A Long Overdue First Print

Three things:

1. Don’t wait for the perfect darkroom
2. Let the process pan out before you decide you stuffed it up
3. Every photograph is different

Andre, Kurilpa Bridge (Image: R.Crapnell, Ilford HP5 f8 1/125)

The moment I opened the envelope containing lab-developed prints from my first roll of Kodak Gold, I knew that I wanted to master the process of capturing, processing and enlarging images for myself. After almost a year, I have finally managed to print a legible photograph from a roll of film I shot and developed myself.

Of course, banging out a low contrast, badly focused and misaligned image falls some way short of “mastering”, but I was still rather proud of myself.

I have been developing my own black and white film for almost a year now, and we had hoped to start printing shortly after we moved into the studio. Alas, the darkroom in the studio had troublesome plumbing and never really came up to scratch. Over the last couple of months I managed to scrape together the necessities of a basic dark room; medium format enlarger, trays, chemicals, paper and all the other bits and pieces. The only thing missing was the dark room itself.

Finally, I decided to just do it and contrived a cheap and nasty black-out kit for my kitchen and set up the gear. With my downloaded guide to printing black and white photos memorized, I turned out the lights and did my first test strip on the Durst C35 enlarger. I ran through the two second test exposure segments before dropping the print into the developer bath and hoping. In the glow of the safelight, my heart sunk as it appeared to me that the print showed as far too dark across the whole image.

Already thinking about how I should adjust the enlarger, I went through the stop and fix process just for the practice and plopped the print into the rinse. Flicking on the main light, I thumbed through the enlarger manual to see how I could dial down the exposure. But when I turned back to the rinse, the photograph floating there showed a nice clear set of exposure gradations.

I chose four seconds as the best time, and ran through the print process for real. The end result was a badly focused, low-contrast and crooked image that brought a lump to my throat and now sits on the first page of my new photo album. Three other photos quickly followed, one of which was my long awaited first image from my Pentax 67.

I learned three things from this effort. The first was, of course, that I should not have waited for the perfect dark room setup before I started printing photographs. I wasted months hung up by some dodgy plumbing while all I needed to do was tape up a window, hang a black out curtain and wait for the sun to go down.

The second was that while film developing is an exacting art, it is not an exact science. Running that test strip through, I was ready to search for a solution to a non-existent problem rather than just wait for things to pan out. I will keep a notebook handy and try to capture all of these little quirks as they happen.

Third is that every printed photograph is an individual image with its own quirks. My first fumbling attempts at dodging and burning showed that the film negative is just a template (yeah, obvious, but it took a while for me to figure it out) from which many interpretations of an image can be made, and no two of those interpretations will be the same.

Five Stages, The Gear Snob: or, I just realized there is no way my f4-5.6 kit can take a decent photo

If only the photographer had a constant aperture zoom, a full-frame body (Canikon, naturally, because that’s what the pros use), a nice strobe (no, three strobes), a triple-layer carbon fibre tripod with graphite head, a computer with real grunt (Fruit Company issue, of course, because that’s industry standard), a suite of imaging software (from the Mud Hut Company, of course, because that’s what all the BoobTube videos give tips on) and a colour-balanced monitor...

...then they really could start taking great portraits of their family and friends.

(Image: R.Crapnell)

Even a lay person can understand this one. Or think they do, but can’t really. On second thoughts, no-one can really understand lens envy unless they have had it. It is the conviction that photographic quality only comes with the best gear available. It is insidious, it kills creativity, it inhibits insight and, sadly, it is entirely preventable. 

Almost.

Gear Snobbery usually manifests itself first in dissatisfaction with whatever lens came with their consumer-grade DSLR. Suddenly, there is no way that the kit lens that seemed like such a leap from the photographers Fruit Phone just six weeks ago can deliver the required photographic vision now. The only possible solution is buying a better lens, preferably one that costs twice as much as the entire kit they bought just six weeks before. Uncle Canikon and even Auntie Pentax know this and are only too eager to provide. Trust me.

The worst thing is that there is a grain of truth in the proposition that you need good gear to take better photos. For example, to achieve those stunning fashion-house grade shots you see in magazines photographers do need all that stuff… plus stylists, assistants, re-touchers, great locations, more lighting gear than you can fit in the boot of your scooter and, most importantly, a budget. Good gear will deliver better images in the hands of a good photographer, and can even make a competent photographer better with no further effort.

The problem is that gear snobbery usually kicks in well before the photographer becomes, well, competent. Or anything like it. Instead of going out and practicing, the Gear Snob will but their camera away until they can afford the right gear. Then, the new "ultimate" gadget purchase, the Gear Snob will head out to test the gear and probably return to the computer to look up some pricing on their next bit of kit.

Further, the Gear Snob is also in dire peril of becoming a brand fanboi (pronounced "fan-boy", after immature males who arbitrarily pick some consumer icon to adore, foresaking and heaping scorn on all others). Canon-shooting fanbois will refuse to play with Nikon users and vice versa while spending more hours on discussion boards bagging their respective dopplegangers than they do actually shooting. The best way to avoid being a fanboi, of course, is to shoot Pentax.

Gear Snobbery may also lead to or aggravate other gear-related afflictions like pixel peeping (judging the merits of an image on the basis of microscopic imperfections rather than artistic merit), feature fetishism (simply counting the number of features on photographer's camera as a measure of their capability), shoppism (equating post production steps with merit) and generally banging on about "sharpness" and something called "image quality". More sophisticated Gear Snobs may even venture into the scarily qualitative arena of weighing up the merits of "bokeh". 

No, actually, the really worst thing about this phase is that there is no upside to it and the photographer’s creative journey is most likely just going to suffer as a result of it. For instance, a badly afflicted sufferer will spend money on gear that might have been spent getting to places they actually want to photograph. Really severe cases will exacerbate the next phase, The Prosumer, and ultimately compound the Crushed Soul phase that often quickly follows. 

But all is not lost. Good gear lasts and ultimately it will be there when the Gear Snob finally finds enlightenment and starts taking the photos they want to take. In the most optimistic view, a bad case of Gear Snobbery early on will deliver many “aha” moments over the following years as dusty old bits and pieces become useful… or at least can often be sold on at pretty good prices years after they were purchased.

Tips for the Gear Snob from a bloke who has been there:

Assuming you MUST buy stuff, buy a good tripod first, then buy a good lens (zoom, probably, though purists will suggest a prime). If you have any money at all after that, your lens you bought wasn’t expensive enough so perhaps just buy some lessons. Mostly, though, just try to move on. And don't be a fanboi.

Film v Photoshop

Two things:

1. Digital and analogue; just different ways to turn photons into images.
2. Images should be printed.

Almost a year ago today I shot my first roll of film. As I mention somewhere on the site, after a couple of years of shooting digital a dear friend suggested it was time I learned photography. To that end, she gave me a Pentax K1000 for my birthday. This simple gift started me on a soul-searching journey trying to figure out where film belongs in my photographic world.

Flower Basket, Yarra River (Image: R.Crapnell  Pentax K1000, Kodak Gold, lab-developed)

I remember being intimidated by that heavy chunk of mechanical technology. I could not quite grasp how such a basic instrument could capture light and produce an image by way of glass, sprockets and a chemical process. My first roll was Kodak Gold that I shot around Melbourne and then just dropped into a lab and I remember being surprised by the vivid, colours that jumped off the prints at me when I opened that envelope.

Two things struck me right there. The first was that (some) film is very forgiving when it is developed by skilled professionals. Despite the fact that all I did was be sure I shot in daylight, all thirty-six frames were beautifully colour balanced. Also, in spite of the fact that I was manually focussing using a forty-year old lens (albeit in beautiful condition), many of the images were plenty crisp enough for the task.

Second, and perhaps more fundamental, was that this was the first time I had seen my images in print with no digital intermediary steps taken on my part. When I opened that envelope I immediately knew these were images in their ultimate form. Barring scribbling on some mustachios with a felt pen or doing some cropping with a real knife, the images I held were complete. From that moment I knew I had been underrating the importance of seeing an image in print, be they digital or analogue.

These two revelations provoked a lot of thought over the following twelve months as I took my first painful steps into film photography and continued learning digital. I read the discussion boards and opinion pieces advocating film over digital and vice versa. Happily, there are very many very good photographers who plainly understand that each process is simply a different way of doing the same thing. It was that view that really began to gel with me.

Shooting film with even the basic level of understanding I have reached has changed the way I feel about my photography. It has settled some disquiet I felt over being a self-taught child of the digital era, with all the associated complexes about “cheating” in the software darkroom, chimping exposures and all the rest. Was I really taking those images, or was I settling for some compromise a collection of diodes and software were offering me?

By learning just how much engineering and magic go into an emulsion I have begun to understand that film photographers can choose their “effects” by choosing their film or filter just as a digital shooter can do the same from their palette of presets. A lot of “photo-shopping” happens by default every time the shutter is activated on a film camera, and that is before any adjustments are made during developing and enlarging.

Like a choice of oils over acrylic over pencil over charcoal; digital and analogue photography are just means of capturing an image. None are used to actually recreate reality, no matter how realistic the image. The important bit is the artist's touch, through choice of medium and subject through all the little decisions of technique that deliver a final image.

Yet two things seem true for me now that I have become acquainted with film. The first is that it either way, the better the shot in camera the better the result after all the editing is done. The second is that any valued image deserves to be printed.

Five Stages, The Awakening Artist;or, I just realized that my phone camera doesn’t really take good photos

The photographer at last accepts that taking pictures is fun in itself and may even be, gasp, a bit of an art form.

(Image: R Crapnell)

 The Awakening Artist begins to look longingly at nice images other photographers make and begin to suspect that there may be more to photography than a phone cam can actually deliver. Loyalist Fruit- and Robot- phone using friends will say that the advancement in phone cameras makes the step up to a real camera less relevant now. But this simply isn't true and the Awakened Artist begins to figure this out when they discover that there is no way their phone cam can squeeze out that special look they are chasing for that one special shot.

The Awakening Artist will be aware that taking photos could be more than a simple act of logging social events, recording milestones and showing off their holidays and stuff to (hopefully) envious friends. Photos are more than just proof. The Awakening Artist occasionally takes a shot from a different angle, dabbles with some of the more obscure camera effects and starts being accused of getting “arty” when taking party portraits.

Eventually, the Awakening Artist will begin to realize that the photos their phone camera is taking are not actually that good after all. Some might be fantastic indeed, but it gets harder and harder to achieve the photographic vision the Awakening Artist now seeks to capture and express. For instance, when those smartphone images are looked at on anything other than a smartphone screen they lack punch and clarity, while those super saturated colours or faux sepia effects begin to just look cheesy and, well, arbitrary. The Artist begins to realize that their camera's automated idea of what looks good might be pretty in a pinch, but isn't really the vision they want to capture.

Of course, the gifted and insightful Awakening Artist will already know that the phone isn’t taking the images at all; it is the Artist taking the photos and the camera is just a tool. The Enlightened and Awakening Artist will likely start looking around for cost effective alternatives to their phone camera in order to expand their creative possibilities. Perhaps they will seek out a mentor, a more developed photographer who will guide them to finding the camera that is best for them. These lucky souls are truly blessed and may well avoid the financial perils of Gear Snobbery and the ass-hattery of the Prosumer.

The rest of us just instinctively know that we need a better camera and will likely just buy the one the retail guy says offers the most features for the dollar. It will almost certainly be a Canon or a Nikon with a kit lens and a spare battery plus a completely useless UV filter and possibly an unusable cheap tripod. We will actually think we scored a bargain. Like and expert crack dealer, the retail guy has set us up on a loss-leading deal that guarantees we will be back for more in good time. The Gear Snob beckons, but hopefully not for some time. Well, let's be honest, hopefully not for at least six weeks.

Either way, the Awakening Artist starts  loitering at the Imaging section of magazine racks, and perhaps slinking into a gallery or two before finally clicking on the Cameras and Tech link on their local daily webpage. At that point their fate is sealed as the world wide web wakes up to the fact that yet another individual is now susceptible to targeted marketing in that most visceral, unreasoning and lucrative consumer product segment; the amateur photography market.

From then until the photographer starts showing an interest in photo holidays or hair replacement, their banners, pop ups and spam will be dominated by pitches from the likes of Canon, Nikon, and Sony. Olympus will have a crack as well. The good news is that consumer level DSLRS offer amazing value for the quality of the gear on offer, and no DSLR from any of the big three will actually be a bad camera. They might not be as good as Pentax for the price but, hey, going Canikony will pay off when the photographer hits the Gear Snob and Prosumer stages.

The DSLR (or good MILC) that will hopefully result from this process of awakening will blow open the doors of creativity for the new photographer. It will likely be remembered as the best value for money ever spent on gear, and may well serve faithfully for years (against common wisdom, decent cameras don’t become obsolete quickly at all). The leap from phone camera to DSLR will be so profound, that the Awakened Artist may well feel overwhelmed at first. But in the age of the instawebz boundless support and inspiration is just a click away and the world of good photography has never been more accessible. The Awakening Artist just needs to make sure that they keep a high ratio of shutter clicks to mouse clicks at this stage.

The Awakening Artist will start photographing a wider variety of subjects, and now has the tool with which to bring subjects to life. It's a golden time, with every street a bonanza of unrealized potential and their friends will be chuffed at the really nice photos the Awakened Artist takes at social events (but that won't last long). The best bit is that the Artist will discover that a better camera does not make things easier… it actually makes photography more challenging, and so much more rewarding. Things like depth of field and composition, golden hours and blue hours, hard light and soft light, contrast and diffusion will soon become more important than sensor sizes and lens speeds. Sadly, sharpness will start to dominate the language of some.

One of the more important things the Awakening Artist will hopefully realize is that their camera is just a toolbox. Hopefully it won’t be long before the photographer discovers manual settings, or someone gently (or not so gently) suggests that they should get off Auto Mode. Then things really begin to open up as the Awakening Artist is freed from the arbitrary whims of the camera itself and deliberately starts making their own decisions on exposure and focus as well as composition. Throw in a bit of photo editing while finally shooting in raw digital formats, and the Pandora ’s Box is truly open.

From here on the Awakening Artist will have all the technical means at their disposal to take fabulous photos expand their technique and really begin to create some art. Unfortunately for many, however, as artistic ambition rises faster than technical competence, the door is also open for the entry of… The Gear Snob.

Tips for the Awakening Artist from a bloke who has been there:

Live it. Stretch it out. Love it. Record it (learn to keep your files in order!). Revisit the Awakening Artist if you can (apart from the buying new gear bit). Hold off the Gear Snob as long as possible. Most importantly, get off Green Mode as soon as you can.