William Mortensen was a pictorialist with an unusual take on how film should be processed. I have a lengthy article about his 7-derivitive technique at http://unblinkingeye.com/Articles/Mortensen/mortensen.html(posted 8385 days ago)Whatever one may think about the aesthetics of his photographs or the controversy over pictorialist versus "straight" photography, there is no doubt that Mortensen was an accomplished darkroom worker whose views cannot be dismissed out of hand. His most significant assertion is that expanding a short-scale subject gives more pleasing gradation than compressing a long-scale subject. Coming from Texas, I almost always encounter the latter situation. My few experiments with Mortensen's technique gave mixed results, but the successes I had were definitely worth the trouble.
I'd be curious to hear the opinions of the contributors to this forum on the subject. Have you ever noticed better gradation from expanding scales than from compressing them? If you don't know anything about Mortensen, take a bit of time to educate yourself. Read my article for the technical stuff, then check out the links at the bottom of the page to see some of his photographs and read other opinions.