details about that as well.

The Turnley Twins
Peter Turnley's holiday print sale is over now, but his twin brother David's is still going on. David and Rachel are once again offering prints of a wide selection of David's award-winning work as a photojournalist. David and Rachel, like Peter, have kindly offered to share a referral fee to TOP if you mention you came from here. Scroll to the bottom of the sale page to order. Tell your friends!

David Turnley and Jim Harbaugh, who have both returned to the University of Michigan after impressive careers out in the world

Mike

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Peter Turnley Has Changed His Mind

=

Change of mind is not inconsistency. —Cicero

-

It's not too late to mention this—almost, but not quite!

You remember a few days ago I mentioned that Peter Turnley is having his annual Paris Print Sale. I also said that the prints would be inkjet prints for the first time.

That has changed. In his most recent e-mail blast about the sale, Peter announced that "The prints are signed traditional silver gelatin fiber prints. I have decided to offer silver gelatin prints to maintain continuity will all previous printings of my photographs."

I know Peter is more than happy with the quality of the inkjet prints that have recently been made from his work—but all the prints shipped for this sale will be traditional silver gelatin black-and-white prints. (No telling if this will be the last time.)

Thought you'd want to know.

Note that anyone who orders two or more prints will receive a free, signed, slipcased, hardcover copy of Peter's most recent book Cuba: A Grace of Spirit.

Tomorrow is the last full day of the Paris Classics offer, so it's not too late!

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.

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Lawrence Plummer: "I had been very close to asking you about the prints when I saw that they were inkjet. I was wondering what happened to Voja Mitrovic! I still marvel at the three prints I picked up in your sales that were printed by Voja. They are superb."

Mike replies: Voja retired many years ago but, as a favor, continued to print for a small, select group of his friends, all of whom happened to be world-renowned photographers. I gather he has now retired from that retirement, although I don't communicate with him directly and don't really know the story. Although getting up in years, he is well.

Paris For Christmas

Photo by Peter Turnley

It's not an official TOP print sale, but our friend Peter Turnley is having a holiday sale of the most popular of his fine art prints of Paris, at significantly discounted prices.

The selection is broader than it has been in our sales, and includes several new images. See the pictures.

If you're one of the many people who have ordered one of these fine prints through us in the past, I don't have to tell you that they make outstanding gifts. The prints are expertly crafted archival pigment inkjet prints using the very finest materials. The image quality is outstanding and the LE (life expectancy) of the physical prints is likely to be measured in the hundreds of years. And they'll be beautifully packaged. Just add wrapping paper.

Peter has generously offered to share a bit of his profit if you indicate you heard about the sale from TOP (there's a drop-down menu at the bottom of the sale page.)

The grand tradition
I have the new picture reproduced above, and the older print of the French gentleman reading a newspaper in a bistro is prominently displayed on my kitchen/dining room wall, effectively in the very middle of my house.

Peter has lived in Paris for more than 40 years, using it as his base for his top-level photojournalism career. His romantic and beautiful Paris work, which he deliberately undertook as an antidote to having to photograph (and witness) war and suffering the world over, embodies his humanity, goodwill, and fellow-feeling—all that is right and beautiful about humanity. It is part of the great tradition of the romantic street photographers of Paris that includes Willy Ronis, Brassaï, André Kertesz, his friends and colleagues Robert Doisneau and Henri Cartier-Bresson, and his late good friend and mentor Édouard Boubat.

Check it out!

Mike
(Thanks to Peter and Laura)

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A Foundation Stone of Your Photography Library

My old book stand is an antique—I inherited
it—but here's something similar.

Our current book sale is ending soon. Sorry, I should set that off for emphasis—

BOOK SALE IS ENDING SOON!

The fire-sale price is only $32.50 for brand new, unread copies of Keith Davis's excellent The Origins of American Photography. It won't be the last opportunity to own the book, but it's probably the last time you'll be able to order a new copy easily, and for so little.

It's not too late. To order, go to this link and then enter the code "12555" at checkout. (Note that the discount doesn't show up until the last screen.)

Get it while you can! (Did I miss my calling as a marketer? My son is just about to graduate from the University of Wisconsin at Oshkosh with a degree in marketing, and I'm near to busting with pride that he's accepted a very good job at a very good salary with a major corporation. He's a comer. Raised by hand, he was.)

I think of certain histories as being the foundation of my library. The two-volume set of Keith's An American Century of Photography and the present volume—telling the story of photography in America from its beginnings to approximately the year 2000—is one of those foundation-stones.

Guys with guns

This book covers less time than the other volume, but just as much change. The 19th century in America was tumultuous and fractious. Think about it: this book covers the Civil War, the building of the railroads, waves of immigration, and the exploration of the Wild West.

There's something elemental about the deliberateness of early portraits.

I've noted before that you don't actually have to read books like this to get a lot of out them. This is a large, thick, heavy book, with copious amounts of illustrations, and the repro quality is very good. You can enjoy it just as a picture book, paging slowly through it and savoring its curated collection of hundreds of fine historical images.

I use the word "curated" advisedly—Keith Davis's own origins were as a connoisseur. He was the curator in charge of putting together the Hallmark Collection, one of the major photography collections in America and in the World. (Someday I will get to Kansas City and write up my visit for you.) He has a great eye for photographs, something that can't quite be said for every museum curator out there.

The opening of the West falls within the time period covered

A feature of both books is that the illustrations are not just "the usual suspects." Lots of photography books are put together, let's just say, a little more cynically—the authors are book-aggregators hired by publishers to churn out coffee-table volumes for stocking bookstores. Not so here. Keith deliberately made the decision to mix well-known images with lesser-known ones. As an example, I have a number of volumes in my library about Daguerreotypes (I'm not exactly certain why, except that when you buy books, sometimes you just get started down a particular trail and it becomes self-perpetuating—I have a poet friend who found himself collecting volumes of Dante that way, despite not having a particular interest in Dante. But I digress.) Anyway, I'm familiar with a lot of Daguerreotypes, and this book has a lot of them that I've never seen.

A book for readers as well

I don't mean to short the text! Keith is an excellent writer, and the text is erudite but accessible, meant to be read, and able to be read with pleasure. And this isn't just a picture book with an essay or two at the beginning to underpin the pictures with a little intellectual weight—the text is generous and runs throughout the volume.

A wonderful earlier book is Photography and the American Scene by Robert Taft, reprinted by Dover and available as a free download. These books easily supersede that one, though.

I don't have a very current count, but I believe we've already sold around 300 copies. There should be plenty left, so if you'd like to Tweet this, or mention it on other forums you visit, or put it out there on other photography websites, please do. (For one thing, TOP gets a little cut, and every little cent [the United States doesn't actually have coin called a "penny," did you know that?] will go toward my new computer. I seriously need a new computer...it took fifteen minutes to get this one started this morning, and that handwriting is very much on that wall.)

How to order: go to the book page at the Nelson-Atkins Museum bookstore and then enter the special discount code "12555" at checkout. If you have any problems for any reason, let me know and I'll pass your email along to the bookstore staff, and they can help you.

If you already ordered, shipments begin Monday (November 14th). So if you order now you'll get yours before very long.

I think you'll like this! Hope you do.

Thanks again to Keith and the good folks at the Nelson-Atkins Museum for making this possible.

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.

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Book Sale: 'Origins of American Photography'

As a matched pair, the very best history of American photography

Here we go! Last February we hosted a very large book sale—of a very large book—for Keith F. Davis, the noted author, photo historian, and Senior Curator of Photography at the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City, Missouri. The book was the magnificent An American Century of Photography: from Dry-Plate to Digital, a literally weighty tome which covers American photography from 1885 to the recent turn of the millennium.

On offer now is the companion volume to that book, Origins of American Photography: from Daguerreotype to Dry-Plate, covering its subject from the pioneering generation up to 1885, the point at which the second book begins.

Although it is a companion book, completing the other, it's perfectly enjoyable as a stand-alone single title about the rich and riotous early days of photography in North America.

The book was originally published at $65, and was a fine bargain at that price. For a limited time, thanks to Keith and his associates at the Nelson-Atkins Museum, we are offering it here on TOP, exclusively, for 50% off—only $32.50. Note that these are all brand new books, not seconds, not used, and not shopworn.

How to Buy

To purchase yours, please go to this link and then enter the code "12555" at checkout to get our discount. Note that you can also get the same discount in person at the Museum as long as you know the code.

We're not "protecting" this information, so you're welcome to share it. However, there are fewer books available this time than last, so you might be well advised to order your copy before posting the link to big photo sites!

Domestic shipping is only $12.95. Unavoidably, international shipping is $100, same as last time*.

The sale will continue for 30 days or until the supply of books runs out, whichever comes first.

As I mentioned last time, although the text is uncommonly readable and engaging, the book is worth its price just as a picture book. It's loaded with illustrations, many of them unusual, and the reproduction quality is very high for this type of book. Just paging through it and enjoying the pictures is rewarding.

Hope you like! I just love Keith's books and have gotten a great deal of enjoyment from these, although (fortunately!) I'm nowhere near finished reading both of them. More pleasure awaits.

Mike
(Thanks to Keith Davis and the Nelson-Atkins Museum, and
Brian Day and his staff and helpers at the Museum Store)

*This will be disappointing to some readers so it bears a little explanation...the books are big and heavy, and the Museum Store is largely responsible for sales within the Museum itself...they normally do very little mail order and almost none to other countries. Groups of volunteers assist with packaging and mailing to the U.S., but shipments to other countries unfortunately require a lot of time and attention from staffers. Hence the high price.

If the Book Depository ships to your country, the overall price will be less for you if you order it there. I'm not sure how many books they have, however.

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.

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Featured Comments from:

Thomas J. Burleson: "Another winner, Mike; thanks for arranging it. All the previous books have been exceptionally useful in helping an assortment of aspiring young photographers of my acquaintance understand why cellphone cameras and Instagram are only a place to start. This book should help them understand how we got to this point."

John Camp: "Is the first book, An American Century of Photography: Dry Plate to Digital, still available?"

Mike replies: It was when you asked this question, but now it looks like it is not. At least from the Museum. You might still try the usual suspects, Amazon and the Book Depository. Or, if you can settle for a used copy, Abebooks.com or eBay > Books.

Peter Williams: "I know you live in the USA, but these books sales are pretty off-putting for your international readers."

Mike replies: We're a bit between a rock and a hard place. As I explained, that's just what it costs; the Museum doesn't want to lose money, which is reasonable. If they were set up for international shipping on a regular basis, I'm sure they could get the cost down drastically, but, as I've explained, they're not, because they don't ordinarily do any international shipping. On the other hand, if we refuse to sell to international readers altogether, it creates alienation—we've done that a few times in the past and the complaints can be bitter.

As antidote, consider that in numerous print sales, American readers have paid a little more in shipping than the actual cost so that international buyers can pay a little less than their actual cost (whenever you see the same shipping cost for U.S. and overseas, that probably pertains), meaning that American buyers have subsidized international shipping somewhat in those cases.

I've given the best alternative I know of in the footnote above, and I apologize again that we can't level this particular playing field. But we can't.

Notice: Next Book Sale Begins Next Tuesday!

Our next installment in presenting the work of the most excellent Keith F. Davis, curator and author extraordinaire and one of Yr. Hmbl. Ed.'s favorite writers on photography, begins next Tuesday. We will be offering a limited number of copies of The Origins of American Photography: From Daguerreotype to Dry-Plate, 1839-1885: The Hallmark Photographic Collection at The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art at a greatly reduced price. They are brand new books, protected, pristine, never touched by human hands, found in long-sealed crates in the ancient skull-encrusted bone-dry catacombs far beneath the massive walls of the Museum.

Okay, that last bit is me getting carried away. But they are brand new, never read, and the price will be very, very nice.

The new sale starts next Tuesday.

The book can of course be read alone; it covers its time period comprehensively. However, it was conceived and written to form a matched set when paired with An American Century of Photography: From Dry Plate to Digital, which we offered for a discounted price last February. The two books together comprise the best and most complete current history of American photography to the end of the 20th century. Like An American Century, Origins is copiously and beautifully illustrated and written in a readable, engaging style.

There are fewer copies available of Origins, but enough that you won't need to order absolutely immediately. The sale will run for thirty days or until we run out of books, whichever comes first. Please check back on Tuesday for more information.

Mike
(Thanks as usual to Keith and all the good folks at the Museum)

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Weese Platinum Prints Have Shipped

All of the 7x17 platinum/palladium prints from our most recent sale have now shipped (except for one or two where the buyers have made special arrangements). Please allow up to ten days for your prints to arrive—three weeks if you are overseas. After that, you can contact Carl or me if you have any problems. We will replace damaged or lost prints, so don't worry if the boat bringing yours to you is slow. You're covered.

Big thanks everyone who participated!

Mike

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Geoff Wittig: "Just by patronizing TOP's print sales for a couple of years, I've acquired exquisite examples of a range of photographic print technologies. Dye transfer, high-end inkjet, gelatin silver, and now platinum/palladium. Sort of like my own little museum collection. And at amazingly affordable prices! Thanks again, Mike; and thanks to all the photographers/printers who have shared their beautiful work. Cibachrome/Ilfochrome might be cool; just sayin'.  :-)  "

Rob: "My wife and I received our print of 'Fog' today and it is absolutely gorgeous. I think these prints really have to be seen in person to be appreciated: the detail is immersive, both from normal viewing distances and close up. This is the second print we've bought through TOP print sales, and it's a fine companion for Peter Turnley's 'Paris.' Looking forward to next year's sale!"

Russell Jacobs: "Took forever to mat and frame my 'Fog'...viewing the image up close is a near mystical experience. Exceeded my wildest expectations. Much thanks for sponsoring these sales."

Great News!

I'm very happy to announce that we will soon be hosting a sale of American photography curator Keith F. Davis's magnificent 2007 book The Origins of American Photography. The book is the companion volume to An American Century of Photography (1999) from our previous sale, and is similar to it in size, scope, and quality.

The full title is The Origins of American Photography: From Daguerreotype to Dry-Plate, 1839-1885: The Hallmark Photographic Collection at The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art. As soon as I got my copy of American Century, last Winter, I bought Origins from Amazon. The two make a matched set.

Like last time, the price will be very low and an extremely good value. We will be selling brand new books, surplus from the Museum Store's stock in storage.

I've very pleased about this. These two books together comprise the most thorough and up-to-date history of American photography, with a very readable text and copious amounts of outstanding illustrations. More news as I have it.

See you Monday! Have a nice weekend—and take some pictures if you can.

Mike

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Pt/Pd Tech Part II: A Little Help From Your Friends

By Carl Weese

[Part I is here]

Some people claim platinum printing involves black magic. I won’t go that far, but it’s certainly as much art as science. That’s partly because it’s just plain complicated. The ideal of testing one variable at a time is nice, but it just doesn’t happen in the platinum darkroom. You’re always juggling multiple factors.

This past March, Hahnemühle sent me some sample packs of its not-yet-released Platinum Rag paper (HPR). I did a couple quick tests and liked it so much I requested more for my “Digital Platinum” workshop at CAP/Penumbra in New York. (Disclosure: Hahnemühle is now a partial sponsor—donated paper—for my CAP workshop, which is entirely appropriate because CAP is a non-profit educational institution. For my current print offer I’m buying my paper from B&H, just like anybody else.)

The paper behaved about as you’d expect if one of the oldest and most respected paper makers in the world put their mind to the task of creating a paper from scratch for the process. The surface is so easy to work with that students, absolute beginners, were getting nice smooth coatings right away when we opened the samples on the second day of the workshop.

HPR and humidity
A sheet coated with Pt/Pd solution needs to be carefully prepared for printing. You have to dry it off, but you need to leave enough moisture in the paper to support the exposure process. Just how much humidity you need depends on the particular paper. I knew from beta-tester reports that the new material thrived in lower humidity environments than most other papers, which was great because the CAP workspace tends to be dryer than most papers like. The students’ prints showed that the paper is faster (shorter printing exposures) than the old standby, Platine, and had significantly more contrast. I’d need later on to do some tests to modify my negative preparation to compensate for the higher contrast. Meanwhile the workshop participants were delighted to be getting nice prints in their first experience with the process, and to see the fascinating differences between the prints on Platine and HPR.

Back in my darkroom I did precise tests with a file that combines an abstract step tablet and a small real-world picture. This let me find the shortest printing exposure that gives a maximum black, and then let me dial back one of my print driver settings (for outputting the digital negative) to keep the higher contrast from burning out the whites.

Then I did other stuff for most of the summer. When Mike and I had gotten our possible Print Offer selections down to four or five, working from on-screen files from scans, I decided it was time to test print them. As much as I like Fabriano, I didn’t want to do a volume run of printing with a paper that needs pretreatment, and anyway, I thought these pictures would look better on the brighter, cooler-toned HPR. So I got a package of 22x30 (which cuts down efficiently to 10x19.5) and immediately ran into a sticky situation. Literally. When a coated sheet that seemed to be perfectly prepared was printed with my large UV light source and vacuum frame, the edges of the coated area stuck to the negative film. This is not a complete surprise. These films are made super-absorbent so they can handle extreme ink loads, which is why we can make digital negatives for platinum with them, but absorbent is more or less a synonym for sticky. So I tried again and dried the next sheet enough that it would not be successful on Platine or Fabriano. The picture printed fine, but the edges of the coating stuck. This was strange. I’ve never before had this issue relate to scaling up the size of the print.

I coated a small sheet for my standard test negative, dried it totally with a hair dryer, and printed it right away. No sticking, but no Dmax. That’s no surprise, and most of the tones looked amazingly good for a bone-dry sheet. I coated and totally dried another one, then let it rest for ten minutes in 60% humidity, then printed it. It stuck. Just at the edges. I developed it anyway, and the print looked great, but the negative was toast from sensitizer transfer at the edges.

Community
The small community of platinum printers is very collegial and generous. I quickly found out that people working with HPR over the past few months liked to use the additive Tween20 with it. About Tween, there are people who swear by it, and people who swear at it. I’ve always been in the “at” group. I hate the way the solution “works” during the coating process with the additive, on most papers. (It’s a surfactant. For those familiar with the silver darkroom, think Photo-Flo on steroids.)

Well, if HPR came with an instruction sheet (it doesn’t) I think it would recommend the use of a surfactant. The action of coating was not badly impacted—the coating distributed and worked in more quickly. Most important, given fan-but-no-heat drying in a 45% humidity environment, it showed no sticking at all even in the hard pressure of the vac frame, and delivered a beautiful print. OK, problem solved.

That’s how you figure things out for platinum printing: experiments, limiting the variables as much as feasible, and a little help from your friends.

Carl

Carl Weese, who lives in rural Connecticut with his artist wife Tina, has been teaching the esoteric art of fine platinum printing in group workshops and private tutoring sessions since the 1990s.

©2016 by Carl Weese, all rights reserved

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Andrea B.: "Carl, can you tell me a bit about Pt/Pd archival properties? Any particular framing or hanging suggestions? Thanks!"

Carl replies: Andrea, Pt/Pd is the most archival of photographic media (well, carbon transfer may tie for that honor). The print consists of microscopic particles of non-reactive Pt/Pd metals embedded in fine, 100% cotton paper. Standard archival matting and framing materials are fine. Avoid dry-mounting; the print will lie perfectly flat positioned with corners or a paper hinge. UV-blocking glazing is a good idea to protect the paper, and avoid display where it will get direct sunlight.

Subdued or special lighting is not needed. In fact, it makes me a little crazy when I go to a museum show of wonderfully archival platinum prints and find the curators have set the lighting so low I can’t see the pictures properly!

A Note on Digital Internegatives

[Note: Mike here. I just thought I'd pluck these two comments from the mass of materials we've presented so far, to address the question of Pt/Pd printing direct from camera negatives vs. from internegs. —MJ the Ed.]

Clyde Rogers: "Platinum/palladium (Pt/Pd) printing 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 six 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."

Carl replies: Clyde, thanks for that great explanation of the dangers (to the negative) of platinum printing. Watch for some interesting news about humidity issues in the next technical post [coming up next —Ed.]. I only use the term "contact print" to refer to something made directly from the in-camera negative. There are a few photographers who work this way exclusively. 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.

Mike adds: When I was a student I wanted to buy examples of each of my teachers' work—a plan which faded quickly when I realized I would need stuff called "money" to carry it out—but I started by asking Frank DiPerna if I could buy a particular 8x10 platinum print from a series of portraits he made. He said I would have to make another choice. He had made one print of the picture I wanted, but, while making the second, the phone rang. When he got back to the easel, the "sun lamp" (meant for home suntanning, heavy in UV, also in heat) he was using to expose his prints had burned a hole in his negative. So the single print that existed of the picture I liked was unique and couldn't be replaced. I did buy an alternative—for $100, which was half off his regular studio-sale price, which I remember because it was a lot of money for the time—but I never liked it as much as the one I had originally chosen.

A quick snapshot of my Frank DiPerna. Sorry about the reflections. The frame is a bubinga moulding with an unusual "arrow" profile I copied from the frames at a Timothy O'Sullivan exhibit I saw in Philadelphia.

As far as internegs are concerned, Carl said "I’ll take a current state-of-the-art digital negative over a traditional internegative any day."

Mike
(Thanks to Clyde, Carl, and Frank)

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'A Banner Year for Platinum Printers'

By Carl Weese

It might be surprising, but I consider the most important variable in platinum printing, both technically and aesthetically, to be the paper, not the chemicals. The chemicals—double salts of platinum and palladium combined with ferric oxalate to make a coating solution—are pretty much the same as when the process was invented in the 1870s. You can modify the appearance of the print by changing the proportions of platinum (Pt) and palladium (Pd), or by using additives to increase the contrast or shift the color, but the biggest changes, and so the most important creative decisions, come from choice of paper.

In the heyday of platinum printing, manufactured, store-bought papers were the norm. Kodak alone made thirty different platinum papers around 1900. Warm and cool, thick and tissue-thin, smooth and rough—a vast array of choices, all of which disappeared around WWI when the noble metals because precious wartime commodities. The revival of Pt/Pd printing in the 1970s didn’t attract any manufacturers and to this day Pt/Pd prints are all prepared by hand, mixing the coating solution for each print and applying it to the paper with a brush or glass tube.

The weight (thickness), texture, and color of the paper all affect the appearance of the final print. However, it’s more complicated than that. The coating and eventually the image area of the print aren’t just applied to the paper like a crayon or charcoal; the coating solution interacts chemically with the sizing of the paper, and those reactions affect many aspects of the print, including color and contrast. Or, they make the paper useless for the process. Most papers are in that category, because manufacturers seeking the “archival” label for their products load them up with alkaline buffering agents. The coating needs a neutral or slightly acidic environment, so coating on a buffered paper results in dismal failure. Some papers with too much buffering can be rescued by treating them in a bath of highly dilute oxalic acid. Three-minute soak, hang up to dry, and the sheets are ready to print on in the morning. Fabriano Artistico is a paper that responds well to this treatment and the natural white version is one of my favorites.

2016 has been a banner year for platinum printers. Arches Platine, which has been around for years as the only paper manufactured and expressly intended for platinum printing, was revised with a new and improved version. Magnani Platinum, an excellent paper for platinum printing that was introduced a few years ago, then disappeared, is now available again, though I haven’t had a chance to test it yet. Most important, this spring, the venerable Hahnemühle company developed and introduced a new paper built from the ground up especially for Pt/Pd printing, though it is also proving to be excellent for many other alternate photographic processes. There are also several Japanese exotic-fiber papers specially prepared for Pt/Pd; they’re lovely, as well as stunningly expensive. I chose to use Hahnemühle Platinum Rag for this print offer because the characteristics of the paper are perfect for the two selected pictures.

Tomorrow I’ll describe the testing/experimenting process I went through to learn how to work with a newly introduced paper.

Carl

©2016 by Carl Weese, all rights reserved

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About the Pictures

By Carl Weese

There are places, locations, that strike me as simply magical. One that I’ve returned to many times is a five or six mile stretch of dirt road along a ridge line, a point, in central West Virginia. Most of the hollows on either side are farmed, and no matter what the weather conditions might be like nearby, somehow the light when I get there is always fantastic.

Another magical place is a farm in far western Virginia that happens to belong to an old friend. I made “August Morning Fog” at the farm in 2001. I’d driven at dawn from the farmhouse in the valley up to the highest hayfield. There was ground fog (I think there always is on summer mornings there) and the views back into the valley were spectacular. In short order I made several pictures with my 7x17 and one with my 12x20-inch camera. When I turned around to take the 12x20 back to my truck, I saw, more or less, this picture. The 7x17 came out again and I made several variations of this as the light brightened and the the array of spider webs in the tree branches glowed.

I made the second picture in the spring of 2000 in the town of Easley, South Carolina. One of the facades has a large sign with the name “Dixie Milling.” It was morning again, but this time in clear sunlight an hour or so after dawn.

For those interested in technical details, both pictures were made with a Korona Panoramic View Camera (it says "Panoramic" right on the nameplate on the front standard). The lens used for both is a 305mm Schneider G-Claron. As far as camera adjustments go, the tree picture was pretty much, “ƒ/45 and be there.” I metered the darker trees and gave an exposure of several seconds to retain detail in the shadows. For the mill, I took advantage of the fact that the G-Claron design provides a large circle of coverage that grows dramatically as the lens is stopped down. At ƒ/64 I was able to use almost all of the camera’s front rise capability in order to take in the top of the mill with the camera perfectly plumb to avoid convergence in the lines of the building.

Both of these prints are made from digital negatives slightly larger than the image area of the in-camera negative. I’ll have more about the printing process in another post.

Carl

Carl Weese, a former Contributing Editor of Photo Techniques magazine and occasional contributor to TOP, is the co-author of The New Platinum Print (1998). He has been teaching the art of platinum printing for nearly twenty years. He uses large and ultra-large format cameras extensively and has been an enthusiastic advocate of the use of digital internegatives for platinum printing. He has put many hundreds of thousands of miles on a succession of trucks photographing vernacular scenes all over North America. His work is in many private collections.

©2016 by Carl Weese, all rights reserved

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.

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Doug Howk: "Carl, I believe you've said elsewhere that you do not adjust contrast when Pt/Pd printing. Since these are from digital negatives, do you still try to retain the contrast from the original scene?"

Carl replies: Doug, yes, I make the prints using a mix with about 20% Pt and no contrast agent. Getting that long a scale in the digital negative was the primary challenge.

John Sarsgard: "Carl's photographs celebrate the world around us in perfectly composed images of the extraordinary ordinary. They reach full realization in his beautifully made platinum/palladium prints with the characteristic Pt/Pd delicacy in the midtones. I take issue with some of the earlier comments about his choice of subject matter. There is much that is interesting about our world on its own...without concepts that feed commentary by art critics. I also enjoy some of the conceptual photography that I see, but not more than Carl's work. I own several of his prints...you need to see them to fully appreciate."

Carl replies: John, your check is in the mail.  :-)

CharlieH: "Curious whether Carl likes to see these framed so that the black irregular borders are not covered?"

Carl replies: I leave that up to you. If I were matting one for myself I would probably include a thin black line with either of these pictures. That could be my Leica roots showing, though.  

toto: "Is 7x17 the size of the paper or of the image?"

Mike replies: I make the image area 6 3/4ths by 17 inches, give or take a sixteenth or so. The paper is several inches bigger.

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.

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'The Lost Art' Platinum Print Offer Starts Soon

Carl Weese with his 7x17-inch view camera

Our next print sale starts next Monday, September 12th at about 9:00 in the morning. We'll be offering a choice of two beautiful 7x17-inch platinum prints by our friend and longtime contributor Carl Weese.

It's a bit odd to say that Carl has been working with the very latest methods, considering that the difficult, expensive, but exquisite art of platinum/palladium printing arguably reached its apogee before the First World War. But as we'll tell you about, Carl, who is well known in the tiny Pt/Pd-printing community, has been working hard to fine-tune the latest methods and papers, to superb effect.

Please come by on Monday to see the pictures (or rather images of the pictures, assuming that doesn't confuse anyone).

Mike

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Walter Glover: "'Images of the pictures' is so true. Pt/Pd prints are an artifact to be experienced as an intrinsically linked component of the work, along with the image content itself. Regardless, I'm looking forward to seeing whatever facsimiles you present. I am a Pt/PD fan and also a long time Carl Weese fan."