Fox Fridays: In­tro­duc­tion to Digi­tal Neg­a­tives with Quad­Tone­R­IP

This is a one-day work­shop to in­tro­duce cre­at­ing digi­tal neg­a­tives for al­ter­na­tive process print­ing. This work­shop is de­signed for peo­ple to get start­ed mak­ing digi­tal neg­a­tives us­ing inkjet print­ers and Quad­Tone­R­IP. The sys­tem is de­signed to be com­plete­ly vis­ual, and not re­quire man­u­al cal­cu­la­tions or com­plex math on the part of the print mak­er.

Top­ics will in­clude:
- Brief in­tro­duc­tion to inkjet tech­nol­o­gy and Ep­son print­ers
- Com­par­ing dif­fer­ent digi­tal neg­a­tive meth­ods and curve cre­ation tech­niques
- Print­ers, pa­pers, trans­parency ma­te­r­i­al, inks, and col­or man­age­ment set­tings for digi­tal neg­a­tives
- Op­ti­miz­ing your files for print­ing
- Cal­i­bra­tion for dif­fer­ent pro­cess­es us­ing Quad­Tone­Pro­fil­er-QCDN
- Ba­sic in­tro­duc­tion to plat­inum-pal­la­di­um print­ing to demon­strate the cal­i­bra­tion process We will be us­ing a stan­dard Pal­la­di­um and NA2 print­ing method but the process is trans­fer­able to any process you plan to use.

Par­tic­i­pant Re­quire­ments: Apple/mac­OS com­put­er for the digi­tal neg­a­tive cal­i­bra­tion and print­ing soft­ware
4x5-5x7-inch high-res­o­lu­tion black and white digi­tal im­age to print
Ba­sic im­age edit­ing tech­niques in Cap­ture One, Light­Room, Phot­oshop, or Affin­i­ty Pho­to

Takeaways

The one-day work­shop won’t al­low time for a lot of hands on print­ing, but you will come away with a PtPd neg­a­tive and good fi­nal print from one of your im­ages and an un­der­stand­ing of how to cre­ate neg­a­tives for any process you want to ex­plore.

Cross-disciplinary connections

Leather work crosses with fashion, product development, manufacturing, fine art and architecture, particularly for interior accents, furniture, lighting and objects.

Instructor

Richard Boutwell, orig­i­nal­ly from Joshua Tree, Cal­i­for­nia, is a pho­tog­ra­ph­er and print-mak­er based near Phil­adelphia, Penn­syl­va­nia. His work is based around as­pects of ar­chae­ol­o­gy, fam­i­ly his­to­ry and myth, and the in­flu­ence of spir­i­tu­al­i­ty, tech­nol­o­gy, and so­cial me­dia on how we in­ter­act with the nat­ur­al en­vi­ron­ment. Through it, he ex­am­ines his per­son­al con­nec­tion to the greater cul­tur­al, indus­tri­al, and en­vi­ron­men­tal his­to­ry of the land­scape—most­ly in­volv­ing is­sues of wa­ter rights and the im­pact of recre­ation in the desert land­scapes of the South­west. In ad­di­tion to his tra­di­tion­al land­scape pho­tog­ra­phy, he is now com­bin­ing his pho­tographs with 3D scans of the en­vi­ron­ment, found ob­jects, his­tor­i­cal ma­te­ri­als, and ap­pro­pri­at­ed map­ping and sci­en­tif­ic data.

Boutwell be­gan pho­tograph­ing in col­lege in the year 2000 while study­ing mu­sic and pur­su­ing a ca­reer as a jazz bassist. Short­ly into his first dark­room course and be­ing ex­posed to the beau­ty and cre­ative pos­si­bil­i­ties of fine-art pho­tographs, he dropped all his music class­es and de­vot­ed him­self to study­ing the his­to­ry and craft of pho­tog­ra­phy. In­stead of pur­su­ing a for­mal fine-arts de­gree, he relo­cat­ed to Bucks Coun­ty, Penn­syl­va­nia to en­ter an in­ten­sive long-term ap­pren­tice­ship with the pho­tog­ra­phers Michael A. Smith and Paula Cham­lee. He worked as their dark­room, stu­dio, and field as­sistant from 2002 un­til 2008, and then be­came their full-time printer and ran the scan­ning and digi­tal stu­dio at their pho­tog­ra­phy book pub­lish­ing com­pa­ny, Lodi­ma Press, un­til 2015. In bal­ance with his fam­i­ly life and fine-art prac­tice, he teach­es pho­tog­ra­phy and fine-art print­ing pri­vate­ly through B+W Mastery. Boutwell also cre­at­ed spe­cial­ized soft­ware that helped ad­vance the craft of digi­tal black-and-white and his­toric- process print­ing now used by pho­tog­ra­phers world­wide. His pho­tographs have been in­clud­ed in na­tion­al and in­ternational group ex­hi­bi­tions and are in pri­vate and pub­lic col­lec­tions. He has served as a guest lec­tur­er on the his­to­ry of land­scape pho­tog­ra­phy at mid-At­lantic col­leges and uni­ver­si­ties.