Master Printing Class

Following up on the overwhelming success of our earlier Master Print Classes starting in 2004, this workshop is again a direct response to popular demand. Students who have taken the Complete Photographic Process workshops presented several times each year since 1990 have requested a concentrated printing course allowing them to print in the darkroom each day while obtaining feedback, direction, and hands-on assistance from Bruce throughout the duration of the course. This class is designed to meet those requests. It takes photographers/printers with a solid level of darkroom experience and skill to a new, higher level of quality. This class can also be of great value to digital practitioners, since virtually all digital darkroom procedures are direct translations of traditional darkroom techniques.

The number of students accepted for the workshop will be strictly limited to seven. There are seven high quality LPL dichroic enlargers in Bruce's darkroom, and each student will be assigned an enlarger station for the workshop. Students can print from the negatives they bring to the workshop from the first print to the final print, with timely suggestions and help from Bruce. Additionally, students may wish to have Bruce demonstrate printing techniques—burning, dodging, multi-contrast printing, and potassium ferricyanide bleaching—using his own negatives, or Bruce may suggest an opportunity for full-class demonstrations using a student's negative.

The activities of the course will depend on the needs and desires of the group. The workshop will begin with a thorough review and discussion of all student work brought to the workshop. This seerves to give everyone a good idea of which prints are highly successful, whch could be far more successful with altered printing, and which may never make the grade. Following the print review, Bruce can demonstrate some printing techniques if students request such demonstrations. Beyond that, it's hands-on printing by students.

In addition to the hands-on student printing with continuous assistance by Bruce, and having demonstrations when useful, students may desire to see how contrast-reduction masks (also known as unsharp masks) are made, to make them, and to see their effect on the printing of a negative. This can be done with or without pin registration. Bruce can also show how a sharp mask is made using pin registration, and when such a mask would be helpful, or even necessary.

Students may request Bruce to show and discuss his own work at any time during the week. This can include viewing any or all negatives of prints shown, full discussion of printing techniques used to make the image, and even full discussion of how the negative was exposed and developed, and the thinking behind the image. The decision to have such sessions will be a group decision, and will be offered as an option. The workshop will aim toward maximum flexibility, and toward meeting each student's needs throughout.

The workshop cost includes all darkroom equipment, chemicals and paper.

Please note that the workshop begins the afternoon of the announced session, making the first day a day of instruction. We ask all participants to arrive the day of the workshop begins, to join us for an informal get-together with refreshments and desserts and meet your fellow students and Bruce informally. Immediately after that, the workshop begins