How I go about my own photography

I generally like to go out alone to do my photography - it is a concentrated, meditative process - often involving waiting for long periods for the right conditions (clouds, sunlight, lack of people) to arise. Patience is vital - and a willingness to 'be' with what is. Some days nothing quite seems to work, but at other times - especially in exceptional weather conditions like frost and fog - there seem to be great photos everywhere. So take a tip from the Boy Scouts - 'be prepared' - with lots of film!

Sometimes I take a photo which I am convinced is going to be brilliant, but eventually decide it isn't. This realisation is very painful, particularly if I've invested a lot of time trying unsuccessfully to print it.

My tip for this issue is to keep some distance between the 'taking' and 'printing' stages of the process. That way, I don't have such an emotional investment in the taking of the photo, and can look at it more objectively. Also, by processing my film in batches, I can save some time.

Once I have my negatives, I start off by doing a number of contact sheets (lots of tiny prints on one photo) at different contrasts and exposures. These I study at leisure with a magnifying glass, to decide which photographs have potential, and to make a first stab at how they should be printed.

The next stage is to make 5"x7" test prints of each of the candidate negatives, using the settings derived from the contact sheets. These are again studied at leisure - some discarded as being not worth pursuing - the rest examined with a view to deciding how best to print them.

Now finally, I am ready to attempt to a final print. I have already invested a great deal of time in these photos, but this final stage will still typically take me several hours. Rarely do I have a negative which I can print 'straight' - where the whole print shares the same exposure and contrast.

Generally, I find that some part of the print needs to be lightened, another part darkened - this is done by shadowing parts of the print during its exposure to the light from the enlarger. Despite my years of experience, this involves much trial and error, during which I really get intimate with the picture - a process I believe essential to get the right print. And when I get one part of the print right, I suddenly discover that this changes the balance of the composition, and something else needs changing - it is a painstakingly iterative process.

A tip I got from one of Ansel Adams' books is to use a metronome to time my shading process - this beeps every 1/2 second, and after a lot of practice, I find I can use this shade my prints to within maybe 1/5 of a second.

Often I cut special masks to help me in shading the print successfully. Sometimes these have hinged sections so I can vary the amount of shading for different parts of the print. I may also combine masks with use of filters to selectively alter the contrast in particular areas of the photograph.

When finally I have a successful print, I assiduously note down on the back all the details of how it was achieved - this is my 'reference print', which is filed away for future use.

It is now relatively easy to produce a batch of similar photos, which (after suitable toning, retouching and mounting) are available for sale!
Digital Photography

Although my setup is essentially traditional, I am reviewing using more digital imaging in my photography - indeed I recently used it to rescue a flawed image, which I had transferred to film for printing in the traditional way - and I use digital imaging to prepare photos for publication.

Digital imaging has two huge advantages. Firstly, you can amend the picture in ways difficult to achieve traditionally - for example to remove unwanted people. Secondly, you can very quickly achieve tonal adjustments to get the picture just as you want it - a process taking hours of darkroom time.

Until recently, it was very difficult to get permanent 'photographs' from digital sources (since the ink-jet inks fade), but that is changing with new inks from Lyson and Epson, and the quality of digital photographs can be excellent.

For image-capture, traditional film still has better resolution than digital cameras, although you then have the problem of scanning the film into digital form. Having said that, a good film scanner is far cheaper than a good digital camera - I've recently bought a Canon FS400US film scanner which I'm well pleased with.

My present view is that digital imaging does not yet produce the resolution I want, and therefore I remain predominantly traditional.

However, digital photography is becoming an increasingly attractive alternative - particularly if you're limited on time, already have the computer, or have no space for a darkroom.