Any Road Will Get You There…

The role of experimentation, print-proofing, and refinement

A surreal view of the ubiquitous.

The complete version of today’s newsletter title is; ”If you don’t know where you want to go, any road will get you there”. I wanted to write a follow-up to last week’s newsletter covering manufacturers’ prescriptions to better pictures. While somewhat askew but related to those thoughts, questions arise regarding how one might make better prints, make better editorial decisions, etc. Once past the “how do I get it to look like my screen” and other technical obstacles are overcome, the real question is more “what do you want it to look like, what is the print trying to say”.

There are great practical reasons to make proofs before committing to larger, more expensive prints. Assume you have what amounts to a good proof print. It meats that definition assuming your print represents what you are seeing prior to committing it to paper. Great your done, go ahead, make that final print. Rarely is this the case with new work, or especially a new kind of work. More likely there may be something nagging at you along the lines of “is this really the best way to portray what I’m trying to say”.

Typically this is where one starts to experiment in the form of different post-processing treatments, different print materials, new ways of looking at the original material. This is part of a refinement process. This is good. This is also a good reason to make proof prints. The refinements can be small or they can be radical. In many cases some of those “small” refinements can lead you down a radical new path. Don’t be fearful of those or get locked into one notion too early in the process.

A year and a half ago we published something to this effect describing how paper testing lead us to a radical, non-intuitive decision to reduce the shadow detail of an image rather than increase it. While in no way am I proclaiming doing exactly the opposite in a big way to what “good picture” wisdom is but do realize that general advice is sort of like training wheels. Dogmatically adhering to general photography rules and proper print regulations rarely produces the representation of your art that matches your vision.

So the question is; What is that vision? That sounds like a big scary test question that if answered incorrectly you will have your photography license revoked. Don’t worry, you’re fine. I perfectly good example is something like “I don’t know yet”. Make sure you emphasize the word YET. It takes time, it takes thought, and it takes experimentation. A very good reason to make proof prints, maybe a better reason than merely a check you’ve achieved what you thought you saw on the screen.

Proof prints can live with you every day without active effort. You look at them actively and passively in passing every day, maybe every hour. Over time you develop opinions and new ideas or merely refinements. These opinions, ideas, and refinements can have a big impact on your final representation. If you’re working on a project they will even inform work you haven’t made yet. Proof early in the process if you can.

The strange photograph at the top

Camera induced motion of mini-blinds at various white balance and aperture settings

During a lengthy on-line/off-line discussion I had with a reader on last week’s newsletter regarding motion blur, I remembered a series of abstract images I made a long while ago. The subject contained at the top and the random selection in the gallery above are mini-blinds. Not special mini-blinds, cheap, generic, plastic mini-blinds that are the band of my existance when making indoor environmental portraits, they look horrible photographically.

I spent a year or two actively exploring camera/subject motion and slow shutter speeds. I experimented constantly with both people as well as static inanimate objects. The image at the top was about as good as it gets for me attempting to make mini-blinds look good. I could definitely do this with a subject. It has no motion and relies entirely on the wrong white balance and point-of-view. Then came the motion with the thought about how to transform them into something completely different and surreal.

The gallery is a result of experimentation. Experimentation in transforming the eyesore of those ubiquitous mini-blinds into something completely different. It took many experiments. The gallery represents a brief evolution to what turned into a “vision” that got refined to the degree that every one of these save the first one (representing a start) are sequential out of the camera produced on-demand rather than at random. Experiments lead to refinement that leads to “vision” which will get you an answer to what you want your print to look like driven by what you want to say.