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10.5 FINE ART PLATINUM PRINTER GOES DIGITAL | ||
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Featuring Tom Millea
TMillea@aol.com
http://www.tommillea.com/
If Ansel Adams and Edward Weston were alive today, one wonders if they would be exploring digital imaging. It’s hard to say, but Ansel at least was not so rooted in the classic ways that he wasn’t curious about new technologies. Not only was he scientifically oriented, over the years he became great friends with Edward Land and spent much time using Polaroid materials.
The Carmel, California area where both Weston and Adams lived has a long tradition in photography that continues to this day. Among the many fine photographers still working there is Tom Millea, a direct descent of the great photographers who came before him. Like them, Tom makes his living from the sale of his prints. His photographs are in private, corporate and museum collections in the United States and Europe. His "Yosemite Valley" portfolio was the first one ever published by The Ansel Adams Gallery, Best's Studio, Inc. in its ninety-two years of supporting photography.
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Tree at Pt. Lobos (click to enlarge). Copyright Tom Millea. |
During his almost three decades in Carmel, Tom got to know Ansel quite well. Although Tom worked in Platinum photography and Ansel in silver, Ansel encouraged him and had a lasting impact on his life. As Tom has said "I am always surprised to see the number of people Ansel has affected and how long the effect has lasted. "
When Tom won the second Ruttenberg Fellowship from the Friends of Photography, it was Ansel who presented him the prestigious award.
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Tom Millea in his digital darkroom in the mountains above Carmel. |
Although Tom is a classic photographer in every sense of the word, he is on the frontier exploring the use of computers and digital imaging in fine art photography. He feels that many photographers have not yet made the connection that it is possible and EASY to make beautiful straight images using their desktop equipment. He’s interested in sharing what he’s learned to show others how beautiful photographs can be made using the computer and Photoshop in the most simple ways. He teaches privately and has repeatedly proved his contention that "I can teach someone the basics in one day. I can promise a student that he or she will make prints as beautiful as mine in one day. How's that for simple! I can promise beautiful print quality—I cannot promise good images."
"I learned a long time ago that the greatest images from the greatest artists are made with the simplest equipment—often under primitive conditions. From Alfred Stieglitz making prints in his bathtub to Edward Weston printing with a light bulb hanging from the ceiling. Even Ansel Adams had a VERY simple darkroom with a homemade enlarger. It is not the equipment, it is the person behind the equipment. I guess that is heresy for all the equipment makers out there, but that is a fact. (I have seen darkrooms all over this country of ours that could well be trendy restaurants as well as darkrooms. I am still waiting for a good photograph to come out of these places.)"
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Victoria. Copyright Tom Millea. |
Here's what Tom has to say about integrating digital imaging into his platinum style.
I feel myself to be like most people out there. I do not have a great deal of money and there are no big corporations backing my work and giving me lots of equipment to use. Whatever work I do I must pay for myself, so out of necessity I must find ways of working that give me the results I expect with equipment I can afford. I have reduced the process to its simplest elements and allow my talent for image making to do the rest."
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I have been photographing for thirty-five years, most of that time doing Platinum prints, a time consuming, deadly process, which uses hydrochloric acid and platinum salts along with other toxic chemicals to make extremely beautiful prints. For years I looked for other ways to make an image as beautiful but found none.
In the late 1980s I saw the possibility of making prints with the computer and printing them in a process called Iris. I used this process, working with master printers, and the results were beautiful. Unfortunately, the prints were only stable for a few years. I was forced to back off. Collectors demand that prints last forever and then some. If the prints do not last, collectors will not buy them and I make no money to live. I kept at it, working with different people, until finally, just last year, the inks were made to be stable and the quality became even better.
Church. Copyright Tom Millea.
Finally it is possible to make a print which has the same lush tones as a platinum print. These new Iris prints are made on beautiful papers (such as Arches) and will last for an indefinite period of time. (150 years at least. That is the same amount of time photography has been around.)
I am what is known as a straight photographer. My images are not conceptual. That means I do not make things up in my head. I do not take pieces from many subjects and put them together to make new objects. Rather, I see something I wish to photograph and then make the photograph. The final print is a reflection of what I saw and the way I respond to what I saw in the real world.
I go into the world with a traditional camera (Nikon S 90) and film (Scala, a B&W slide film) and make my photographs. Be it a portrait or a landscape or a figure study, I still use a traditional camera and film. But that is where the traditional ends.
Agfa makes a beautiful film called Scala. It is a B&W film which produces B&W slides. Polaroid also makes a B&W film called Polapan which you can process yourself with a small machine made by them. Both films produce excellent results. I use 35 mm film and camera for making platinum prints because it saves me a generation of negative making when I need a negative for the Platinum print. (Platinum prints are a contact printing process. The size of the negative is the size of the print. Using 35 mm means I must make a large negative in the darkroom to make a print big enough for people to enjoy.)
Oasis 3. Copyright Tom Millea.
So now I have a 35 mm slide. No negative to fool with, no contact sheets to look over, just a slide easily viewed. Once I find an image I wish to print I place it in my Polaroid 35 mm scanner. I crank up my Apple 8500 power Mac and import the slide into Photoshop. Very easy and very fast. Takes less than a minute. I have 208 Mb of ram which is more than most small photographs need, but I find it helps with the speed of doing tasks. Once in Photoshop I can then manipulate the image exactly as I would in the darkroom. Contrast, cropping, size, color, density, all the tasks one does in the darkroom.
Except I am able to look out of my window at the mountains which surround my house and I do not have to breath all the toxic fumes locked in some dismal room with a small red light!
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Tom on the deck outside of his Carmel home. |
I use the Apple 8.5 operating system on the computer which makes getting into and out of files very simple and easy. I also have an Apple 21 inch monitor which makes seeing the image a pleasure. I can see all the scratches and dust spots before I print the photograph which saves me a lot of money in paper, ink and time. I had to learn the importance of a good monitor the hard way.
With this equipment, I can concentrate on making the photograph, not on which buttons to push or where some program is stored.
Once I have the image looking the way I want it to look on the screen, I then make a print on my Epson Photo EX printer. I can easily make 11x14 inch prints on this machine. Most often I print using black ink only, so the prints last much longer. If I want a larger print, I send it to my Iris printer in NYC and have an Archival print made for shows and galleries.
It has taken ten years of work to come to this simple level. The process is now at a point where the average person can work and produce images as good or better than can be produced in a traditional darkroom. I can teach people to make beautiful prints in one day on the Mac. Now photographers are able to concentrate on seeing the world and producing their images, rather than becoming buried in technical problems which cause a person to forget why they are making a photograph in the first place!
There is more to this story. This is the part about how I save a huge amount of money and time.
In the past it was necessary for me to have a huge inventory of prints and to ship these prints to many collectors and galleries and museums. The prints were constantly in the mail or Fed-ex. The number of prints lost or damaged was considerable. Now, when someone wants to see the work that I do, I simply e-mail the photographs to them at no cost to me! I can put together whole shows and provide exact sequences over the net. I can have answers the same day and produce only the prints the gallery wants to use for any given show.
Carrie. Copyright Tom Millea.
This saves thousands of dollars a month and a huge amount of time. I can make new images rather than slaving in the darkroom guessing what someone might like to see. I need only have about half the inventory I needed in the past which again saves me huge dollars. Consider that a platinum print might cost 100 to 1000 dollars to make and the amount of money saved is considerable.
Showing you photographs is a good example. Yesterday I sent off 30 images to a gallery on the East Coast. It cost me nothing.
Finding ways to show my photographs electronically has cut my costs in half. It allows me to make new images with money that was spent on production and mailings. As an Artist, I want to do new work not continuously make old photographs over and over. Now I can do it. This is very exciting to me. I can reach collectors all over the world by using the worldwide web to show my work. This has never been possible before. I can print whole books on the web for no cost and take orders from people who see it. In the next few years
I will save hundreds of thousands of dollars on book costs alone!!!
I can put together a new book any time I want and as many books as I feel like doing and publish them on the web. If the response is good then I might publish them in print. The possibilities are endless.
For Galleries and Museums, I simply write and e-mail with a new photograph or two and ask if they want to see more. If the answer is yes I send twenty by e-mail. I have my answer in a day or two and it costs no money. In the past, sending prints through the mail might cost me 75 or 100 dollars to pack and ship 20 prints plus the cost of the prints. The money adds up very fast. I am just delighted with the advantages of using the computer for making art.
My audience has increased tenfold and with the proper advertising there is no limit to the number of people who will see my work.
