Process Description

Overview

Photography's strengths as a medium include its ability to capture amazing amounts of detail and exacting tonal relationships. This ability can be put to practical use in showing you the exquisite texture of sequoia bark, the bubbles in the eddy behind the rock in a fast flowing stream, and the actual form of the mist as it blows from the water fall. By removing the distraction of color, it can show you the underlying structure, patterns, and rhythm that you might have otherwise missed.

These are the strengths of photography. To take full advantage of what photography can do at its limits, I use highly technical and complex processes and equipment, as described below:

Photography requires the photographer to be in the right place at the right time. In particular, the light has to be right. If everything isn't just the way it needs to be, I have no recourse other than to come back and try again.

I have to use the right equipment. In my case, this is a large-format view camera. My camera uses 5x4 sheet film. By virtue of the way the camera is constructed, it gives me excellent control of the plane of focus. I can't translate my compositions onto film without the control that a view camera provides.

Creating the composition is done without the camera. I walk the scene looking for strong graphical elements that I can isolate from their environments. What I'm trying to capture is essence of the place. I particularly enjoy creating compositions that are asymmetrical, yet balanced.

Once I've made a composition that's promising, I use the view camera to make a photograph. There are a number of technical and aesthetic decisions that have to be made, the biggest of which are where to place the plane of focus and how to expose the film. The actual making of the photograph occurs once these decisions have been made and set, and often takes less than a second.

Part of what I do in the field involves handling film holders. After a long day hiking and making photographs, I have to swap the exposed film from my film holders with fresh unexposed film for the next day. It's not enough that the film be fresh as it must also be clean and dust free.

Once back in the darkroom, I process the film. I take color film to my local pro lab while I process B&W film myself using time-honored traditional techniques. I then evaluate each negative on a light table to determine which negatives merit transfer from film to digital files.

To digitize the image I use a drum scanner. This involves mounting the film onto an optically clear acrylic drum and spinning it past an optical system that traverses the length of the drum. The film is digitized one pixel at a time. The drum scanner creates digital image files of remarkable sharpness and clarity.

I use Photoshop to edit the image. The editing I do on a computer is very similar to the editing normally accomplished in the darkroom. I perform operations analogous to setting print-development times, choosing a paper grade, and dodging and burning. The difference is I can do this with far greater accuracy and precision using Photoshop.

Printing the image is done using an inkjet printer with pigment inks onto either cotton-rag fine-art papers or canvas.

The last step of my workflow is presenting the print. This I do through conventional framing techniques. I frame paper prints using a modified Library of Congress method. I stretch canvas prints over stretcher bars and present them as finished products or frame as one would oil paintings.

Introduction

You wouldn't think, looking at paintings and photographic prints hung on the wall, that there's that much difference between painting and photography. The images I make and the images painted by a landscape painter can be quite similar. But there the similarity ends. Painting and photography are polar opposites. Painters and photographers end up at nearly the same point by traversing completely different paths.

What I describe below is the process I use as a photographic artist to arrive at my final prints. I use a hybrid workflow that begins with traditional photography and end with digital image processing. The basic steps include the being in the right place at the right time, having the right equipment, creating the composition, using the view camera, handling film holders, processing the film, digitizing the image, editing the image, printing the image, and presenting the print.

Being in the Right Place at the Right Time

To make a photograph, I have to be in the right place, at the right time, with the right equipment in tow. I can't photograph from memory or from a sketch. The scene must engage me, I must create a valid composition, the light has to be right, I must set up the equipment well, the equipment must work properly, and I have to make a large number of decisions every single one of which must be correct. If there are any weak links in this chain, my only choice is to come back and try again.

This is standard operating procedure for the photographic artist. I often return to the same scene again and again until all the conditions line up perfectly. This is a requirement for making a photograph that can transmit the feeling that I have for the composition in my head. Slide number one of the jury slides I submitted as part of this application is an example. This image, Tree and Shadow, Yosemite National Park 2003, took four attempts, all at 6:00 in the morning. I couldn't make multiple attempts at one session because the light was changing too fast. The scene only looked like this for about 10 minutes every day.

Having the Right Equipment

Having the right equipment in tow means carrying a backpack full of large-format camera gear. This includes a 5x4 field monorail camera, five lenses, a tripod with a ball head, ten film holders with twenty sheets of black and white film, a Kodak readyload film holder and 10 sheets of color negative film, a light meter, filters, a dark cloth, etc. down to a day's worth of water and a first-aid kit. The loaded backpack I carried from the bottom of Yosemite Valley to the top of Yosemite Falls this past June weighted about 17.5 kg (38.5 lbs). The trail itself is about a 11.3 km (7 mi) round trip. It has a vertical rise of about 1.1 km (.7 mi), and switchbacks up beside North America's tallest waterfall. Arduous is one way to describe it; awe inspiring is another.

Creating the Composition

I spend the time hiking and at my destination looking for inspiration. I tend to photograph the beauty that other people walk right by. These scenes have strong graphical elements that I can isolate from their environments. What I'm trying to capture is essence of the place. I particularly enjoy creating compositions that are asymmetrical, yet balanced.

Unlike a painter who can arrange the elements in a painting at will, I have to work with what is actually there. I also have to visualize a couple of levels of abstraction, because I'm working with a full-color three-dimensional reality that I intend to show as in a two-dimensional print, usually without the color.

I walk the scene looking for the best location from which I can both create a composition that interests me and at the same time isolate this composition from its surroundings. This can take from seconds to nearly an hour. It is not at all unusual for me to move on without setting up the camera. I've found that many beautiful scenes just aren't photogenic.

Using the View Camera

A view camera is different from the cameras most people are used to in some important ways. Conventional digital and 35mm cameras work as a unit, with the spatial relationship between the lens and the film fixed; the plane of focus and the film plane are identical. This is not the case with a view camera where the plane of focus is controlled separately from the film plane. If you've ever taken a photograph with a conventional camera in a forest or in a city with tall building, and you've leaned back to catch the tops of the trees or buildings, you might have an idea of why this is important. In such a photograph, the trees or buildings seem to lean toward the center of the photograph. This is called "keystoning" and results from the plane of the film not being parallel to the plane of the trees or buildings. With a view camera, I can tilt the film plane back to being plumb and level which eliminates this distortion.

Once I've found an interesting scene I set up my tripod and camera, then pick and install the lens. I attach the dark cloth, then stick my head "in the bag" so I can see the camera's ground glass. Of course, the laws of physics being what they are, what I see is literally upside down and backwards. I then manipulate the camera so that I can capture on film the composition that I have in my head. The process of setting up the camera to capture a composition takes from 20 minutes to 45 minutes and is an intensely creative process.

After the camera is set up I use my light meter to help me determine the film's exposure. This also takes a fair amount of creativity. Part of what I have to do is determine how much detail I want to have in the shadow areas. Once I've determined that, I have to pick from among a set of shutter speed and aperture pairs, all of which will give me the same exposure, but which have varying effects. Aperture settings determine the distance on each side of the plane of sharp focus will look sharp in the final print (depth of field), and to a lesser extend the maximum sharpness captured (diffraction). Shutter-speed settings affect just how still the composition has to be. It's not unusual for me to wait for an hour or more for the wind to die down and the leaves to quit moving so that I can capture a photograph that requires a slow shutter speed.

Once this has been done, I check to make sure the lens aperture is closed and the shutter is cocked. I then insert a film holder, pull the darkslide, and wait for conditions to cooperate. Slide number four of my jury slides, Yosemite Valley, Yosemite National Park, 2003 is a good example. When I set up on this shot, there were aircraft contrails behind Half Dome that extended all the way across the scene. So I sat down and had lunch. Several fellow hikers asked what I was doing and I explained that I was waiting for clouds to form behind Half Dome. They shook their heads, had a good laugh and hiked on. About 40 minutes after setting up, I made the photograph.

All this effort leads to the moment of exposure which can run from 1/125 of a second up to several minutes.

After I make the exposure, I slide the dark slide back in and tear down my setup, putting everything back in my backpack in the correct order in the correct place. This discipline helps me to set up for the next photograph as quickly as possible.

Handling the Film Holders

At the end of the hike, or the end of the day, I'm still not done. I've got exposed film in film holders. The next day I'll need them full of fresh unexposed film. Enter the film changing tent. This is a table-top sized tent that is a light-tight changing room for film holders. I have to set up the tent, transfer my used film holders to the tent and zip the interior and exterior parts closed to make it light tight. Then I throughly wash my hands and arms over my elbows and insert both arms into the tent's light-tight sleeves. I then open the film holders and transfer the exposed film into light-tight film boxes.

The second stage is to remove the holders from the tent to clean them. Landscape photographers fight an endless battle with dirt. We are obsessed with cleanliness, yet we work outside in the dust, wind, rain, and snow. It's in our own enlightened self interest to keep things clean. A speck of dust on the film during exposure blocks the light and leaves a dust-speck-sized spot in the image. When I enlarge this tiny spot ten times for a print, it's often quite visible; this is a bad thing.

Working to make sure the film and the film holders are as clean as possible saves me a lot of work in the future.

The clean holders go back into the tent along with a box of fresh film. I wash up again, and put my arms back into the sleeves and reload the film holders. Finally, I take the reloaded film holders back out of the tent and reload them into my backpack. The whole process takes about an hour, often at the end of a long and arduous day.

Processing the Film

When the trip is over, I usually come back to my darkroom with as many as a hundred sheets of film to process. The vast majority is B&W film which I process myself. Color negative film goes to a local lab for processing. It took me months of testing to optimize my exposure and development techniques for my workflow. With that work done, I am able to get very consistent results.

When the film is dry, I take it to the light table for evaluation. Since all my film is negative film, the tonal and color relationships are backwards. Shadow areas are light (which actually makes it easy to evaluate shadow detail) and highlights dark. Green leaves appear magenta, etc. This doesn't hinder an evaluation of composition. Nor does it hinder an examination of sharpness and detail using a 10x magnifier loupe.

Evaluation time is sometimes difficult because I know how much work went into bringing each individual negative to the light table. Yet, as many photographers will tell you, the best photographic tool is a waste basket. Those negatives that aren't technically perfect end up in the round file, as do those that lack compositional interest or are flawed in other ways.

Digitizing the Image

Negatives that pass evaluation merit transfer from film to digital file. These I fluid mount onto an optically clear acrylic tube for drum scanning. Just like film holders, the scanner drum has to be scrupulously clean, inside and out. I tape one end of an acrylic overlay to the drum, then apply anti-Newton scanner fluid to the drum under the overlay. The negative is cleaned with film cleaner, then placed between the drum and the overlay. I then apply scanner fluid between the negative and the overlay. The result is a sandwich consisting of the drum, scanner fluid, the negative, scanner fluid, and the overlay. I pull the overlay very tight which squeezes out bubbles and tape the remaining three sides. Then I clean the drum with drum cleaner to remove most of the excess scanner fluid. The overlay has to be spotless and optically clear, so the final step is the clean it with film cleaner. The result of this work is that the negative is held rigidly in the plane of focus for the scanner, Newton's Rings are avoided, any surface defects in the negative like scratches are filled by the scanner fluid, and the negative can not detach from the drum while it spins rapidly in the scanner.

I usually mount four negatives at a time under a single overlay. I then install the drum in the scanner. I use software designed to drive my drum scanner to overview the drum. Then I define the individual regions on the drum I want to scan (usually one region for each negative, but sometimes I only scan part of a negative). For each negative I have a number of parameters I have to set, from scan resolution (determines how big a print I can make from the image file), to the white and black points (this established the range of detail I want the scanner to dig out of the film), the magnitude and shape of the output contrast curve, and a number of other technical details. Suffice it to say there is nothing automatic about setting up a drum scanner. It is this flexibility as much as its technical superiority that allows a good operator to make a great scan.

Once set up, the drum scanner digitizes the image, creating one pixel at a time. I normally scan film at fairly high resolutions to make large prints. This translates into a scan time for a piece of 5x4 B&W film of about 70 minutes. Color film takes about 90 minutes. What I get for all this time and effort are digital images of remarkable sharpness and clarity.

Editing the Image

Scanning produces image files. These I edit on a computer using a software program called Photoshop. I've found that I do less manipulation of the image in Photoshop than I used to do in the darkroom. The reason is that with Photoshop I gain considerably more control over every step of the process.

For each image I crop to an appropriate aspect ratio. Then I "spot" the image, repairing the holes left by dust that blocks the light either from the film at exposure or during scanning. Spotting is a tedious process that can have a profound effect on the final print. This is why photographers tend to get obsessive about cleanliness. The cleaner the film and the scan, the less time and effort goes into spotting.

Next, I fine tune the image's white and black points (analogous to determining print development time in a traditional darkroom), and adjust contrast by applying a curve (analogous to picking a paper grade). With color images I have to adjust color balance and saturation also. Finally I'll adjust some areas of local contrast (analogous to dodging and burning) if required, but I find that with my workflow this is not often needed. Yet in the traditional darkroom, dodging and burning is an art form all by itself and can make or break the final print.

Printing the Image

Throughout the editing process, I make test prints. I print with a professional inkjet printer. For B&W prints, I use inks that consist of four dilutions of black ink. These inks are often referred to as quadtones. The inks I'm currently using are carbon-pigment inks in a carrier that is mostly water. Inks for color prints are similar, except the pigments are not based on carbon, and of course they are different colors.

I use software called a raster image processor (RIP) to drive the printer. When properly set up, the RIP can make a perfectly linear ramp of ink from maximum black to paper white. It lays ink down in a dither pattern of microscopic ink dots, many dots to a pixel. A good RIP can lay ink down such that the resulting print exhibits exceptionally smooth tonal transitions while providing outstanding image sharpness.

I typically print on cotton-rag water-color papers that have a coating receptive to pigment inks. This coating is similar to the gesso painters apply to canvas for oil paints. I am not restricted to just papers; there are a vast array of substrates from silk to canvas, from endless varieties of water-color papers to backlit films. My current favorite paper has a very smooth matte finish. It's a slightly warm white paper that exhibits excellent feel and gives beautifully smooth tonality to the final prints. It is unlike anything available for traditional darkroom printing. Indeed, my prints do not look like a traditional silver gelatin prints. But then, this is new medium that should look like itself, and not imitate something else.

Printing is an iterative process for me. I make a test print, dry it, and evaluate it. Then I'll modify my corrections in Photoshop and make another test print. It's not unusual for me to make six or more test prints before I'm satisfied that the final print communicates what I was feeling when I exposed the film. It's also not unusual for me to make just one. Some are just easier than others.

I have to be strongly convinced an image is worth this much effort to carry it this far in the workflow. As a result, nearly every image that makes it this far is printed and matted for my portfolio. Images in my portfolio are available for sale and shown on my website.

Presenting the Print

Final images are printed to full size as required. I find that each individual image has a range of sizes that suit it. Individual flowers usually look best printed small for example, while wide open landscape views often look best printed large. I don't print all images at all sizes. My smallest size is 28 x 22.4 cm (11 x 8.8 in). My largest is about 125 x 100 cm (39.4 x 49.2 in).

Images smaller than about 80 x 100 cm (31.5 x 39.4 in) I usually print on cotton-rag paper and archivally frame using a modified Library of Congress method. Prints on canvas are first coated with a UV inhibiting laminate for protection, then stretched over stretcher bars as one would stretch an oil painting. The stretched canvas print can be hung as is or be framed using conventional framing materials and techniques.

Conclusion

I've been asked why anyone would go through this much trouble for an image. It's a valid question. It's difficult to answer. I think it has to do with the media's ability to capture amazing amounts of detail and to capture the tonal relationships between the objects in the scene. It also has to do with the media's ability to capture a moment, to show the relationships between objects in the scene as they truly were for an instant in time.

What photography can do then is show you the exquisite texture of sequoia bark. It can show you the bubbles in the eddy behind the rock in a fast flowing stream. It can show you the actual form of the mist as it blows from the water fall. By removing the distraction of color, it can show you the underlying structure, patterns, and rhythm that you might have otherwise missed.

These are the strengths of photography. If you want to take full advantage of what photography can do at its limits, this is what you must go though to put art on the wall.