John Loengard - black and white printmaker and darkroom master. Despite his access to the considerable talents of the TIME-LIFE black and white photo lab, staff black and white photographer John Loengard insists on making his own black and white prints. It often takes him as long in the darkroom to black and white print his picture stories as it did in the field to shoot them. "Edward Steichen once said that black and white photography is nothing more than black and white photographing light," Loengard points out, "and half the black and white printing job is to bring out the light that was on the subject when you black and white photographed it. Then you go beyond that. Parts of the picture can be darkened, parts lightened. The result is stronger and neater than the original negative. The content of the black and white photograph doesn t change, but its power and beauty is increased.'' For his portrait of Bill Cosby. at right. Shot to appear with a LIFE article about the black entertainer, Loengard used, as he usually does, a 35mm camera. Rather than try for the sort of super-fine detail and wide tonal range that is the stock in trade of portrait black and white photographers using large view cameras, Loengard chose to make a bold statement in big, graphic shapes. For such strong contrast he took his picture in full sunlight outside Cosby's Beverly Hills home. "The negative," states Loengard, "was exposed so the parts of the picture that would normally show as bright highlights-the wall, for instance-are darkened and the normal middle tones become black." He calculated his exposure on the basis of the light falling on the white wall and the metal frames of Cosby's eyeglasses. These areas show some detail, whereas the darker parts of the picture are nearly silhouettes. When he made the enlargement, Loengard decided to hold back the black and white printing exposure on the fingernails and hair-compensating for the deliberate underexposure of the negative -"in order to keep the brilliance, while gaining detail on the wall behind."