Re: Express Digital Darkroom Assembly Edition Cracked
Vanina Mazzillo
Nathan: Would you say that the flexibility and comparatively more approachable workings of the digital darkroom have contributed to your interest in photography? And now that you are comfortable working in the digital darkroom, do you ever think about returning, with what you have learned, to the traditional wet darkroom?
Having said that, the analog process requires the hand of the photographer in every step. That direct, physical involvement creates a strong sense of having made something. I do not get that from the digital workflow. When the end of the digital creative process is a picture on the screen, I feel a little dissatisfied. For me, art needs to be tangible. Maybe that comes from watching my mother or from my own adolescent interests in drawing but that feeling is real. I need to be able to touch the finished thing. Tangibility has always been important to my conception of creativity.
I also print my own images because, with the exception of Jeff Gaydash, I have never found a service that knows how to print my images. Jeff did a fantastic job, and I cannot recommend him enough, but it strikes me as essential that I need to print my own work to complete my goal to create my own images. I make no judgments on those who choose to have others print their work, but I am unwilling to surrender my creative control over my image-making. A print, for me, must be the final culmination of my work.
Moving on, I would like to segue from my comment about Kenna and Levin and hear about how you have nurtured and grown your approach to photographing Japan. Both Levin and Kenna have famous images they took during their visits to Japan. I also know that you are very familiar with these images. How do you deal with the fact that you are creating, with your own voice, images of places and structures that are famously associated with these well-known, established and often minimalist photographers?
When I look at images that I would regard as good from my own portfolio, the long exposure technique accentuated something that was already present in the scene. Snow falling on water in winter is fantastically quiet. Snow has a dampening effect that seems to muffle all sounds beyond those immediately around you. Using a slightly long exposure (30 seconds) in that situation communicates that quite effectively.
Images of mine that have failed invariably come from me putting on the ND filter without having allowed the scene to work on me. I find that stepping back to appreciate a scene then deliberately asking myself what it is that I want to impart to the viewer helps me to focus my mind on both the composition and what technique will be required to best communicate that visually. I think that when you start doing that, you move beyond long exposure for its own sake and begin to regard it as tool to make your images. To put it another way, I do not really want to define myself as a long exposure photographer. The technique is not as important to me as the success of the image.
I have been a subscriber to LensWork Magazine for quite a few years now. The editor, Brooks Jensen, has been a big influence for showing an alternative to the wall-hung print, and for demonstrating the possibilities of combining text and image in project-based art.
Kristoffer Albrecht is a photographer that I am guessing few would know. I am a frequent visitor to his website to look at his wonderful collection of self-published books and other projects. He inspires by showing what is possible to photographers that have some book-binding skills and the inclination to try self-published small edition fine art projects.
There are a number of fine art publishing houses that I like that specialize in artisanal books and collections including Brighton Press, Amanosalto Press, and 21st Editions. I like all three and think that 21st Editions sets the benchmark for what is possible when the best of different fields work collaboratively to publish fine art works that combine word and letter press printing, photographs printed using a variety of traditional techniques, and artisanal binding. I hope to be able to see with my own eyes something they have published before my time on this earth ends.
As I do my own clamshell box making and book binding, I also end up spending a lot of time looking at fine bindings to gather ideas for things I might be able to use in my own projects. If you dig, it is all there online is some form or another.
If there are any poets out there reading this and are interested doing something collaboratively, please contact me. I would love to self-publish a project that combines poetry, photography, and uses my binding skills to bring it all together.
Nathan: I notice that you are very selective about the online places you share your work. It is difficult to avoid the reality that much of the modern world of photography is experienced online, but, as I am sure you will agree, much of the tonality, contrast and overall artistic expression is lost in a world of computer monitors that read such things differently depending on the quality and settings of those monitors. Still, the work of many well-established photographers is, in fact, primarily experienced online and not via prints. The print, as I spend more and more time with photography, is just as important to me as capturing and processing the image. Equally interesting is that many excellent photographers have their work printed by others. Do you have any thoughts about such things and your own goals for presenting your work and using social media?
Stephen: There are enough different ways of being involved with photography that there is room for everyone to do as they like. For those that would eschew printing for being out with their camera, who am I to comment. It worked for Henri Cartier-Bresson and many others. There is no denying that time spent finishing and printing is time lost being out in the world with your camera. It falls on the individual to discover what makes them happy. In my case, that creative happiness includes time spent processing and trying to put images and prints together in a way that makes for an interesting project. That process forces me to think about why I photographed something, what it means to me, and whether that might be meaningful enough to others to warrant their attention and time. Although it can be daunting at times, I enjoy the challenges presented by project-based creative work and intend to continue working that way going forward. Both print and social media will have central roles in my creative work; the print by making the creative effort tangible, social media as the vehicle for sharing it publicly and for its ability to put it before people who might not see it otherwise. My goal is self-publish one project yearly. I have managed to do that two years running and have most of the third project finished and two others projects in
progress.
Please tell us about yourself as a person and as a photographer. Where did you grow up and what sparked your desire to photograph? Were you active with the photography department in high school? Where are you living now?
I grew up all over. My father literally was a rocket scientist. He was one of the designers of the zip code machine and system, he was also part of engineering design team for mercury, Gemini and Apollo programs. He was the senior hydraulics design engineer for the crawler, which brings rockets out to the launch pad from the vab (vertical assembly building) it is still in use today. After that he worked on what is now the Abrams m-1a1 tank. So wherever there was a manufacturing/design facility we moved there every six months to a year. Needless to say I had a huge imaginary life and need to fill the time between no friends to new friends. Photography for me was that for me.
My interest in photography was sparked when I was 6 years old. My uncle frank was stuck with babysitting me and he was a wedding photographer. He had to make some prints so off to the darkroom we went, after my first wiff of fixer I was hooked. I save up my allowance for a year and purchased my first camera, a Nikon rangefinder, in a garage sale. I sold my first picture to the local town newspaper when I was nine. Was paid 50.00. I took my father out to lunch at Woolworths. I remember leaving a 1.00 tip (that was what my dad would do)
I recently started a project called 5511 where a client pays $5 for a 5 minute photo shoot when 1 artificial light is used and they receive 1 digital photo. Is this something you would be interested in trying? For me it is something fun and challenging. What are you thoughts on that?
Thank you for reading the interview. This interview was presented to the photographer with questions asked by me and submissions from other photographers. The photographer is asked to answer only what he/she is comfortable with. If you would like to contribute to future interviews, please submit your your questions to me on Twitter, Facebook or on the Interview intro blog post, What would you ask a photographer?. Thank you for reading and enjoy the interview.
Some people are brewing their own beer, others have a vat of pseudo-Burgundy bubbling away in the corner of the sitting room. Yet more are turning into part-time-alchemists when it comes to processing their own films. The home darkroom has regained some popularity in the last few years. Rightly so? I took the test and re-entered a scene that once was all too familiar to me. Read on to learn how it worked and what I recommend to owners of the occasional Leica M3, M6 or the like.
I never thought I would do this again. Not that I particularly disliked lab work. As a young freelancer for my local newspaper, I spent many a night in an improvised darkroom in order to process the film from the event I had just come back from. First, I submitted negatives, later I was able to afford an enlarger and could hand in prints. I thought it was better to keep the negatives than to give them to the newsroom where they were prone to get scratched or lost (the material was shipped in local express trains to the print shop until the late 1990s).
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