It was the height of the tech boom. 1999. A close friend of mine, maybe the person I care more for than anyone I know, had hit it big. He’s a modest man, not given to self-aggrandisement. But he had had a tough childhood, he had married the woman of his dreams relatively late in life and he had had made a son of whom he was justly proud, even though the making had come rather late.

So for the first time, he had said ‘What the heck!. I’m going to get a beautiful place, the better to see the wife and child grow’. And because the wife, at her not-so-tender age had expressed an interest in the piano, something very close to my friend’s heart, why, he went out and got her the very best he could afford, to be installed in the place of honor in his splendid, new estate in America’s most hallowed zip code. Not only was this piano imported directly from Germany but it came replete with the maker’s signature, no less.

I will never forget the look of sheer delight on his face the day it arrived. ‘Thomas’ he called excitedly, ‘You have got to see this thing’. Now while my friend was endowed with something akin to perfect pitch, he couldn’t play a note if you paid him. But he knew the instrument of his choice was capable of great things. Indeed, the sound was beyond compare. My friend had invited a classical pianist to put the instrument through its paces and some four of Chopin’s Nocturnes later you new that heaven was close indeed.

For a while there after that magical evening I lost track of him and his wife, the pianist in the making. He survived the fallout in the markets in 2000, moved on to better things and took the wife with him. Then we happened to bump into one another again and wiled away a pleasant evening over a couple of bottles of Napa’s finest with the food prepared just so.

“She cannot play to save her life”, he said, once well into his cups. “Come now”, I responded, “let’s not be so cruel. After all, you cannot fault the effort she puts into the thing”. For try she did. Twice weekly lessons, endless practice, scores by the….well…score. If effort correlated with results, the woman would have surpassed Horowitz. Sadly, she was proof of just one more example that you cannot put in what God leaves out, and that fateful evening, my friend had realized the truth of the matter, cruel as it may be. His piano was nothing more than a piece of beautiful furniture. It was a Leica in a glass case. There to be admired, but if the aesthetic senses of the world were to be saved, never to be used.

So is it enough if you just enjoy it? Does it matter that you have spent the earth and accomplished nothing except, maybe, a blip on the manufacturer’s bottom line. Do you grin and bear it and say, well, I tried?

The economic reality, of course, is that without consumers like my friend there would be no economy. Ferrari owners who cannot drive. Steinway owners who cannot play. And Leica owners who cannot take a photograph. But it is not fair to denigrate these folks. They are, after all, a source of cheap supply of the world’s finest equipment to those of us who dare not, or cannot, buy it new.

The UPS driver was getting used to the routine.

Every Friday there was a delivery to the estate from B&H in New York. Place your order for film or paper or printing inks on a Sunday and the following Friday, as sure as the Government wants your money every April 15th, UPS arrives at your door with the supplies.

A First Class Business selling First Class Products delivered by a First Class Business.

Now this little haven in the undiscovered central coast of California, has much to recommend it. Beautiful landscape, vineyards as far as the eye can see (not least the few acres of Zinfandel we pride ourselves on, affording isolation from all and sundry, and looking gorgeous in the process) and fine, honest Americans.

So we got to chatting, every Friday, our UPS man and I. There’s something about UPS that encourages that sort of relationship. FedEx doesn’t have it. Too harried, no time for civilized discourse. The grandly named United States Post Office obviously does not. Are you going to trust someone who takes your tax dollars? But no one refers to the UPS man. It’s always our UPS man.

So after a few months of this routine, and after copious quantities of Portra, Gold and Epson paper and inks had been delivered, it was natural to graduate to first name terms. I’m Marty. Hi, I’m Thomas.

And thus it went for a few more months. Ice is hard to break and these UPS chaps have it in their veins in abundance. As is well known, every one wants a UPS man of their own.

Then, the other day, Marty opens up with “I’m giving a concert at Castoro this Sunday at 3 p.m.”

Let me start by saying that Castoro makes the second best zinfandel on the Central Coast. Needless to add, Chateau Winston, named after my son, a.k.a. the family abode, is superior. Both reside in that small area of paradise known as the Templeton Gap, west of Highway 101 and south of Highway 46. The world’s best Zinfandel grapes make their home there.

Before I could ask ‘What do you play’ Martin Paris proferred a CD with a picture of him on the cover, acoustic guitar and all. Without thinking, after profuse thanks, I offered that I was a photographer and could I please inscribe a copy of my book for you? The thought of commerce did not remotely enter my head. After all, it hardly needs saying that playing classical instruments or taking art photographs are two of the least commercial enterprises on this God’s earth. So we made an exchange. Marty’s Spanish guitar playing, all of his own compositions, is simply wonderful. His generosity of spirit and basic sense of American decency unsurpassed. My book of picture is….well, you be the judge.

So we exchanged good wishes. Marty signed his CD “Thomas – All My Best” and I reciprocated with “For Martin – with thanks for the beauty you have brought us”.

This little episode, seemingly insignificant in the grand panoply of life, brings us back to the central beliefs of these essays. Show your work and you will be rewarded. The rewards may be psychic rather than financial, but they are deep and lasting.

Publish a book. Now. Have something to exchange.

The vines doing their thing on the estate, framed by a cottonwood.

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.