A big "Thank you"

[dwross]

A couple of days ago an APUG friend told me about a thread over there where Sean was dipping his toe into the concept of 'inclusion'. That discussion hasn't gone as far as I might have wished, but not for lack of trying by some of the most creative members of the hybrid community, especially Katharine Thayer. Her committment to the dynamic art that always has been photography shines like a beacon. She's never written better. Thank you, KT. I hope you and others can convince the analog-box folks that photography cannot be dissected and displayed on different floors of the museum. The alternative process discussions are sadly hollow without the ability to discuss the interrelationship between the wet materials and the negative; increasingly a digital negative.

This brings me to a personal ironic aha! I had yesterday. As much as I deplore fundamentalism (religious and political as well as artistic) I owe the fundamentalists at APUG a big debt of gratitude. They are the reason I bought my now-beloved Pentax K10. Originally, I had planned to make color-separation negatives from scanned color transparencies. I never would have believed that inserting a digital negative into a process that is wholly analog (none of my film cameras even use batteries and my exposure meter is a 30-year old anolog model!) would bring my soul as a photographer into question. Well, you know how it goes in the fundy churches. You tell a kid she can't listen to rock music or she'll go to hell, she's as likely to join a punk rock band as stay in that church. In my prime I couldn't carry around a camera bigger than 5x7 and baby, I'm no longer in my prime. ULF's are fine and dandy for some. Me, I'll just say: Thank the gods (and APUG) for my Pentax.

Also, a couple of days ago I sent a rather strident pm to Sean and jd. I would like to publicly apologize for that. We each do what we do and believe what we believe. It's undoubtedly the best way, which is good, because it seems to be an immutable part of human nature.

d

[Katharine Thayer]

Well, gee, I'm not sure I deserve that, but thanks for the thanks. I've actually been wishing I'd stayed out of it entirely.

Edit: I said more about this, but in the shower I decided my post took a wrong tone, so I deleted the rest and will try to better express what I mean at another time. Thanks for your patience, and let's keep talking.

kt

[Paul_C]

That thread and a kind PM exchange with Sean clarified a great deal for me as well about both APUG and hybridphoto. Previously I'd gotten the impression like some others that this place was a kind of ghetto where APUG sent its unwanted topics.

I'm thinking of them both differently now.

[Katharine Thayer]

That thread and a kind PM exchange with Sean clarified a great deal for me as well about both APUG and hybridphoto. Previously I'd gotten the impression like some others that this place was a kind of ghetto where APUG sent its unwanted topics.

Paul, I think that impression is strengthened by the practice on APUG to suggest, any time ANY digital topic comes up, that the topic should be brought to hybrid because that's where digital discussions belong.

After participating in that thread, I was persuaded that Sean really does mean for hybrid to be about hybrid processes and not just a place to dump digital topics that crop up on APUG, and was reassured. But after reflecting on it, I don't see that most people understand the distinction (for example someone on that thread asked me if I object to discussion of digital negatives on hybridphoto --!!-- which shows that he has no understanding whatever of what hybrid means) and I'm not sure the assurances and the sudden appearance of a mission statement to the effect that hybridphoto is about processes that use both traditional and digital methods make any practical difference; perceptions make hybridphoto whatever it has become or will become.

I'm not sure that it's even agreed among us here, whether we're about hybrid processes or whether this is a site for all things digital, APUG's de facto digital site. If many people here think that, and if everyone at APUG thinks that, then that's what it will be.
Katharine

[ann]

it never crossed my mind that this site was to be a site for all things digital.

It was to be about hybrid processes.

I must agree however, if i have a series digital question i might look for somewhere here on this site to talk with as i respect their body of knowledge.

There are lots of digital sites available , but my experience is they are full of point and shoot types even with the use of higher end cameras; however, this my be a serious lack of understanding on my part.

[Paul_C]

on the flip side, would this site be for all things analog?

[David A. Goldfarb]

The digital questions we get on APUG that we usually recommend hybridphoto.com for tend to be about scanning film or prints. Starting with film and bringing it into the digital domain is hybrid. Sometimes there have been questions about making alt-process prints from digital originals, and that seems like fair territory for the hybrid site. The intention, as I understand it, was to make this site open to all discussions that involved the combination of traditional and digital methods.

If someone starts a thread of the "which DSLR should I buy?" sort, which we don't get too often, we don't usually send them to the hybrid site. We just delete the thread.

One question is--what is "too digital" for this group? I get the sense that some people find, say, scanning a color negative or transparency and printing it using LightJet or inkjet might fall into the "too digital" category (even though it starts from film, and in the case of LightJet ends with a C-print, and falls within the mission statement of the site), and what they really want is an alt-process forum that is open to digital and conventional techniques, and excludes more routine combinations of film and digital. My concern is that perhaps that emphasis on alternative processes is scaring off some potential participants.

Is there some reason these different kinds of hybrid discussions can't happen in the same place? Of course no one will be interested in everything that is discussed, but there should be some overlap, and it might not be a bad thing for someone who comes to hybridphoto.com to learn about making inkjet prints from scanned color transparencies to learn also that they can use the same printer to make digital negatives and alt-process prints.

[clay]

David, I find this a fascinating observation, because one of the more vocal 'digital capture sucks 24/7' posters over on APUG actually has this as his workflow, or at least that is my understanding. That is: shoot film, scan, then print a chemical print exposed digitally with a laser (Lightjet). That always tickled my funnybone when some of the threads 'over there' would descend into an F5 whirlwind of digital denunciation.

My sense is that most of the people 'over here' are doing digital as a means to making alt process or traditional SG prints. To my way of thinking, the digital negative has been one of the greatest boons to the alt-process world since its revival in the 1960's.

I can now teach workshops and ask the students to bring nothing more than a digital file to make into a negative. We can spend more time printing and less time talking about how to expose and develop a negative for a good palladium print. They come away with a lot more successful prints than back when one of the class requirements was 'Bring negatives that are contrasty and are big enough to contact print' which automatically excluded the vast majority of photographers shooting small cameras.

And I see that as a niche that is well served by this site. There is really no other home on the web where this type of information is shared. I always felt like I was sneaking a beer behind the shed when I posted on the APUG 'Gray Area' subforum. Those discussions were clearly not welcome by some of the more vocal APUG participants. On the other hand, I feel like I can come here and have a tasty beer without my teetotaling Aunt running to the phone to call my parents.

I think this place is fine. Everyone knows the best music is played in joints you are not supposed to go to.

One question is--what is "too digital" for this group? I get the sense that some people find, say, scanning a color negative or transparency and printing it using LightJet or inkjet might fall into the "too digital" category (even though it starts from film, and in the case of LightJet ends with a C-print, and falls within the mission statement of the site), and what they really want is an alt-process forum that is open to digital and conventional techniques, and excludes more routine combinations of film and digital. My concern is that perhaps that emphasis on alternative processes is scaring off some potential participants.

[Katharine Thayer]

One question is--what is "too digital" for this group? I get the sense that some people find, say, scanning a color negative or transparency and printing it using LightJet or inkjet might fall into the "too digital" category (even though it starts from film, and in the case of LightJet ends with a C-print, and falls within the mission statement of the site), and what they really want is an alt-process forum that is open to digital and conventional techniques, and excludes more routine combinations of film and digital. My concern is that perhaps that emphasis on alternative processes is scaring off some potential participants.

Is there some reason these different kinds of hybrid discussions can't happen in the same place? Of course no one will be interested in everything that is discussed, but there should be some overlap, and it might not be a bad thing for someone who comes to hybridphoto.com to learn about making inkjet prints from scanned color transparencies to learn also that they can use the same printer to make digital negatives and alt-process prints.

Odd, that's the same question someone on APUG asked me: how much percentage of digital is "too digital"? I thought I answered the question there, but I'll answer it again. It's not a matter of percentage of digital, but whether something is hybrid or not. A digital image from a digital camera, scanned directly to the gallery, is not hybrid. A digital image that's printed to inkjet or any of the other digital printing machines, is not hybrid.

The processes you describe above, that all start with with film, are all hybrid, and of course can all be accommodated in different places on this site. I've already said several times that I applaud the organization of the site that makes that possible, that different constituencies can have our own discussions here without getting in each other's way. I have never argued, or desired, the hybrid site to be only for alternative processes.

I do think the different constituencies may have somewhat different goals and philosophies, but as long as the organization of the site allows us to coexist, there's no reason for that to be a particular problem.

As to suggestions that topics be taken from APUG to hybrid, the instances I was thinking of weren't instances where a moderator had made the suggestion, but where other members have suggested, when digital topics come up, "Take it to hybrid."

[Katharine Thayer]

on the flip side, would this site be for all things analog?

What would be the point of that? That's what APUG is for.