White

Well I am safely back home from my time in San Francisco and it is back to security guard world tonight.

One of the things I noticed when looking at so many gelatin silver prints this last trip was that even the great photographers have problem printing white tones (or their assistants have trouble printing their bosses negs). Richard Avedon, Diann Arbus and Michael Kenna all had blocked or partially blocked up whites in their prints. Kenna's whites  were very nicely handled and might have been by choice but with the other 2 I got the feeling they just let the whites go bright white because that was the only option they had when printing because of blown up blocked whites in the negs.  Printing in the pre multigrade paper printing days (where you can burn at lower contrasts) the whites would have been especially hard to handle.

It is good to know that we all can have similar problems with whites, it makes these photo gods I admire so much seem more human.