Part of the fun of finally completing the “Taking a Picture” series is that now I get to give away a free print. I put the name of anyone who left a comment on the series into a hat and randomly selected one, and the winner is…Kohlton Ervin, from Meade, Washington.

Congratulations, Kohlton! The print will be in the mail this week. Kohlton is a photographer himself and you can check out his work on Flickr.

Thank you to everyone who participated in the series, or even just read along. I feel like I learned a lot along the way, and I hope you did too.

Thanks for your interest in my “Taking a Picture” series. Just as a note, I have continued improving my digital workflow and some of these notes are now out-of-date. Feel free to drop a line in the comments or contact me directly if you would like more information on my photographic workflow.

I’ve been planning to sit down and write this for quite a while, but I’ve been keeping very busy with other things. The fact that it is currently hailing outside has given me the chance to spend some quality time indoors, though. Much like my previous post on scanning, I am going to try to avoid going into excruciating detail on every step of my digital printing workflow, because I don’t think it will be worth reading for most people. The general ideas are more important, and I am glad to answer any specific questions in the comments or offline. That’s not to say this won’t be a very technical post, and a long one at that. Please remember that I am giving this final print away to someone who has commented on one of the posts in the series, so feel free to drop a line even if it’s just to say hello.

Black and white inkjet printing felt like a very daunting subject when I first approached it. Two years ago, I had a low-end HP inkjet printer which made acceptable 8×10 color prints, but was absolutely lousy for black and white. It was impossible to get profiles for non-HP papers, and there was practically no information about archival permanence for the paper and inks I was using. In short, I wanted to create black and white prints on matte paper that looked as good as or better than what I could produce in the darkroom, and I wanted them to last a very long time. So I took the plunge into the deep waters of selecting a printer and building a solid black and white digital printing workflow.
Read the rest of this entry»

Thanks for your interest in my “Taking a Picture” series. Just as a note, I have continued improving my digital workflow and some of these notes are now out-of-date. Feel free to drop a line in the comments or contact me directly if you would like more information on my photographic workflow.

As an experiment, I am posting this example as a video. Feel free to ask for clarification in the comments if there’s anything in particular that you want to know more about. The embedded version is pretty small; click here for a slightly larger streaming version on Vimeo.com, or download a larger version directly from my server.

This series of blog posts follows the process of creating an image from the beginning through to the final print. When I’m done, I’m going to give the print to someone who has commented on one of the posts along the way.

Click here to read other posts in this series.

Thanks for your interest in my “Taking a Picture” series. Just as a note, I have continued improving my digital workflow and some of these notes are now out-of-date. Feel free to drop a line in the comments or contact me directly if you would like more information on my photographic workflow.

I think my situation is a pretty common one: I love film, especially black and white, but I don’t have the space or the time and energy to devote to a complete darkroom. Developing film is relatively easy and requires very little space, but printing means setting up an enlarger and trays of chemicals. And so, I use a hybrid process: I shoot and develop my own black and white film, but scan and print in digital.

It’s a pretty great situation, as far as I’m concerned. With my mid-range flatbed scanner (an Epson 4990) and my mid-range printer (Epson R2400), I can print excellent quality 12×12 black and white prints with no trouble at all. Larger sizes are beyond my capacity at the moment, but I’m thinking that a better scanner and printer are looming somewhere in the not-too-distant future.

I had been planning a long, drawn out technical discussion about scanning, but I got about half-way through writing it and gave up. For the few people who are using similar equipment and materials, a lot of the research has already been done. I think it’s probably wasteful for me to scan a negative ten different ways just to show that my approach is valid. I have done a lot of research, spent a significant amount of time experimenting, and I have come to the point where I feel like I am getting the most out of my somewhat limited equipment. I am happy to share my approach step-by-step; anyone who is curious can do their own experiments or further research to see if my methods prove out.
Read the rest of this entry»

Thanks for your interest in my “Taking a Picture” series. Just as a note, I have continued improving my digital workflow and some of these notes are now out-of-date. Feel free to drop a line in the comments or contact me directly if you would like more information on my photographic workflow.

Even though there are so many elements involved in the making of a satisfying photograph, this is the moment that counts. I’ve spent hours preparing equipment, traveling, searching for the scene, setting up the camera, and now it’s time to expose some photo-sensitive silver particles to light. My focus becomes very acute and everything around me seems to disappear. The rush of creative energy leading up to this moment gives me a kind of excitement I can’t replicate anywhere else.

* click *

And then I pack everything up and go home.

One of the things I like about shooting with film is the delayed gratification. There’s a certain thrill to be found in pulling a roll of film out of the developer and seeing that an image has been formed. The process still works! The anticipation of seeing the contact sheet for the first time becomes almost too great to bear. And then, the truth comes out: most of the photographs on the roll don’t live up to my expectations. I become conflicted. It’s not that they’re bad (well, sometimes they are), it’s just that enough time has passed between taking the pictures and actually seeing them that they’ve become almost heroic in my mind, and it’s just not possible for them all to be that good.

Then I spend a little more time with the contact sheet and interesting details emerge. I learn something new every time I go through this process. A photo I thought was a throwaway at the time appears to have more potential than I thought. A photo I thought was a sure win turns out to be static, lacking in vitality. I’ve learned to take nothing for granted, because the very fact that I make these assumptions while taking a picture in turn influences how it will come out. Some of my best photos come when I am able to empty my mind completely.

And now the work begins. It’s time to turn potential energy into kinetic; time to pick an image and make something happen.

This is my most recent contact sheet. I am not making any claims that it’s anything spectacular—in fact, as you can see, most of the images aren’t great. I think the effect of the yellow-orange filter in several photos is heavy-handed, and I’m still having some kind of weird technical problem, too. There are a couple in here that intrigue me, though, and certainly at least one or two that will work in the context of this series. I’ll let you know which one I’ve chosen when I get back to town early next week, and then we’ll take a look at scanning.

Some technical information for those so inclined: these photographs were taken with a Hasselblad 500 C/M on Ilford HP5+ film. I developed this batch in Xtol at 1:2 for 15 minutes at 68° F. The contact sheet is just a flatbed scan of a photo sleeve, with each frame individually adjusted for contrast.

This series of blog posts follow a single image from it’s very conception all the way through to the final print. When I’m done, I’m going to give the print to someone who has commented on one of the posts along the way.

Click here to read other posts in this series.

Thanks for your interest in my “Taking a Picture” series. Just as a note, I have continued improving my digital workflow and some of these notes are now out-of-date. Feel free to drop a line in the comments or contact me directly if you would like more information on my photographic workflow.

I think I probably got these posts out of order, but I guess it’s better to ease into it by writing about equipment first. The question of subject is arguably the most difficult one that any serious photographer has to confront. I think we all have a natural affinity for certain subjects, but the challenge is turning that affinity into something more than a series of snapshots. It’s something I have struggled with for a long time, sometimes to the point where I have to take a break from photography altogether. After all, what’s the point of a photograph without intent, without some sense of purpose?

That question is not necessarily rhetorical. I know that many very good photographers have challenged the notion that a photograph, or any work of art for that matter, has to mean something. I’m just talking about my own experience, feel free to chime in with yours.

For the first year or two that I was learning to take pictures, I carried my camera with me everywhere I went and would shoot absolutely anything I could find. This led to some not altogether bad pictures, and was certainly a good learning experience. For the most part, however, I was flailing, and it eventually became repetitive and unsatisfying.

Sometime last year, I began to think about a project; forcing myself to commit to returning to the same theme over and over again until a pattern emerged, and producing a coherent body of work from it. By last fall, I found myself returning to certain areas again and again, and things began to coalesce, both aesthetically and conceptually.

I love the landscape of the shore; both the overwhelming natural features of the area as well as the weird artifacts that people leave behind when they don’t think anyone is looking. I’ve been exploring areas like Broad Channel and Marine Park, and things got even more interesting in Coney Island Creek and Sheepshead Bay. Jamaica Bay is calling out to me. I’d like to rent a boat this summer and explore all of the little islands that I can’t get to by train. Nate just ventured out to Dead Horse Bay, which is another area I’ve been planning to visit.

So now I’ve got a theme. Now I just have to go out and explore the hell out of it.

This series of blog posts follow a single image from it’s very conception all the way through to the final print. When I’m done, I’m going to give the print to someone who has commented on one of the posts along the way.

Click here to read other posts in this series.

Thanks for your interest in my “Taking a Picture” series. Just as a note, I have continued improving my digital workflow and some of these notes are now out-of-date. Feel free to drop a line in the comments or contact me directly if you would like more information on my photographic workflow.

This is part one in what may ultimately prove to be a very long series on the physical process of taking photographs. I had assumed that writing this introduction would be fairly straightforward, but after thinking about it for a while, I’ve become less sure of myself. This is usually the entire decision-making process when it comes to equipment selection for me:

I mean, right?

Well, the whole idea behind documenting this process is about challenging my basic assumptions, so let’s start with this one. What’s so special about black and white film? Read the rest of this entry»