Making Prints Is Important

Making Prints Is Important

by William Lulow

Before the digital age, there were only a few ways of viewing a photographer’s work: prints or slides (transparencies) or photomechanical reproductions. I suppose one could have made a film of a number of prints (which people often did), but the main way to view the output from a photography session of any kind was by looking at prints.

The art of making a photographic print has been covered for at least a century now. It has improved quite a bit over the years, but the basics of the printmaking process haven’t changed all that much. Today, we don’t have to use chemicals, trays, photo-sensitive paper and a darkroom with red safelights, but we do have to respect several rules when it comes to prints.

• A print should cover the entire tonal range from pure white to dead black. This is also true for color prints
• There should be no “blocked highlights” – that is there should be detail in the highlights such as white clouds
• There should be detail in the shadows.

Now, in the days of making darkroom prints, respecting these simple rules often meant spending time “dodging” and “burning in” spaces on the print to bring out specific details. Today, far too many shooters don’t even make prints. These people often say, “I want to show you some of my pictures,” then hand you their camera so that you can look at the LCD! (The same thing with camera phones).  To me, this is not photography. This is just snapshooting and recording images with no thought to cropping or editing. Further, with today’s digital print-making, all the work on a print has to happen in the computer, before it is even sent to the printer. Sometimes, certain modifications to an image file have to be done by an expert in Photoshop in order to retain the qualities of a professional print. In case you weren’t aware, you can do many of these same edits right on your iPhone, although there is nothing quite like a big screen to do all your photo image editing. I now use a 27″ monitor which is superb for this purpose.

Some people also say that if the goal is a digital print, the image needs to be shot in RAW format so that all the digital information is preserved. The answer to this is a hearty “yes and no.” If you need to send the images to anyone electronically, the RAW image needs to be converted to a JPEG anyway. I have shot in both formats and for someone who needs to turn around images quickly for clients, it simply doesn’t pay for me to sit at the computer for large amounts of time doing various conversions. If you learn your lighting and exposure techniques, you can get enough information from your original JPEGS to create outstanding prints if you need them. There are advantages to the RAW format, but they have to be integrated into the type of photography you do and the clients you service. I have done many magazine covers which have been spectacular with JPEGS.

Getting back to prints, it’s important to make your own prints because it’s the only way to learn how to make the changes you want in your image files. I find it important to make prints because I love handing someone a physical image for them to look at. It’s something I made with my own hands and says something about the pride I take in my work.

Below is an original digital black & white image I made in Portugal. Note the detail in the shadows and the highlights. It was a scene I saw in black&white and I made an exposure in between what my meter showed for both. I didn’t have to do much in Photoshop.

So, take the time to make a few prints of what you consider your best work. You can get very good results from online services like Snapfish or Shutterfly. They really do a great job and of course, they monitor their printers constantly for really high quality output. Plus, you can get a really nice 16×20″ print now for around $18. It used to be about twice that much for a decent lab-produced C-print.