LAST ONE!

Woodbury. Connecticut

Final darkroom session for the TOP Platinum Print Offer. Final shipping today and tomorrow.

Shipping

Woodbury, Connecticut

First batch of TOP print offer packages loaded into the car and headed for the Post Office. Back to printing tomorrow.

Inspecting, Signing, Sleeving

Woodbury, Connecticut

Print Finishing

Woodbury, Connecticut

Not my favorite part of the process. Any contact printing medium is going to end up with white spots once in a while from dust (or unidentified mystery specks of something) finding their way onto the glass of the vac frame or the negative itself. Also, I've never found a paper that doesn't now and then show a small dark spot, which invariably lands in a clear, light-toned area.

Same print after ten minutes of very delicate work:

In the Darkroom

Woodbury, Connecticut

It's a good thing I like these two pictures, because I'm sure seeing a lot of them.

Printing

Woodbury, Connecticut

Getting to work on print offer fulfillment. Just a few prints today to see if I want to tweak anything a bit, then into full production tomorrow. That's "Fog" in the first water rinse.

"Dixie" in the vac frame, waiting for the pump to come up to pressure.

Exposure finished, neg moved aside.

Just right, pale, printout ghost image after exposure.

First rinse again.

Fog in the final wash.

Print Sale Ending/Last Tech Article

August Morning Fog, in the first water rinse

A final technical article—related to the platinum print sale that ends this evening—is up now at The Online Photographer. I'm using a new paper introduced earlier this year. The article describes my tests/experiments to see how good the paper really is, and then to refine exact procedures and conditions to get the most out of it in my darkroom.

TOP Platinum Print Sale

The third occasional TOP Platinum Print Offer has gone live, over at The Online Photographer. We did a similar sale back in 2010 with a choice of three 8x10 Pt/Pd prints, then again in 2014. There was a good response and between the two sales we got something like 360 alternate process prints out into the world.

Here are the two prints we're offering.

Dixie Milling, Easley, South Carolina, 2000

August Morning Fog, Eggleston, Virginia, 2001

Both were shot on 7x17-inch film. They're printed slightly larger than the original image size, exactly 7x17 inches. Scans, digital negatives, and prints all made by me. Other details about the sale available over at TOP.

IDEAL

Hudson, New York

Postal Service

Stockbridge, Massachusetts

So, the question now is, does England not only have the most expensive postage in the world, but also the worst service?

In the 2010 first TOP  platinum print offer, the only two packages lost were both to England, and the post office there refused even to communicate about it to the postmaster here in Woodbury. This time I found that postage to England is the most expensive in the world—more than to Sinagpore or Japan—and that insurance isn’t available. I self-insured, overall, because of reliable performance, otherwise, last time, but checked how much it would be to insure the packages to Great Britain, because of that last time. It's the one place insurance isn't available at all. Apparently the insurance underwriter knows something.

Now, a print offer buyer in England hasn't received his package shipped on Oct. 9. The USPS website tracking on the package just stops when it leaves NYC. Another package, sent to London, also just stops tracking when it leaves NYC. A package to Norway shows leaving NY, arriving in Norway, entering customs, clearing customs, attempted delivery, notice to adressee, successful delivery. Packages to England, nothing after they leave the the NY terminal.

Next chore will be to check with UPS and FedEx about shipping replacement package(s). Uninsured international Priority Mail packages all showed an indemnity valuation of about $70—I suspect I'll find that doesn't apply to mail to GB.

UPDATE: It gets more crazy. As near as I can tell using their online package pricing tools, FedEx and UPS both want over $100 to send a less-than-one-pound package from Connecticut to London. Clearly, they've consulted with the USPS insurance underwriter.

UPDATE TWO: The USPS "customer service" response is, Fuck You.

Or, in the long form:

The United States Postal Service does not accept inquiries on First-Class Mail International items and Priority Mail International. Your parcel, however, may receive scans as it maneuvers through the United States, but this is neither a requirement nor guarantee. You may find other delivery options for these services by visiting your local Post Office. If you would like a fully traceable International service, please use our Priority Mail Express International or Global Express Guaranteed services.

The first of those raises the price—for a 12x15x1-inch, 14-ounce package going from Connecticut to London, from $40+ to $50+, and the second option costs $70. 

One More Time

Woodbury, Connecticut

Making a few more prints of The Church and Steep Rock. As it happened, the number of prints I made in each session came out almost perfectly even, on the last day, with the total number of prints ordered, just a little short of 120. A bit too perfect. Not one order has dropped out, all but one are paid for, and I'm assured that the money order is in the mail on that one, so I find I have only two prints left over.

Trouble is, I've got to close the darkroom and make it essentially into a storage pod as we turn the whole contents of the house upside down to clear all perimeter walls for installation of the baseboard heating system to replace the antique—and deceased—steam system. So if anything goes wrong in shipping—and, while the success rate has been excellent in percentage terms, some things have gone wrong in shipping both our first TOP platinum offer and the similar Kickstarter Rewards fulfillment two years ago on the drive-in project—so I need more spare prints.

Since I had to do a short printing session, I decided to pick two of my drive-in theater project pictures, one an 8x10 original and the other a digital capture, run the files through my standard batch action to produce a digital negative file, then output them onto a sheet of 11x17 Pictorico. After the print offer work, I printed the two new negs at my standard time of 4 minutes. They seemed to do quite nicely.

Closing in on It

Woodbury, Connecticut

The order list keeps getting more and more highlighter as labels are printed and packages are shipped. To be fair, also, Click 'N Ship is working correctly today (although you still have to exit after five labels to avoid the system bogging down to second-per-keystroke). Email customer service also got back to me and says they will order a refund of the twice-billed labels from yesterday.

But on another weirdness front, postage rates are crazy. Guess what the most expensive packages have been so far? Great Britain. Postage to England is more than all the way to Australia or Singapore! There's a shipment to Japan coming up so I'll be interested to see if they can wrest the expensive postage prize from British hands.

A set of international packages ready for the trip to the post office. Except for a couple orders on hold it looks as though we'll get everything into the mail tomorrow before leaving for New York. We're going to the Penumbra Foundation Open House, which includes a Center for Alternative Processes Instructors exhibit, which I'm participating in.

Tree, Wall, and Driveway

Hudson, New York

A nice little city tree on a rainy day about a month ago.

Adventures with Click 'N Ship continue as we ship, or attempt to, the print offer packages. Today, it failed to acknowledge our payment for a first set of five packages. I made the mistake of trying again, and it charged me twice. Then we did a set of nearly a dozen international labels, and paid the nearly $400 bill with PayPal. A PP charge notice came through email immediately, then for nearly an hour the C'NS page insisted that the bill was unpaid and refused to print the labels. Aside from interfering with throughput by preventing us from outputting the labels for an hour, I couldn't get any answers and was told by a computer that their customer service phone lines were experiencing heavy traffic and representatives would take much longer than usual to answer. I guess I know why. As a final touch, when we could finally print the labels, the 'shipping history' showed them as charged, but when I tried to make some new ones, they were added to that $400 list, not a new one, as if the first set hadn't been paid. I gave up for the day. We'll see if their computers are more compliant tomorrow. If this system actually worked, it would be really convenient, but it still seems a long way short of ready for prime time.

Walls, Markings, Weeds, on a Roll

Waterbury, Connecticut

I'll keep rolling along with these wall and weed shots collected over the summer, as there's no time for shooting right now.

On the TOP Platinum Print Offer front, we got thirty packages out today. While it beats standing in line at the Post Office, Ship 'N Click is slow as molasses in January. Not only do you have to key in each individual line, but as the number of shipments in your 'shopping cart' moves up (supposedly you can accumulate twenty before checking out) the program begins to take a second or more to respond to each keystroke! If you try to move ahead and let it catch up, the keystrokes it hadn't recorded yet start to appear in the next field. Yuk. We exited at fifteen, paid from the PayPal account that's been getting a lot of the sale receipts, then dealt with the—idiosyncratic, shall we say—system of printing out the labels and receipts to our laser printer using custom adhesive label sheets. Next set, the system responded to the keyboard normally at first, then the slowdown began on the fifth label. I gave up and decided to key in, buy, and print, five labels at a time.

Over a third of the sales were international, so those will need a different online form that includes customs declarations, then prints out two pages of forms on plain paper that you have to cut in half, insert into a self-adhesive plastic split-sleeve, then attach that to the package instead of a label. Then you have to wait while a clerk at the PO scans in every package. With the domestic ones you can just hand the clerk a whole stack and leave.

Happily, this has changed since the last time I did a bunch of International Priority Mail—you can now just drop off without waiting for personal attention from a clerk.

All Packed Up and Ready to Go

Woodbury, Connecticut

Somewhat to our surprise, by noon today we had everything packed up. Four years ago the first TOP Platinum Print Offer had three pictures, available as either Pt/Pd or digital comparison prints, so the orders were complex. Two years ago, the Rewards for the Kickstarter drive-in theater project had half a dozen or more levels and options at all the higher levels. Both times, we pretty much had to custom build each package, working from the order sheets. No problem for an organized shipping operation, but working manually on something you only do every couple of years, it was a headache. This time, there are only three choices. Steep Rock, Church, or Both. So, with just the count break-out in hand, all we had to do was tape up the right number of packages for each of the three options, mark each package with S, C, or B, then stack or box them. I expected it to be simpler, but didn't realize how big a difference the simplicity would make.

We did a test shipment yesterday morning, of the first order to come in, to see what's changed in the USPS Ship 'N Click system. What hasn't changed is that you can't scarf up an order's address and paste it into the system, thereby avoiding typos. Every field has to be entered individually, so you just have to sit there and key in the entire name and address info, line by line, for each order. Also, play with radio buttons for "State." Plus, they didn't provide enough lines for many international addresses, so I'll have to see if that's changed.

[Edit: it has—when you tell it you're heading for England, it opens up enough fields for English addresses, which are just short of the number of lines in a Shakespearean sonnet. Head for Ireland, and the system knows the address may be 'Paddy Murphy, Number 12, The Old Cowpath, Galway.' It knows where states/provinces are needed, and where not, and what sort of postal code to look for (none in Ireland).]

Given past reliability of Priority Mail*, I'm going to self-insure above the "free" $50 level since on that first order, insuring for $230 would have doubled the cost of the postage. Not a good wager. More than one third of our orders were international, so I'll have to see what's changed there as well tomorrow—the forms and printouts are completely different, and of course there has to be a customs declaration.

*Of 190 orders four years ago, only two went missing—both shipped the same day to England, and worth a whopping $900 or so. Despite alleged included tracking, which took it as far as leaving the US, not only I, but the Woodbury Postmaster, could never get a response from British postal authorities about the two packages. On the Kickstarter Rewards shipping, which mostly went Parcel Post, just one package was lost—in Australia—and one other damaged enough that the recipient made them send it back. Shipping begins in earnest tomorrow morning.

Packing

Woodbury, Connecticut

So this weekend the lab has been transformed into TOP Platinum Print Offer Packing/Shipping World Headquarters. The work is going smoothly, but for some reason it doesn't make the place any neater.

Printing Finished

Woodbury, Connecticut

The lab work for the TOP Platinum/Palladium Print Offer is "officially" over. The quotes are because I'll likely need to do a short session next week to replace the few prints that will probably fail to pass final inspection. The print count is very tight with the orders, almost no extras. But the production line workflow choreography is done.

There is very little spotting/retouching work to do. I think the OHP material is less prone to static and dust doesn't cling to it as much as normal film. Also, the lab is the most dust-free I've ever had it, because my new dehumidifier moves an enormous volume of air for the size of the room, and it is filtered! We may get a first shipment of prints out into the world tomorrow, depending on how long it takes to re-acquaint with USPS Click 'n Ship after not using it for several years. I expect everything to be shipped by late next week.

"Day Off"

Woodbury, Connecticut

Decided to take a day off from printing today. Still put in some time doing the inspect/sign/sleeve/sort/count routine. Looks as though I should comfortably finish the printing by the end of the coming week, then easily get everything shipped out by the end of the next week.

About Halfway Done

Woodbury, Connecticut

Midpoint in two ways—the print of The Church on the small UV unit is just over halfway through its four minute exposure, and today's set of prints got me almost to half the 115 needed for the TOP Platinum print sale orders. The materials, and the digital negatives, are tracking flawlessly as the printing moves to newly-mixed batches of ferric and metals solutions. Not only have I not needed to move even to the first set of back-up negatives, but I'm seeing essentially no need for retouching. Earlier versions of Platine had the annoying (that's being kind) tendency to throw random dark specks once the print was made. You might or might not be able to etch them out successfully. So far I've seen none of that. There's also no dust. I think there are two reasons for that. First, my new dehumidifier throws an enormous volume of air, and, it is filtered! I don't think the lab has ever been as dust-free as it became after running the dehumidifier/air-filter for a couple days. Also, I think the OHP material is less static-prone than real film. I'm forever inspecting and working with an anti-static brush to get big film negatives pristine for each print. So far, for these, I've done nothing but blasts of air from the cutely-named Rocket Blower® at both sides of the negative before placing it on the sheet of paper and loading the assembly into the print frame.

Here's another look at what the exposed but undeveloped Pt/Pd print looks like. The large, bold, form of the church in this picture, with its surround of relatively dark material, makes it easy to see the ghost of the image that will emerge almost completely in a few seconds when you pour on the developer.

Any Papermakers Out There?

Woodbury, Connecticut

Arches Platine's basic parent sheet is nominally 22x30, but is actually at least a quarter of an inch oversize on the short dimension because of the feathery deckle there. Shipping supplies however, are precision cut to 11x14 inches, if that's the item you order from Uline. So, as I work on the TOP Platinum Print Offer orders, I can't simply cut the sheets into quarters. I have to quarter them in a way that ends up with printing sheets that are exactly 11x14, and that leaves a certain amount of wastage.

I've never done any handmade papermaking, but I've seen it demonstrated and have had contact with folks who do it as part of the Artist Book milieu. You can also make your own paper for Pt/Pd printing though that's not a place I'm interested to go. I know that for many, making your own artisanal paper begins with finding scraps of "rag" paper (meaning cotton, not wood pulp) to sort of melt down and begin the home brew. Well, these scraps are from about the most primo all-cotton paper imaginable (25 sheets ships in at just short of $200) so if anyone reading here has something better to do with this than throw it in the recycle with the cardboard, let me know.

Tech details for anyone interested. Cutting down paper for Pt/Pd printing is very picky. If you use a knife and metal straightedge, or the superb RolaTrim cutter I use with the roll paper output of my big HP-Z3200, or scissors, all these tools have a metal-on-metal action that is apt to scatter microscopic particles of metal. What does Pt/Pd-coated paper and developer think of those particles? Yum! Attack! Dense black spots in the print.

Tearing it doesn't work either with Platine, though it's OK with some other papers. With this stuff, torn sheets seem to bleed tons of cellulose into the developer, which I don't need to deal with. To get a clean cut, I simply use my matt cutter, with the flat blade intended for cutting down parent sheets of matt board before you cut the windows. The blade floats about an eighth of an inch from the guide rail, held by the slot in the tool. So it touches nothing but the paper, can't make contamination, and is easy to use.