Tuesday, February 3, 2015

Printing with Purpose

I have been reading old magazine issues during my downtime.  Which is all the time as I am waiting on the arrival of some fixer and toner tomorrow.  This particular read was in the Jan-Feb 2007 issue of Lenswork.  The editor, Brooks Jensen, was writing about a new direction in his darkroom printing that really struck home with me.  And here is why.

I have admittedly not done a huge truckload of printing.  I can probably count the number of prints I have done by using both hands and adding mot much more than that in the last six years, postcards withstanding.  I have mulled over theory and have made some decent prints.  Well, some OK prints.  Well, some really flat and poorly dodged and amateurish and hack-like prints that are of poor quality and are probably poorly enough processed tha they may, with any hope, fade away to nothing inside of ten years to remove any proof that i had anything to do with them.

Don't get me wrong.  I have a wonderful vision when it comes to how I want my prints to turn out.  And I really do know how to acheive this in my prints.  But I have yet to accomplish it.  I am close on Stones and once  get my fix and toner tomorrow I will tackle this in the darkroom this weekend.

But my printing to date can be referred to as Random Printing, much like Brooks described eight years ago.  I use different techniques, different papers and chemicals, different apertures, different exposure times, different formats, different orientations.  And my efforts have been met with completely random results.  My mother asked, the other day, where I wanted my photography to go.  I said I would like to put on a show at the public library in a year or two.  I look back at my work to date.

No way, Jose.  Nuh uh!  Forget it.

But I plan to print with a purpose.  I have Stones nearly figured out.  I have an aperture I like.  I have a general exposure time I like to use and stay near.  I have my chemistry down pat and am adding the toner for deeper blacks and permanence in my prints.  I plan to finalize Stones and make four final prints.  I will then try one print in one of four toners options, two different dilutions at two different bath durations.  I will choose the effect I like best and that will be added to the process.

I then will select negatives that look like they would benefit from such a process.  And then I will print them.  It is my goal to have 20 such prints by the end of the year.  It will probably be much more than that, but 20 is not an insurmountable amount.  By doing this I will accomplish two things.  First, I will have fine prints.  Not just prints that I have worked on that I can refer to as 'Working Prints' for the sake of avoiding much due criticism.  Also, I will have prints that will look like they belong together instead of a conglomeration of discumbobulated visual noise, randomness.  I want to have a body of work, not just a bunch of prints I threw together because I had put in some time.

And it is not wasted time either.  It has been educational.  I have learned how certain things react when I do them.  But now is the time to apply some direction to my printing.  Time to apply some purpose.  It is time to go all out with my photography.  and printing is not the same as exposure of film.  That gives me the basic visual information with which I can work.  But it is not printing.  They are two completely separate steps in the process of achieving the end result, a fine print.

I think the thing in which I have noticed the greatest change in my outlook on my photography is the attitude of my approach.  No, I do not have the absolute best gear that I can have.  But I do not need it.  I know how to make what I have work splendidly.  It is now time for it to be done.  Just done.

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