The Expressive Black-and-White Digital Print

Join renowned educator Craig Stevens for a master printmaking workshop in Santa Fe this summer. You are challenged and inspired to explore digital printmaking through the classic and time-honored medium of black and white. Craig writes:

I was very fortunate, at a particular period in my life, to share my studio with my mentor Paul Caponigro. That period (almost a decade) gave me the opportunity to learn by observation from one of the most remarkable photographic artists the medium has known.

One of Paul’s best-known and beloved photographs is Galaxy Apple. When you first look at the print you see a starlit sky. As you continue to live with the image, the shape of a Delicious apple begins to appear. One evening after returning from teaching at the Maine Photographic Workshops, I went out to my studio, and there on the drying screens were a number of Galaxy Apple prints that Paul had made that day. On the easel under the enlarger was a large cardboard cutout of an apple shape attached to what looked like a chopstick. The straight print of the apple was simply a black-and-white photo of a red Delicious apple on a neutral gray background. Nothing special. Paul’s interpretation of the image transformed the banal into magic.

My workshop in Santa Fe approaches the image for what it might become.

Working in the Workshops Digital Lab, we investigate the possibilities that our tools offer us, from scale to tonality to contrast to the subtleties of monochromatic color and split toning. We work with Adobe software (Lightroom and Photoshop), DxO plugins, and the ImagePrint Black RIP. Most importantly, we dive deeply into what you want from your images as they take shape as physical objects.

The inventor of the negative/positive process, William Henry Fox-Talbot described his invention as “a little bit of magic realized.” And so shall we!