Last night, I had the opportunity to meet Tod Gangler, the man behind Art & Soul studio. Tod produces color carbon prints, a incredibly complicated process that uses pigments, gelatine, and all other kinds of obscure materials - plus high-tech lasers to etch sets of negatives to be used (it's a contact printing process, and it uses three separate negatives for different colour layers).
I have the feeling that most readers by now have looked at the samples that can be found online and are wondering what the big deal is. If you had been there last night, to see the photos, you would know. In my whole life, I have never seen photos of such stunning physical beauty. The tonal ranges in those prints I have never encountered anywhere else, and for the first time I saw photos that conveyed a very clear sense of a third dimension.
In a sense, the photos looked as "un-digital" as possible - instead of having this kind of edgy crispness that digital photos usually have (even those that aren't completely overprocessed), the photos were amazingly smooth, with what looked like an infinite number of colours. It was quite unbelievable - as was talking to Tod and getting some idea of what actually goes into making those photos.
I think I'll start saving up some money to get selected photos from my own work printed that way...
