Digital BW, The Print

On Aug 25, 2006, at 8:22 PM, Roy Harrington wrote:

>
> Reading the article I can see the somewhat negative overtones. But  
> I view it more
> as an observation that photography is a two stage process.





Yes.  It's like songwriter and performer.  Some are one or the other,  
and some are both.  I for one first fell in love with printing.  My  
idea of photography was to get a negative to print :  )   And I  
quickly became a better printer than I was a photographer, which  
realization raised my consciousness about just what's involved in  
seeing as a photographer- or rather, how my planning and seeing were  
lacking at the photographing stage.  And so I worked on my image  
taking skills, both the visual and the technical aspects of getting  
better negatives.  And as my images improved, the prints were both  
the proof (no pun) of the pudding, and the inspiration to do more.   
The more I thought about how to see as a photographer, the more I  
thought about how the photographer saw in the inspiring images of  
others.  It's the same in music:  one can make a distinction between  
the music and the technique of the music.  One can point to rough  
performers who have a musical spirit with depth; and one can point to  
musical athletes who have stunning but empty technique. Neither  
extreme is ideal.  However, musicality and technique inform each  
other.  The desire to flesh out one's musical ideas leads to the  
improving of technique, and the  practicing of newly improved  
technique leads  to new musical ideas  which would not otherwise have  
come to life.  I think this staggered ladder pattern of idea, need  
for technique, and new idea springing from that technique is probably  
inherent in the arts in general, and maybe in many other endeavors as  
well.  The dual hats of being both photographer and printer may not  
be an exact analogy, but yet it is like that in many ways.  And it's  
also refreshing to approach the creative photographic process from  
first one, then the other stage of it.

James Irelan

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