I am back from Ladakh but not yet ready to start posting on the trip.  In the meantime, I will post technical articles I have already published for the Canberra Photographic Society Blog:

• Computers for Photography
• Why Print?
• What do you need for Printing?
• How to Print
• Lightroom Previews and Getting Lightroom to Fly
• New Auto Changes in Lightroom
• Backup for Photographers

Following this, I will start posting on the trip to Ladakh, then the Atacama (2015), then the Caribbean (2016).

 

Why Print?

This is Part 1 of a three-part series on printing:

1. Why Print?
2. What do you need for Printing?
3. How to Print

These days when we are deluged with digital images and creating them is so readily available, why even bother to print? The short answer is that printing is an important learning tool that will help you to grow as a photographer and an artist.

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Ansel Adams 1902–1984: “The Tetons and the Snake River”, Grand Teton National Park, Wyoming, 1942. Vintage signed print. National Archives Unrestricted.

(Click for larger image).

There is a sale record for this print on Christie’s auction site. There is also a short article on some of their prints for auction and a brief video about Ansell Adams.

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More often than not, a print will win Image of the Night in our Canberra Photographic Society monthly competitions, even when there are more digital images than prints. This is because a successful print has a special presence. It’s a tangible thing, a finished object, something with texture as well as tonality. In creating it, the process of closely examining an image, fine-tuning it and optimising it for a print will also show you a lot about your work that you might miss in merely preparing digital images.

OK, so you want to enter some prints in Society competitions or just generate some for your own purposes – so the next question is “Should you print them yourself?”. I believe the answer to that question should be Yes!. In short, it’s your best route to quality, it will probably work out cheaper and the final print will be all your own work.

You can of course get your images printed and there are many reasons to do this. It might be more economic if you make few prints, you don’t have a suitable printer, you may want a larger print than your printer can make or your printer may have died. There are many print competitions for which you submit digital images and then if you are a finalist they will print your work. Canberra Photographic Society competitions also allow commercially printed entries.

However, if you make your own prints, you should easily be able to get better results than a cheap commercial printer (such as Big W or Harvey Norman) and after a while you should also be able to get better results than a custom printer. This is because only you can understand your artistic vision and for that matter, making your own prints will help to develop it. While some prints may pop right out from screen through printer to print in completely satisfactory form, others may require considerable time and effort to optimise.

And I think the most compelling reason to do your own printing is that otherwise it’s not really your own work.

Former President Brian Rope told me a story that illustrates this from a more general perspective. Ostensibly, all that is required for an image to be yours (including a print) is that you pressed the shutter button on the camera. Some time ago, a photographic competition in China received a number of identical images from different people. It turns out they had all been to the same workshop. The convenor of the workshop had set up his camera on a tripod, carefully composed the image and made all the required technical settings. The attendees of the workshop all went through, put their cards in the camera and pressed the shutter button. Those entries were all disqualified from the competition of course. They might have pressed the shutter button but apart from that it was not their work.

In the Canberra Photographic Society we believe in freedom of information, assisting anyone who requests it and working cooperatively. Even so, ultimately I believe that everyone has to take responsibility for their own work, specifically the technical and artistic aspects that require an exercise of skill. There’s definitely skill in printing, both technical and artistic, and these skills are definitely worth picking up and exercising.

In summary:

• Printing is an important part of Photography
• Learning it and practicing it will help you to grow as a photographer and an artist
• Printing your own prints should lead to better quality than a commercial print
• You can probably make prints more cheaply than cheap commercial prints (details next post)
• If you want it to really be your own work, you should print it yourself.

Any value judgements expressed above are entirely my own. Feel free to discuss any issues or ask any questions in the comments below.