Ik ben bezig met het afdrukken van deze serie zwart-witfoto’s en eindelijk gaat nu goed. De afdrukken op Canson Infinity Baryta Photographique II (bedenk eens zo’n naam voor een papiersoort) zien er erg mooi uit.
Nu wil ik de resultaten van dit werk delen, dus moet ik een goede foto van de afdruk maken. Dat is niet zo eenvoudig als het lijkt. Ondanks de glans van het papier reflecteert de afdruk licht, waardoor er donkere vlekken op de foto ontstaan. Niet zo mooi.
I am massively enjoying making these prints of my black-and-white Polder project. I also like printing in the darkroom but never got to do it.
Before the black-and-white project, I have always photographed in color for no other reason than to limit my options. For more than ten years, I shot with little direction. Consequently, my work is all over the place. I have always liked this, and still do. I do not like to put any boundaries on my work a priori, but at the same time, I wanted to create a more consistent piece of work.
Looking for a more intentional, focused project, I began to analyze the pictures from the past decade and stumbled on my polder landscape pictures. I like a couple of them, but I found for a larger work, the dominating green color became problematic. So, I tried to convert a couple to black-and-white, and I liked the result. So I crawled through my archive and surfaced about 200 acceptable images, which I further edited down to some 40 pictures.
When converting to black and white, you find that some pictures do not work in black and white. B&W needs more rest. Where color may divide a picture into spaces, after converting it into black and white, the result may be a headache of grey tones and forms.
Color pictures, I think, have a closer relation to reality, opening a broader palette to distort that reality and create an interesting image. On the other hand, Black and white pictures can have a more poetic, sometimes dreamy effect. Black and white pictures, I think, need more space and benefit more from careful design-like composition (though I am not a fan of the word composition in photography). That is probably also why snapshot-type pictures work best in color.
Anyway, I searched for some nice papers (a rabbit hole in itself), and a friend advised me to use Canson Baryta Photographique II or RAG Photograpique Matte. Never mind the name. The first is a fine art luster-type paper, and the second is a high-grade matte paper. I started with the Baryta and liked it so much I have not even tried the RAG/Matte. By the way, I am printing on an Epson p600, a good entry-level pro photo printer with good ink.
Here are some results. Needless to say, taking (iPhone) pictures of photo prints does not serve them as it should.
From Personal Computing to Personal Manufacturing Gershenfeld draws a parallel with the computer industry. First, there were large, expensive mainframes for organizations. The rise of the personal computer brought computing power to individuals. A similar shift is now occurring with manufacturing.
New technologies enable additive manufacturing, such as 3D printing. Here, material is added layer by layer, rather than subtracted as in milling. These machines have become more affordable. Fablabs, global networks of makerspaces, make them accessible as a shared platform.
From Mass Production to Production for One This changes a fundamental principle. Previously, mass production was necessary to keep costs low. Now, production for a market of one is possible. Individuals can make products they would otherwise buy, customize them to their own needs, or have them produced locally. This shift from consumer to maker is something I’ve also explored in my hands-on project to repair a classic Sony Walkman.”
Community, Open Source, and Challenges Gershenfeld also discusses the next phase: digital assemblers at the nano-scale. Furthermore, he points to potential dangers, such as the fabrication of weapons and issues with intellectual property.
His approach to the latter is open source. In Fablabs, as in software, open source has become the norm. Communities, supported by digital communication, can thus respond to local demand. Gershenfeld emphasizes the innovation potential: communities that question existing assumptions drive innovation.
Conclusion The development of Fablabs turns an existing logic on its head. It makes advanced manufacturing accessible and enables communities to innovate locally. The question of how to deal with the risks of the technology remains complex, as with much technological progress.
