The Joy of Printing Your Images

Chinatown, New York City

www.dennismook.com

In my opinion, what you see on a computer screen, television screen, camera LCD or other electronic device is an image, not a photograph.  A photograph is an image transformed on a piece of paper that you can hold in your hands.  Whether as an individual print, part of a book, newspaper or magazine, it is something that has physicality.  That image at which you look on a computer screen is a display of electrons that are beamed and converted in a device that allows you so see them as a coherent item.  A photograph is a real object.  An image is vapor.

The terms, image and photograph, are mostly used interchangeably, but in my mind there is a world of difference.  My definition may conflict with the definition of others or what is officially used in dictionaries, but I believe that an image has no substance besides being visual in some form.  A photograph has a physical substance and specific dimensions.  A photograph can be called an image but an image cannot be a photograph.  The operative term here is "graph", meaning "to write" in its Latin or Greek derivative.  Light, electrons, ink, dye, pigments are "written" onto a piece of paper, whether in traditional or digital photography.  One can certainly argue that I am wrong, but my opinion is my opinion.

The reason I am writing about photographs is that I encourage you to print your images.  I love to print my work.  I have always loved it from the first time I saw a silver print appear in the developer under an amber safelight.  I was just amazed that I was able to make a photograph!  It was like magic to me.  It took my love for photography to a new level.  I loved taking pictures, but loved it even more when I was able to develop my film and make my own prints.  I quickly discovered making my own prints was much more enjoyable than seeing a print returned to me by a photography lab.

During my career I was very fortunate to be able to run a darkroom to make photographs for work but also have it at my disposal to make my own prints.  At work, we used an inexpensive multi-contrast resin-coated paper but for my own work, I purchased high quality fiber based graded paper.  I loved Oriental Seagull and Ilford Galerie papers.  I always processed archivally and almost all of my prints from the 70s until now are still in great shape with no fixer stains or image degradation.  Even better, one of my best friends owned a professional photo lab.  A group of us got together every Thursday evening, had dinner, then printed late into the night.  That was how I made big color enlargements at little cost.  It was a wonderful time.

I continue today printing my digital work.  I have an Epson 3800 printer, certainly not the newest, but she works well and provides me with a means to get that same satisfaction of seeing a print develop.  Only now, I get excited watching it come out of the printer.  Turning my images into photographs still gives me a great deal of satisfaction. 

I am one of those individuals who likes to be fully engaged in a project.  I like to "wander" and explore an area to discover a visually interesting subject or scene.  I like to "work" the scene to fully explore my creativity.  I love to then edit the resulting images and pick one or more that I believe are my best of the series, then process them to achieve my vision for the final print.  I print the image and I also like to mat and frame the image.  Start to finish gives me the greatest satisfaction.  Also, I will say, that I can now make better prints, both color and black & white, than I could in the darkroom.  Also, each print is exactly repeatable.  I no longer have to dodge and burn each and every print, hoping I get them exactly the same.

There is a real joy in printing your own images and making your own photographs.  By printing them yourself, you can exactly achieve the result you envisioned when you came upon the scene and decided to take the time and effort to make the image.  If someone else prints your images, you lose so much control.  They don't know exactly what you felt.  And, isn't that what we are all trying to achieve in our art, record our "feeling" about where we were and what we say?  I encourage you to invest in printing your own work regularly.  I don't think you will regret it, in fact, I think it will heighten your joy in photography.

Thanks for looking.

Enjoy!
Dennis Mook