My learning experiences with my newly acquired large format Crown Graphic 4†x 5†camera have reminded me what a bore technique really is when it comes to photography. Or, more accurately, the job of learning a new technique. The most intrusive aspect of this learning experience is that it really gets in the way of taking pictures, and the more I find myself thinking about technique the more distracted my picture taking becomes.
I suppose there are many analogies to the bother that is technique in everyday life. Driving a car smoothly, making a perfect mortise and tenon joint in two pieces of wood, learning your way around some new piece of software. Heck, remember the first time you made love? Your major concern was not enjoyment. It was technique, assuming you were sober enough to remember anything. In these, and innumerable other examples, once technique is mastered, enjoyment begins. So I tend to see technique as an obstacle to enjoyment or, in creative pursuits, to creativity. Which is the same thing.
I started taking pictures and being serious about it – meaning I wanted to produce good work – when I got my first Leica at the age of eighteen. Up to then picture taking had been nothing more than dilettante dabbling. In realizing that fewer variables made for less to worry about, I standardized on one lens (well, it’s all I had in any case), one make of film (TriX) and one developer (D76). Over-exposure, I quickly learned, was the death knell of definition, underexposure playing havoc with shadow detail and dynamic range (though we didn’t call it that in those days). So the first technical lesson was to get the exposure more or less right. Then memorizing which direction the controls had to be turned to focus and adjust exposure was critical. As my avocation was street shooting, no time could be spent thinking about these. Finally, the chemical darkroom (ugh!) required learning how to black the room out properly, get the foul, smelly chemicals at the right temperature (68F in frigid London was not always that easy) and then exposing the paper properly. Of course, unlike modern digital back ends, making two identical prints was more a case of luck than judgement, but after a while, and not a few sheets of wasted paper, 8â€x10†prints started to roll off the old Gamer enlarger like GM makes cars, if maybe not as quickly. At least the quality was better than Detroit’s.
It really showed in the negatives. A few years ago when I got my first decent negative scanner and printer I could see how the early monochrome work got consistently better, the success rate higher, after the first few dozen rolls of film. In those days you submitted pictures for publication as prints in the mail, so they had to be good prints. A good print, it seemed, put you in the 10% pile immediately – the non-rejects. Those many years later, learning ’darkroom’ technique again, as applied to those old TriX negatives, was trivial compared to what the chemical darkroom called for. You could scan at high or low definition but a simple, high resolution unmanipulated scan allowed you maximum flexibility in Photoshop. Sadly, the scanning software could not apply its dust and scratch reduction to the silver based originals, reminding me how bad my drying technique for film had been all those years ago. At least retouching was now a one-off prospect, and not something to be done on each print. Can you imagine a worse use of your time than retouching dust and scratches? I cannot.
I have not had a chemical darkroom for over 25 years now. First, I realized that I was adding no value to my pictures by developing my own film. So I let labs do it. Their volumes assured consistency and the better ones guaranteed quality. Never mind black and white, think of the complexities added when you process color. There is simply no earthly justification for processing your own film. Period. In other words, I delegated that aspect of technique to those more competent than I. And as my time saved was worth more to me than the incremental cost of delegating the task, I made money into the bargain. Not bad.
Then in the 1980s through the mid-1990s, before scanners and printers became affordable, I delegated all my printing to labs also. Same reasons. Just a question of finding one you liked. No one, but no one, has ever asked me whether I printed a picture myself or whether a lab did it. Except, that is, for equipment geeks, whom I try to avoid at all costs. truth be told, something was lacking in the prints however, for dodging and burning was not something easily delegated. But mostly the results were good enough.
Then, when really good printers and scanners became available for home use, I could recapture the creative side by doing my own scanning and printing using Photoshop with just those tweaks to the image I wanted. After learning the technique (if, indeed, anyone can ever claim to have learned Photoshop), control was reestablished over the creative process. For some, back end manipulation is 90% of the creative process. Ansel Adams for example. Mediocre photographer, great darkroom technician. For others, back-end technique is 10% of the process. I’m at the 10% end, mostly. But the point is that the technique, once learned, is subsumed to the creative process. The technique, in other words, becomes invisible and ceases to be an obstacle, as it has become second nature.
When I got my first wide carriage printer, I set the simple technical goal that any scanned original – whether 35mm or medium format, and now large format – would yield a sharp, 13†x 19†print of broad dynamic range, by default. Not by accident.
So as I find myself struggling to master the new aspects of technique of large format photography, I am making strenuous efforts to make these techniques second nature. Some are trivial. It is, for example, very difficult not to take a very sharp picture. A 4†x 5†negative does not need much enlarging! Anyone can make huge, crisp prints from large format originals. Hardly something to set as a goal. But loading those blamed film holders, packing that heavy gear, messing with swings and tilts and clumsy controls, and not letting all that process get in the way of seeing, that takes some learning.
So my advice to you is the same that I follow – work hard, work fast to get that technique down so that it becomes second nature, then forget about it and get on with the creative side. Your pictures will immediately be better and it will show. And don’t let anyone tell you it takes years to learn this or that aspect of technique. It does not. Those who would tell you otherwise are trying to safeguard their not so precious secrets. Avoid them.
My second 4″ x 5″ photograph. Technique is getting there….
