Autumn Snow on Trees. Central Park. New York City. 2011
THE VIEW FROM HERE
by
Stephen Johnson
Some discussions at a Ted Orland/David Bayles lecture this past weekend at the Center for Photographic Art in Carmel got me thinking about printing and editing. Combined with our upcoming Image Editing class next weekend, it seemed a good point of departure for this months essay...
Images, Prints, Process and Craft
We've been writing with light onto our retina since vision evolved in our species. Memory is our storage media. Some of these images in our minds are precious, some necessary, some we would rather forget.
The impulse to make photographic images comes from those same instincts of valued memory. Photography is the conscious act of selectively committing images to external mechanical memory, imbued with a real desire to react and remember. Expressive or record, the ability to hold an image is as old as we are as a species and as instinctive. It just that for the last 170 years, we've had photography as a means.
Making and holding the external physical manifestation of those images, the print, is something else entirely. As photographers, we deal with the ephemeral, the changing light, the shutter tripped, the notion of the latent image, even the photographic negative to some degree. In so many ways, it has been the print that satisfies our notion of the image fixed in time and space.
Although these notions of a print as the final manifestation may change with new technology, and may have even already generationally changed, most of us still think of the print in our hands as the final version of the photographic image.
It is no wonder that the changing nature of making prints is simultaneously causing consternation and liberation. The labor and craft of a darkroom experience seems to have been supplanted by the mere pushing of a few buttons on a computer keyboard. Of course, if that were really the case, an explosion of unparalleled photographic beauty and inspiration would be overwhelming us all. And although outstanding work is being done, sadly no such explosion seems to be taking place.
Just as many of us know that exposing a piece of paper and timing it through a series of chemical-filled trays did not in and of itself make for a beautiful print, pushing Command P on the keyboard does not either. There is so much more to it than that.
The Command P Fallacy
Pushing the print button is a purely mechanical act commencing a sequence of actions between the software, the computer, and the printer. Carefully managed, this can produce consistent and predictable results. Much the same as feeding film into a processing machine with automatic prints coming out the other end.
More often than not however, the process is not carefully managed. That process and workflow can be taught and brought under control. But there is more to it than that. Just as pushing the saturation slider to the right does not result in automatic beauty, producing a piece of paper with ink on it does not make for automatic beauty. Judgment and skill is critical way before a print is executed and in examining and refining initial results.
Changing Metaphors and Control Points
The careful print was once an interaction between a photographer, a negative, an enlarger, a certain waving of hands, a timer, fresh chemical solutions, consistent tray rocking and lots of water. The pivot point of where the image is realized has now evolved.
The fixing of the moment in a camera onto a holding material, silver or silicon, remains the primary act. The development is now an interaction of a number of processes starting with a RAW interpreter, then is handed off to a pixel editor like Photoshop where the act of developing is now actually completed with careful tone, color and design balancing into a finely tuned light-based rendition of the original scene.
The printing process has largely become a set of software steps with a real mechanical/electrical device at the end, the printer. As has always been the case, the first prints in hand are further steps in a process that now doubles back into the editing software for the evaluation of the real print that then becomes a plan for fine tuning it further into a work of art. This iterative process has always been present in photographic printmaking and it still should be considered core to the process. Anything less accepts the initial result as final, even though rote, and translated into an entirely different form.
Image editing is now a combination of what was once film development and the front end of printmaking under the enlarger. The evaluation of the success of the print and the modification of the file now replaces different dodge and burn patterns and perhaps altered chemistry of development. There is much that is the same even though the tools have evolved considerably.
Learning How Beautiful a Print Can Be
The pity of it is that many people new to the photographic printmaking process do not have experience with traditional processes and often fail to recognize this iterative and evolutionary process as a natural part of the printing process. Furthermore, it seems few have real first-hand experience seeing absolutely gorgeous prints.
The seduction of the viewer is not just the image, it is the delivery. As a print on the wall, the sheer beauty of the print itself is no small part of the wonderful evocative reaction a truly beautiful print can illicit.
Go to galleries, see work. Find work you truly admire, learn from the image maker if you can, or someone who clearly has the craft and sensitivity to know what a print can be. Seek out mentors and educators who can truly communicate, not just the steps, but the passion. Ralph Putzker was one such person for me. Be satisfied with nothing less than the most beautiful print that you can imagine.
Perfectionism has its place in printmaking.
Our Professional Image Editing class this next weekend November 12-15 could be of real help, as would the next Fine Art Printing Hands-on class January 21-25, 2012. We also offer a Mentoring program to work with people individually in person or virtually.
email any essay comments
Steve Lecturing in the Canon Booth at PhotoPlus New York. 2011. (screen images stripped-in)
New Workshop Program
We are initiating a Friends and Couples workshop discount where two enrollments coming in at the same time get a 10% discount on the second enrollment and a referral discount on a future class. That combined with shared expenses can cut the cost of a workshop significantly. Email for discount
Information on the addiitonall Referral Credit on future workshops.
Occupy Wall Street Camp in the Snow. New York City. 2011.
Photo Journeys
While in New York last week, I wanted to visit the Occupy Wall Street camp and the Ground Zero Memorial across the street. The weather didn't cooperate, so the photographs I had in mind chatting with people didn't work out. However, the camp itself in the unseasonably early snow carried its own sense of determination.
The Ground Zero Memorial was also effected by bad weather and was closed due to falling ice by the time we got down there. Although disappointing, the cold wet weather had a way of punctuating both the plans and real experiences.
Warming up in a nearby cafe, many of the people from the camp were doing the same. The conversations, normal human interactions and controversies, sense of purpose and common frustration I hear most everywhere I go, made its own small sense of America at work, working things through, even on my very brief visit. This was deepened by my visit the next day to the National Archives in Washington DC and the chills I get looking at the Declaration of Independence and the US Constitution.
Man with Sign. Occupy Wall Street Camp. New York City. 2011.
