More About Photographic Prints

More About Photographic Prints

by William Lulow

Last month I wrote a piece about how photographers should try to make more prints of their images. As I have said many times, these days, since the advent of digital imaging, and the fact that everyone has an iPhone or similar device, taking great numbers of pictures is really easy. Making a great photograph is not! I have related the story of a friend who goes on holiday a fair bit and always comes home with thousands of images on his point-and-shoot device and now, more than ever, just on his iPhone. He often asks if I’d like to see pictures of his travels. Politely as I can, I tell him to pick out one that he really likes and show it to me. If I didn’t do this, he would simply hand me his device and tell me which way to scroll! That’s not a particularly good way to view photographs. In a certain sense, it may actually be detrimental to the art of viewing pictures itself, which is why, lately, good photography exhibitions are a must to attend!

Another friend reminded me of the days when our parents would take their cameras on vacation and come back with 35mm color slides they had shot. We all would then have to sit through long, protracted slide presentations of their vacation trips, with all the accompanying descriptions. Most of us were usually quite bored with these and couldn’t wait for them to end.

In the days when I was teaching at the New School for Social Research in Manhattan, I told students to bring prints of the assignments they had done for each class. There was always a table where they would leave the prints when they came to class and we would proceed to discuss at least one print from each student. Sometimes other students in the class would have to crane their necks to view the prints, especially if they were small. But that was always okay with me. It kind of reinforced the notion that viewing prints was an integral part of the photographic process.

Digital photography, having taken the world by storm, does not negate the need for making prints. Recently, I had the pleasure of going to the Metropolitan Museum of Art to see an exhibit of photographs by women photographers. The show was spectacular and very well presented by the museum.

These photographers’ images, some well-known, others not-so-much, were beautifully laid out in the Met’s print gallery and as I was walking around looking at the images on the walls as well as the placards of descriptive detail, I couldn’t help but notice how people were viewing the images. Some were reading the information first, then examining the photographs by looking at them closely as well as taking in the “feel” of where the frames were actually placed on the wall.

Sometimes the wall itself, was instrumental in adding to the importance of each image. Galleries and museums around the world have always been cognizant of the fact that HOW an image or painting is displayed is frequently as important as the picture itself, because it can draw attention to specific works or say something else about others. There is also something to be said for the environment of a gallery show. People become more mindful of how others are viewing the pieces. It is just not the same experience one gets from flipping through an easel of prints or especially scrolling through an iPhone’s files.

The black frame around this matted photograph as well as the description placed on the lower left, adds a great deal of importance to the image and is evidence that someone not only has thought about it enough to select it for the exhibition, but has also put a great deal of thought and consideration about how to display it properly. Many people go about the act of photographing anything without thinking at all. Some have thought about photographing something in which they are interested, but not really about how they wish to depict it.

So I again implore all photographers, whether amateur or professional, to print their favorite images more often. The digital medium has presented many more opportunities to print our works. I recently had to buy a new photo printer because my old one had “reached the end of its life.” The new machine was faster, better, smaller and half the price of my old one. My former print workhorse was only about six or so years old. Now my printing results are far superior and I am enjoying printing original black&white photographs as much as I enjoyed making them in my darkroom.

Here’s one I just finished working on:

This was a photo I had taken several years ago on a trip to Maine, but I decided to rework it and make a nice little gem of an 8×10″ print in an 11×14″ frame to hang on my office wall. Photographs really are made to be displayed. But in order to do that, you have to examine them carefully and select them from among thousands you might make in the course of a vacation, trip or just a plain walk around your neighborhood. Look at them carefully. Choose a really good one. Bring it into your photo-editing software and see if you can improve on the cropping, contrast, or other editing devices. Then make a print of it. Frame it and hang it on your wall for viewers to see.