You need some woodworking done in your home. Two laborers show up bidding to do the work. One brings with him only hand tools. Not a motor or power source in sight, save his well developed biceps. The other comes with an assistant and every power tool known to man. Both come recommended, so you know the quality of the work is not an issue.

Which do you choose? The romantic aspects of the craftsman with the brawny arms notwithstanding, you obviously choose the man with the power tools and the assistant. He will be faster, his work more dimensionally accurate and less of your precious time will be taken up with the sawing and hammering that ensues. Plus it will cost you less.

In that example the value of your time is irrelevant as you are not doing the work in either scenario.

Now translate the problem to one of making photographic prints. You pride yourself on traditional darkroom techniques, you set up your darkroom, prepare the quickly aging chemicals and potter about in the dark, shading here and burning there, never quite sure how it will turn out, the while praying that little Johnny will not come into your miserable, smelly work area and destroy yet another box of printing paper.. You are automatically constrained to monochrome, of course, because it is beyond any rational person’s effort to home process color prints using traditional chemical means. So right there you have excluded 99% of your audience. When all is done and the print fixed, you pray it will look something like what you want when the light is switched on (you did put the unexposed paper away first, didn’t you?) and luckily, even if it does, your are still faced with the task of washing the prints in an attempt to render them permanent, drying, glazing, and on and on. You have retained the artisan with the hand tools.

You and the artisan have failed to notice one key thing about life. Technology has moved on. Both of you have unconsciously placed a very low value on your time.

The power tool photographic worker, meanwhile, having established a well rehearsed routine, has used Photoshop or whatever his application of choice is, done what dodging and burning is needed, removed dust spots (he only needs to do this once, ever, while the artisan must do it on every print) and spooled out twenty print jobs to his computer and left it to print while getting on with other more important things. Like taking more photographs.

The power tool worker’s level of retouching and corrections is infinitely superior and his prints are all identical. Exactly, you say, see, they are all identical. No two of my prints are ever alike. Obviously not. Your are technically incapable of making identical prints as your technology is inept. Making prints that look different is nothing more or less than a statement of your incompetence and refusal to recognize that times have changed. And they have changed for the better.

You tell yourself that none of that makes any sense, of course, as your traditional darkroom print is so much better. Of course, it is impossible for you to make that statement, as you have never mastered the modern technology of the computer print, but it makes you feel self satisfied and happy. Your time, in other words, is worth very little.

The reality is that not only is your print not better than the ink jet worker’s, you produce one for every twenty or thirty his modern machinery outputs. His artistic output is thus many times yours, his chances of acceptance and success commensurately greater. Worst of all for you, the artisan, is that the consumer cares not how the print was made. He just cares about the result. Unless you are showing your work to those sad souls who collect equipment and cannot take a picture to save their lives (why would you waste your time doing that?), believe me, no one will ever ask you what camera you used or – I mean how comical – inquire whether this is a chemical or ink jet print!

You already have a computer or you would not be reading this. Supremely competent ink jet printers are available for under $100. Photoshop Elements retails for a similar amount unless it happens to come free with your printer.

Then, when you become supremely successful, the resulting tripling of your time for photography certainly enhancing your prospects greatly, you can delegate all printing to some poor toad who does this for a living and get rid of the printing drudgery for once and all.