“Photography has been part of my life for as long as I can remember —”
Photography has been part of my life for as long as I can remember — not so much a conscious choice as simply who I am. For years, I worked with sheet film and 4×5 field cameras, standing outside with a dark cloth over my head, looking at the world upside down in the ground glass. It is a powerful way to learn composition: everything reduced to shapes, tones, and textures, the basic elements of design.
I developed and printed everything myself and came to see working in the darkroom as a very special, introspective time. I’d work from late evening through the night, when I knew I wouldn’t be interrupted. I’d put on Baroque music, and the world would cease to exist. Patiently fussing with enlargers, easels, and a dozen specialized tools, many older than I was. One eye on the darkroom timer and the other eagerly watching the developer bath reveal the photograph’s shapes, moving the wet print through the fixer, stop bath, and, finally, the moment of truth when I flipped on the white light to see if I’d got it right. The whole process still feels like ancient alchemy to me.
I use digital cameras now and love their lighter weight and ability to respond to changing situations quickly. It’s a different world from shooting with the field camera. I move faster and feel more nimble. A fellow photographer said it best when I was trying to describe the difference: “It’s like you’ve changed out of hiking boots into tennis shoes now, isn’t it?”
I no longer have my own darkroom, but my love for the arcane processes and the authentic nature of prints produced this way hasn’t changed. I still begin the same way, with a vision of the final print, only today the photographs are in digital files instead of negatives on film. I still believe that photography reaches its fullest expression as a custom fine art print.
Ansel Adams wrote that for photographers, the negative is like a musical score, and the print is the performance. So, I’ve assembled a core group of talented session artists to perform my printing work while I make all of the photographs and personally conduct every performance. I work with a small number of custom photo labs owned and run by master craftspeople who’ve devoted their lives to perfecting their skills.
Continuing Adams’ music analogy, rehearsals begin with an initial test print. I examine these closely and mark them up, noting where I want changes and corrections, and then send them back to the lab. Then more test prints and more rounds of refinement follow until the print is the best that we can do, and is ready to become a fine art print I’m proud to put my name on.
‘The Prints’ link below leads to discussions of our printing methods, media options, editions, shipping, and production process.
“An image on a monitor is but a pale imitation of a well-crafted photographic print.”
