Answers to Frequently Asked Questions

Q: Achromatic Arts?

A: Achromatic Arts, Inc. was founded by Bruce Watson. That would be me, the guy answering these questions. The company's purpose is to sell and promote my art, perhaps the art of others, and perhaps in the future to offer services to other photographers.

Achromatic infers the absence of color. Since most of my photography is black and white, I thought this was an appropriate name.

Q: What kind of photography?

Large format. That is, I work with a large format view camera, and make photographs on 4x5 inch film. Remember your American History from school? Remember those teams that surveyed the western part of the country, that often included a photographer? The guy with the huge camera, big bellows, massive tripod, with his head under a dark cloth? Well, my equipment is a little more modern, but that's the basic idea, even today.

Q: Why do you use a large format view camera?

A: Because size does matter. The larger the film size, the more information I can capture. For example, each frame of 35mm film has an image area of about 8.64 square cm (about 1.34 square inches). The 4x5 film I use has an image area of about 129.0 square cm (about 20.0 square inches). Or, 4x5 film is roughly 15 times bigger than 35mm film, and can therefore carry 15 times the information.

The more information I capture on film, the larger the final print can be. Looked at another way, the more information I capture on film, the more detail I can carry to the fine art print.

Another reason is control. The hallmark of a view camera is that the plane of the lens is separate from the plane of the film. This allows me much greater control of the plane of focus, for example. It allows me to maintain perspective, such as keeping the vertical lines of a building parallel in the final image.

Q: How much time and equipment does it take for you to capture an image in the field?

A: More than you'd think. My typical “kit” fits into a standard hiker's backpack. Just the camera equipment alone weighs in at about 14 Kg (30.8 lbs). That's before adding water and food. For an all day hike from Yosemite valley to the rim and back, for example, I start out with about 17 Kg (37.4 lb) on my back.

When I find something interesting to photograph, it takes me about 20 minutes to set up the camera and get ready. It can take hours after that, waiting for the wind to die down, or jet aircraft contrails to blow out of the frame, or for the earth to rotate under the sun so the light is just right. It is normal operating procedure to return to the same scene day after day waiting for conditions to be conducive to making a photograph.

Q: Do the images on the website look like the prints?

Yes, and no. The images seen on this website are much smaller than the actual prints. The limitation of the web and your web browser mean that the image you see here offer only a very small portion of the detail and tonality of the prints themselves. Nothing beats seeing the originals in person; they can be breath taking.

The prints I sell vary in size from about 28 x 35 cm (11 x 14 inches) to about 1.0 x 1.25 m (39 x 49 inches).

It is my hope that the website images will give you an idea of what kind of work I do, encourage you to seek out my work at galleries and shows, and of course, and encourage you to buy some prints.

Q: What kind of prints are you talking about?

A: I sell fine art prints. In particular, most of my prints are made on 100% cotton rag paper (some are on canvas), using carbon pigment inks, printed with a professional level inkjet printer. Carbon is one of the most durable pigments known, and 100% cotton rag paper is one of the most durable substrates. The combination should provide an extremely long lived print.

I would be remiss, however, if I did not point out that there are many factors that determine the lifetime of a print, and substrate and ink are just two – they just happen to be the two that are under my control. Other factors include the print's display conditions, including how it is framed, where it is displayed, how it is lighted, its ambient temperature, relative humidity, ambient air quality (pollution levels), etc. All of these are beyond my control.

As the technology improves, I'll change my process to take advantage of it. In the future, I expect to be able to print using archival dye inks instead of pigments. Dye inks give a host of advantages over pigment inks, primarily in the areas of print quality. I'm not using dyes today, however, due mostly to print longevity issues.

Q: Are there other kinds of fine art prints?

A: People have been making fine art prints since well before the invention of photography. Lithography comes to mind. Aloys Senefelder invented lithography in about 1798. Basically, the process starts with a flat stone that has had its surface prepared to an almost velvet texture by abrasion with sand paper or abrasive powder. The artist then draws on the stone with a grease pencil or crayon. The stone is then treated with something that makes the grease in the drawing repel water but accept oil-based inks. The stones are then rolled with ink, covered with a substrate (typically a thick paper) and the image was transferred to the paper by applying pressure in a press. This process (inking and pressing) involves some wear and tear on the grease drawing, obviously. Typically several hundred good quality prints can be made before the drawing deteriorates too far. This is the origin of the idea of a “limited edition” if I recall my art history correctly (I'm sure I'll be corrected if I'm wrong ;-) When the artist decided that the quality of the prints wasn't up to standards, the run was stopped and the stones were cleaned of the drawing or broken. However many acceptable prints were obtained was the number in the edition.

Other methods include Serigraphs (silkscreen), woodcut, engraving, dry point, messotint, etching, offset lithography, rotogravure, xerography, and certainly many others.

My favorite, of course, is photography. Just in photography, there are a number of ways to make a fine art print. The current “standard” is the silver gelatin print, yet even today there a number of photographers using “alternative” printing processes such as platinum, palladium, albumen, salt, cyanotype, dye transfer, print out paper (POP), inkjet and many others.

What all these methods have in common is that the artist uses an intermediary (the lithography stone or plate, woodblock, silkscreen, photographic negative, etc.) which is used to make the fine art prints. The fine art prints are sold, while the intermediary is either destroyed or kept by the artist.

Q: What's the difference between a fine art photograph, and an art reproduction (giclee)?

A: The photograph starts from an image capture, either to film or through a digital photoreceptor chip. The image that is captured is up to the artistic creativity of the photographer. This image capture is the “original” which is not a finished product. This original is post processed, either in the darkroom by projecting light though the film onto light sensitive paper, or through manipulation in an image editor. The fine art photographic print then, is an artist's interpretation of the original image capture.

An art reproduction print is similar, but different. It is a photographic capture (again, either film or digital) of an artist's work – a large oil painting for example. This image capture is then post processed in a similar fashion to a fine art photograph, but with a completely different aim. In this case, the effort is to exactly match the original artwork in color and contrast. It is not an interpretation of the original – it is a copy of the original.

Q: Why should I buy a photograph from you? I could take it myself.

A: You should buy a photograph, or any piece of art, because it pleases you and you want to own it so you can look at it whenever you want.

On the other hand, to pass up a piece of art because you think it's easy to make is questionable logic. How hard is it to make a big smooth stone like Henry Moore did? How hard is it to throw paint through a fan like Jackson Pollack did? How difficult is it to drag a brush across canvas like Monet did?

The truth is, the craft behind most art isn't technically difficult. Certainly, for most art the cost of materials is very low. If anything, photography is on the high end of technical difficulty and cost of equipment. But that's not what art is about. The trick is, the artist has to use the materials and tools, whatever they may be, to express something. When you find a piece of art where what the artist is trying to express resonates with you, you've got something special, no matter how it was created.

But if you want to hammer on it, yes, you could have painted “Starry Night” instead of Van Gogh. But you didn't. You could have made the photograph “Clearing Winter Storm” instead of Ansel Adams. But you didn't. So why think that way?

In many ways, photography is among the most difficult of the 2-D arts. Unlike a painter, I have to physically be there; I can't take a photograph from memory. If the painter wants the curve of the river to be bigger than it really is, he can paint it that way. If I want the curve of the river to be bigger, I'm just out of luck. If the painter thinks the scene would be better with some big fluffy white clouds, he can just paint them in. If I think it would be better with big fluffy white clouds, I have to come back tomorrow, and the day after, and the day after, until the weather cooperates.

I went to an exhibition of the Hudson River school of painters just a few months ago. I was impressed (I always am with these guys) with just how much beauty they could pack into a painting. Then I got the some Bierstadt paintings featuring Yosemite Valley. What struck me was that while the paintings were inspired by Yosemite, they weren't of Yosemite. The Merced river doesn't have that curve. Beyond Cathedral Rocks, is more valley rim down to Bridal Veil Falls, which Bierstadt conveniently left out of one painting, to be replaced by the setting sun – which was setting in the south, not the west like it does for photographers.

Painters can take what they see, and modify it to make a beautiful scene on canvas. Photographers can't do that – they have to find a scene that is already beautiful, figure out how to isolate it from its cluttered surroundings, and capture it. There's a lot more to it than just tripping the shutter.

Q: Why black and white? Why not color?

A: This may sound strange, but I find that color is distracting. It hides the underlying form and structure of a scene. Also, the human eye/brain combination is more sensitive to some colors than others, and we tend to pay attention to some colors more than others. By removing color, I “level the playing field” as it were, and reduce color to just the tonal relationships (dark and light) between the parts of a scene. This frees us to see the entire scene, not just the color relationships. What we see when color is removed is the form, structure, and rhythm that underlies the scene.

Q: Your photographs are just recordings of nature, aren't they?

A: Actually, no, they aren't. I've altered the tonal values quite a bit in some cases, such that if you stood in front of the scene and held one of my prints in your hand, the difference would be quite evident, even startling in some cases.

I'm not trying to make a recording of nature. I'm trying to illustrate the beauty and tranquility I find in nature. This isn't nature itself. It's my interpretation of nature. This is not at all the same thing.

Q: Why photography? Why not painting?

A: Painters and photographers come at art from two different directions, I think.

Painters try to show you their impression of a place. They start with a vision in their head, inspired by what they've seen, imagined, or experienced, and work forward from that vision to put it on canvas so that you can see it too. Painters don't need to paint what is actually there. They paint to communicate the beauty they feel about a place.

Photographers try to show you their impression of what is actually there. We start with what we find in nature, and work backwards towards a print that will communicate the beauty that we feel about a place. We find the bits of beauty in a scene that interests us, find a way to isolate them, then catch them at the right time of day, the right time of year, and under the right conditions (sunlight, rain, fog, etc.) and capture the image onto film. Then we modify the tonal variations and colors to emphasize what we find interesting, unique, and beautiful about a place. The resulting fine print is our impression of what is actually there. But, if you go to that place, hold one of my fine prints in your hands, and compare the scene to the print, you'll see that the print is my impression, not a documentary.

I'm interested in the form and structure I see in nature; the natural patterns, the rhythms, the symmetry, the asymmetry, the textures, and the huge amount of detail. The best set of tools to show this, is photography.

Q: Are these prints limited editions?

A: No. And Yes. They aren't traditional limited additions, they are sold as an “open edition” which means that the collectors help determine how many prints are made of any given image. If a given image is popular, it sells more prints. As the number of prints sold goes up, so does the selling price. Eventually, the price gets high enough that no one is willing to buy a print. And that's how many prints end up in that image's “edition.”

This system works for both collectors, galleries, and the photographer. The collectors who buy early get a bargain. The collectors who buy later aren't locked out as they would be for a fixed size edition, but they do pay more. The gallery selling the later prints makes more money. And the photographer gets more money for more popular images. I should also point out that collectors don't have to wait for me to die before they see their print valuations increase!

Q: What about framing?

I recommend Jesse Goslen of Fine Art Framing for anyone who needs fine-art framing services. I especially like his outstanding floater frames.

Q: Do you do weddings?

A: No. Sorry, I don't have the equipment.

Q: Do you do commissions?

A: Sometimes, it depends on the job requirements.