Tom Mallonee, Edition Information

Total edition size for each image is 66 prints.
Edition size and pricing for each print size are as follows:

A Brief History of Process
In 1981, I attended my first & last workshop with Ansel Adams. With a captivated group of neophytes in the piano & gallery room of his Carmel home, he eventually brought our attention to two images on the wall: A traditional silver print of his well-known Aspens, and next to it, a poster of the same image printed by Gardner Lithograph. He explained that it was difficult to make a truly satisfying print of that particular image in the darkroom, and that the printing plate for the poster had been made by laser-scanning, digitizing, and manipulating a traditional print. The poster glowed, especially in the shadows, and I’ll always remember how Ansel’s eyes brightened as he talked about the potential of the "electronic" image.

A quarter century later many photographers using a digital medium still feel compelled to provide explanations well beyond that which might be expected for a more traditional process. This is both regrettable and understandable (and something to which I’m obviously not immune), particularly since digital imaging seems to involve "new" issues of manipulation, authenticity, and longevity. Of course, these factors have always been germane to photography. It is a medium that is inherently plastic and technical, and has involved a wide variety of capture, processing, manipulation, and display techniques. But digital or not, the veracity of any photograph always rests on how it is represented by the photographer. And even the most straightforward of photographs represent an abstraction of their subject. To paraphrase John Sexton, photographs might not lie, but they all fib a little.” Tom Mallonee

• Tom uses a large format 4x5 camera and Kodak 100TMAX black & white negative film.
• The negatives are scanned at high resolution in 16 bit, and with careful control very large prints can be made which retain subtly of tone and fine detail.
• The process of working through a series of test prints is done on the computer with Adobe Photoshop taking the place of my darkroom. Ironically, Tom finds himself making as many digital progress prints as he did with silver prints in the darkroom. Judgment time isn’t reduced, and while a calibrated monitor will allow one to see and control the image to a point, the print is a tactile object with unique qualities. Tom uses the computer to make adjustments that are common to darkroom printing, with the benefits of greater precision, tonal control and repeatability. Tom does not add or delete subject matter, but he does remove dust spots and film defects.
• These prints are made on 100% heavy cotton rag paper using an Epson Pro 7000 printer and archival hex-black carbon-based pigment inks. When mastered, this combination results in images with extraordinary sharpness and delicate tonality more akin to that associated with platinum prints. Tom hand mixes his own inks to produce subtle color variations across the density range. With this combination, prints exhibit exceedingly smooth highlights and a creamy, almost chocolate tonality.