Back in the mid-‘90’s, I was in my all-time favorite area in Utah.   Island in the Sky District of Canyonlands National Park. The National Park itself comprises three distinctive landscapes, the most popular is the Needles District followed by the largest land area, Island in the Sky District and then the extremely remote and least visited Maze District.  The Island in the Sky District is where I am drawn to the most for several reasons.   By its nature, it is subterranean with much of its interest below the easily accessible and high-level plateau and system of developed, and undeveloped 4WD roads.  This type of vantage point provides a terrific perspective looking down into the ever-changing erosion so common in Utah. In addition, the higher vantage point offers the opportunity to include just a hint of the sky for a relationship but not to be a dominating part of the composition unless warranted.  To my aesthetic, the sky is always brighter than I wish it were and that reason is due to the limitations of film, or digital capture. More appropriately, our eye-brain relationship is an extraordinary real-time phenomenon that can never be equaled by technological advances.   

   The contrast range seen in this month’s photograph is a perfect example of the shortcomings of any form of photographic capture, film or digital.  That is particularly true when including the sky as a major component of the image. Failed images as seen in the first image below have lead me over the years, to think in terms of “learning to see like film”.   Or more specifically to see as the final photographic process of choice will appropriately render.  For the sake of an easy analogy, “Learn to See as Film does.”  I made the below image 25 years ago in the hopes of creating a dramatic sky as all the components were present.  The foreground had a terrific side to side movement, interest, and texture. I hoped I could print enough drama and contrast into the sky when I returned home in the mid-’90s. To be clear, the sky at the time of exposure was quite bright, and not a lot of definition between the clouds and blue sky.  Therefore there was little reason for a blue darkening filter as this would have taken away shadow detail due to the shadows are illuminated by blue light.

  Early in my film and silver Gelatin printing career, I learned that I responded to higher mid-tone contrast over the literal rendering of a scene embraced by many silver printers. Mid-Tone Contrast will always be a function of the papers’ inherit contrast, not negative contrast !!  Dating all the way back to the late ‘80s I would intentionally design my negatives to a lower highlight density so I could then intentionally print on a higher contrast single graded paper. That somewhat unconventional approach was always an ongoing debate among the best printers of their time. My mid-‘90s Dead Horse Point negative was designed in this manner. However, the deep red sandstone of the foreground in conjunction with the always too bright sky I could not produce the drama with single contrast grade enlarging papers, so the image was retired before it ever saw the light of day !

  Take a look at these two comparisons, the top image was a “straight” print of arguably Ansel Adam’s most iconic and famous photograph. Moonrise Over Hernandez, New Mexico. Ansel’s initial printings looked like the first version seen.  Some years later he realized a more dramatic and higher contrast version aligned with his vision. Adams’s Moonrise on single graded paper is a testament to his supreme talents as a darkroom printer.  I do not possess his darkroom skills, but with 35 + years of darkroom experience and the advent of “multi-contrast” papers, the possibilities of significantly departing from reality in the darkroom printing process were within my reach.

   Multi-Contrast papers are a leap forward in emulsion design and theory. Light sensitive emulsions were formulated to respond to a particular light spectrum. The easy explanation is emulsions sensitive predominately to Green-light were incorporated with emulsions responsive to Blue-light. Weaving these emulsions into one coating on photographic paper is pure genesis. This allowed manufacturers to eliminate 4-5 different contrast paper grades and put all their R&D into emulsion design for only one paper. While it took 25+ years for serious printers to accept the new technology, today MC papers are the industry standard and provide every bit the quality of their predecessors, single contrast grade papers.  

    MC papers didn’t reach my darkroom until the early 2000s. A new technique called Split Contrast printing was becoming popular and l pursued the possibilities with passion and grew to understand the enormous potential of MC papers. Through years of trial and error, I’ve evolved into a technique where I use only the extremes of each colored light to affect the delicate mid-tone contrast relationships.  This technique and understanding coupled with the EMA film processing technique I perfected back in ‘03 have lead celebrities in the analog world to describe my silver prints on par with any they’ve ever seen.  

   Consider the comparison below when talking specifically about this month’s photograph. The top image is shown in an un-manipulated form as a means to illustrate what the film saw and rendered in a literal manner.   Back in the mid ’90’s my skill set would have allowed me to preserve more luminosity in the foreground areas. The bright sky could still have been rendered with subtle detail throughout the photograph.  What would be lost is the dramatic tonal differences in the clouds as well as the heightened mid-tone relationships in the darker foreground.  Mid-tone contrast is a direct result of the paper’s predetermined contrast.  So, using a single graded paper to achieve the mid-tone contrast relationships I wanted would have pushed the foreground into deep dark tonalities while pushing the higher areas such as the clouds and sky up near the limits of the paper. Those would have been the trades off using single contrast grade paper. 

Look closely at the photograph on the left of the Cockatoo.  It is a single sheet of Multi-Contrast paper, the left side of the print is exposed only to Blue-light while the right side of the paper only received a Green-light exposure.  The contrast difference on a single piece of photographic paper is striking.  Once a printer fully understands how far this paper design can be exploited, no pun intended, the sky is the limit !

   With MC papers when you begin to “steer” the two colored lights in the direction that suits your desired end result these literal relationships can now be greatly exaggerated. In very general terms the photograph at the bottom of the page has much less Green-light in some areas and at the same time a tremendous amount of Blue-light in those same areas where relationships are exaggerated such as the sky. The printing of Dead Horse Pt. is the most extensive “dodging” (holding backlight) and “burning” (adding light) to specific areas within each colored light I have ever done to achieve a final print. Intricate corrections that could never be done with single contrast grade papers no matter who the printer.  So long as these corrections are undetectable, that is really the only concern in arriving at what I had hoped the image could be back in the mid-’90s when I exposed the negative. There is a short video filmed at Hartford City Hall illustrating how mid-tone contrast relationships can be altered and exaggerated.  There is also an in-depth article I wrote for Unblinkingeye.com, an online publication that can be accessed for free @ Power of Process Separation for anyone interested in a deeper dive into my Power of Process method of printing.

   Very simply, years ago, and entirely appropriate for the times the Ansel Adams negative design was the prevailing standard. That was, with single contrast grade papers as the final process, negatives were designed to affect the final print contrast as a function of the negative’s density range. Today’s MC papers are best suited when generous shadow exposure and compressing or reducing negative development yielding a relatively low contrast negative.  Quite the opposite of the negative design of 25 years ago, today’s MC papers are at their best when print contrast is a function of the paper rather than negative contrast. Certainly, my darkroom printing skills have grown over the last 20 years, in conjunction with Multi-Contrast papers, and the unique way I process film enabled some extraordinary departures from reality as is clearly seen in Dead Horse Point, UT. Stay tuned for more tech-oriented imagery as 2019 winds down.

Dead Horse Point, Island in the Sky District, Canyonlands, UT.