In Print

I can hardly believe it, but my image of Kate and an article about a darkroom workshop I did with an amazing printer has finally made it into Black and White Photography magazine. It is so wonderful to see the image in print, along with 2 others that I'll post later. Back in June I spent a day up at Lighthouse Darkrooms with Mike Crawford, which was really useful and opened my eyes to the art of printing. Before, I had always felt guilty if I needed to spend very much time making my print look 'right', feeling that if you need to work too hard at it then the negative isn't good enough. However, watching Mike tease out the finer details of my image and give it a look and feel that, I'm ashamed to say, I had never imagined could be achieved, was a revelation.
For me, the joy is in the process of taking the photo: visualising, setting up, making all those choices about camera and film, pressing the button. I love the anticipation too, waiting to see if you got that perfect shot. By the time it comes to printing I've moved on, I'm thinking about the next image. So now I guess I can see just how important it is to follow through so I'm going to try and do it from now on. Or, at least, get Mike to do it for me...