A contact print is a photographic image produced from film; sometimes from a film negative, and sometimes from a film positive. The defining characteristic of a contact print is that the photographic result is made by exposing through the film negative or positive, onto a light sensitive material that is pressed tightly to the film.
In the dark, or under a safe light, an exposed and developed piece of photographic film is placed emulsion side down, against a piece of photographic paper. Light is briefly shone through the negative. Then, the paper is developed into a contact print. The image in the emulsion has been pressed as close as possible to the photosensitive paper. An exposure box device called a contact printer or a printing frame is sometimes used within a light-controlled space called a darkroom. Enlargers can also be used for this process.
Read more about Contact Print: Basic Tools, Proof Sheets, Finished Prints, Production Tools, Other Uses For The Technique, Artistic and Practical Considerations
Famous quotes containing the words contact and/or print:
“There is hardly any contact more depressing to a young ardent creature than that of a mind in which years full of knowledge seem to have issued in a blank absence of interest or sympathy.”
—George Eliot [Mary Ann (or Marian)
“The Anglo-American can indeed cut down, and grub up all this waving forest, and make a stump speech, and vote for Buchanan on its ruins, but he cannot converse with the spirit of the tree he fells, he cannot read the poetry and mythology which retire as he advances. He ignorantly erases mythological tablets in order to print his handbills and town-meeting warrants on them.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)