The Online Photographer

The Printing Challenge

My print sale was modestly successful. I sold 23 prints to 18 people, and hereby thank them all. What it means is that my B&W camera is paid for—for which I'm very grateful. The very first sale I had, of "Wisconsin No. 7," somewhere in the 2005–2007 timeframe, paid for the camera I took it with, my first-ever DSLR. If you're curious, "Lake" was the most popular print, "Car" came second, and "Vultures," let us just say, was not as popular.

Now I have a challenge. How am I going to make prints going forward?

Ctein is probably too expensive for me. In the print size my 18 customers just purchased, he charges $350 for the first custom print (that's the one that soaks up most of the effort he described the other day) and $110 for each additional print ordered at the same time ($160 for additional prints made later). That's $460 for two prints. Those prices makes perfect sense for those who have any kind of purpose for their prints (sale, exhibition, etc.), but it's a steep price for a guy who just wants to take pictures and store them in a box, perhaps someday to have a show—at a loss, no doubt—at a local gallery.

I've always had a hate-hate relationship with inkjet printers—my first one(s), the ill-fated HP B9180, made beautiful prints, but it soaked up immense amounts of troubleshooting time, had to be replaced by the manufacturer twice, and never worked right. I don't think I ever got all four print-heads testing "green" all at once, not even one time. The B9180 basically put HP off pursuing that whole segment of the market—the company stopped making mid-level home pigment printers for photo enthusiasts not long afterward. And it put me off digital printing, if I'm honest. I have never since had a "good" printer for artwork that "took." I did try an early Epson, but the heads clogged immediately. Most recently, I killed an Epson P600 because I was too cheap to pay for the ink to run a test sheet every day to keep it unclogged; that one clogged too, and I had to put it out of my misery.

I have a real problem with ink costs. The model is the one devised by the accursed competitors of King Camp Gillette, called "the razor and blades model." King Camp Gillette (really, that was his name) didn't invent it; his competitors did. Whoever they were, I trust they're now roasting on a spit in the Devil's domain. I really, really hate being cheated that way. Including being remorselessly soaked for printer ink at $4,000 per ounce or whatever it is.

Computer printer manufacturers have gone through extensive efforts to make sure that their printers are incompatible with lower cost after-market ink cartridges and refilled cartridges. This is because the printers are often sold at or below cost to generate sales of proprietary cartridges which will generate profits for the company over the life of the equipment. In certain cases, the cost of replacing disposable ink or toner may even approach the cost of buying new equipment with included cartridges. Methods of vendor lock-in include designing the cartridges in a way that makes it possible to patent certain parts or aspects, or invoking the Digital Millennium Copyright Act to prohibit reverse engineering by third-party ink manufacturers. Another method entails completely disabling the printer when a non-proprietary ink cartridge is placed into the machine, instead of merely issuing an ignorable message that a non-genuine (yet still fully functional) cartridge was installed.

(from the Wikipedia article "Razor and Blades Model.")

A lot of what's called "marketing" is actually "cheating the customer in ways we can get away with." I learned of another one just the other day: people don't use dishwasher powder any more. Dishwasher detergent is now sold in "pods," which are merely dissolvable packets of...dishwasher powder. Not only are the "pods" sold for greatly higher prices than plain loose powder, but they are now "recommended" by the dishwasher manufacturers...despite being actually worse functionally* than plain powder! And the reason they're "recommended"? Because the manufacturers of the pods pay the manufacturers to do so. They called that "marketing," but it is in fact a plain swindle IMO. There oughta be a law.

This goes beyond just my own personal anger. In my judgment, this systematic exploitation by the printer manufacturers of people who print for anything but money has put a chilling effect on photographic printing in general, and is in part responsible for the decline of home photographic printmaking as an independent pursuit among amateurs and hobbyists. The way it is, the fewer prints you make, the less you get exploited. Obviously, the situation would be better for photography if it were reversed: the more you print, the more you save. That's the sales model of volume discounting. Whether I'm wrong or right about this chilling effect might be disputed, but at the very least the status quo has put a chilling effect on my home photographic printmaking—and that's germane to our topic.

Well, let's get past this digression.

The fact is that I won't buy another printer than doesn't at least offer minimally acceptable value for ink. That means at least the Epson P900 or Canon Pro-1000. A single replacement inkset for the latter, a $1,200 printer, can be ransomed for a cool $700, which in turn means I would have to sell a few prints of every picture in order to be able to afford the ink. I'd have to crunch all the numbers and come up with a break-even point; could I afford to print a picture if I could sell two or three copies of each? At what price? Does a market exist for my work that would get me to the break-even point? Having sold to just 18 customers in the maiden print sale doesn't bode particularly well for finding a clientele on TOP. Coals to Newcastle, I guess. So then I have to find a market for my prints outside of the blog. And where—?

Enough of this now; the point is that, as you can see, the business calculations are actually pretty formidable.

Then there's the complexity of installing and running such a printer. I don't have room on the porch where I work, so I would need to move my office to the family room of my house, a converted single-car garage in the back. Wi-fi doesn't currently reach back there, but a kind reader (all my readers are kind! As well as above average) just informed me about mesh systems. So, first, I would need to try that to see if it works. Assuming it does, I'd need to engage movers to get the couch to the porch and the sit-stand desk on the porch to the place the couch used to be in the back room. The former garage is not on the house heating system, but I might even save on heat by moving back there, because I could keep the house colder in the winter and just heat the office. Then it's a matter of getting everything set up and running in the back.

Looping back around to the printer, I'd actually need to do a pretty deep dive into B&W printing to see what the best printing method for B&W actually is. Then there's the question...could I actually learn to get a printer up and running, without all the ongoing anguish and difficulty I experienced with the B9180 all those years ago? Probably, but it's not a foregone conclusion. I have lots of history of accomplishing difficult things, but I also have lots of history of failing to reach intended goals, sometimes simply because I can't keep my interest up. Could I navigate the treacherous waters of home printing—and, must I?

Anyway, as you can apprehend, printing would not be a trivial challenge pretty much no matter which way you cut it. I'll tell you what, though. Having seen prints from my new B&W camera, I'm not going to be satisfied with just throwing JPEGs up on Flickr. That's nice enough, but it's the print that's going to be parked in my head as the endpoint for my process. Much more rewarding than an image on a screen.

Mike

*Really, because there are not one but two wells for detergent in the average dishwasher. The smaller one is for the first wash, which lasts about 15 minutes. The pod has no way to distribute powder to the first wash, so the first wash becomes just a rinse. Here's the skinny on all that, from Technology Connections, in two videos: the first and the second. Aakin turned us on to these the other day, and, as so often happens with TOP, I learned something new. I was gobsmacked, as our British brothers and sisters say, to learn that at age 65 I actually didn't know how to properly operate a dishwasher! (You need to fill the secondary well and run the hot water in the kitchen sink before starting it.) So cool.

Aakin replies: "I'm glad that was interesting! And yeah, it definitely changed how I use my dishwasher as well. It's so much more fixture now, as opposed to being an useless waste of space in my kitchen."

Featured Comments from:

Rand Scott Adams: "Printing is a pain in the butt. Unless you’re addicted to it. 'Hi, my name is Rand and....' Even then, it’s still a pain in the butt.

"It is also one of my most satisfying pursuits. It is the final step in being in complete control of my output. It is a skill that has allowed me to help other photographers achieve an 'in their hands' realization of their vision for an image. That's worth a bunch to me. It's fun. It’s satisfying in a way that's hard to explain. Printing my own work has made me a better photographer. I see things in prints I’d never see on even a large, accurate, calibrated professional level monitor. Putting together a state of the art, fully color managed, printing operation is expensive in both money and time. Adventure into large format printers (24" wide and above) and you exponentially multiply cost, and space requirements. Keeping the printing space dust free, at proper humidity and temperature is also a factor. Creating an adequate color-temperature-controlled print evaluation station is part of the package. And, even with the best modern digital printers, you can’t just let them sit. The time it takes to understand the process and become truly proficient is significant. To get from 'good enough' to master is a large investment in time, patience, materials, and perhaps most of all, 'learning to see what it is you’re seeing.' Printing is also a losing proposition. The demand for really fine prints was declining before COVID, and is all but dead now. None of this matters; 'Hi, My name is Rand and....'"

Jean Bienvenu: "Isn't there a middle way between using a world class printing master and doing your own? Engaging the services of a good printer who does this as a job and does it well (enough)? I am pretty happy with the guy I use here (not in the US so that won't help you) and he charges me a fraction of what Ctein would (OK, this is partly because I also live in a cheaper country than the US)."

Bob Keefer: "The solution is the excellent after-market inks out there. I've been running my Epson 7880 for years on ink from InkOwl.com, with no problems and plenty of excellent prints. Buying ink by the liter instead of by the ounce reduces the cost of operation to nearly insignificant. Epson tries to scare you away from doing this by having the 7880 give you frightening error messages when you use non-Epson cartridges. You can safely ignore them."

Benjamin Marks (partial comment): "Ugh. My most hated topic. I have an Epson something-or-other that has never fed paper properly. Each sheet has to be hand fed dozens of times to get it to register in the right place. I suspect some sensor inside is covered in dust. Also the heads were perpetually (at least partially) clogged. I did get some of Cone Editions' pink head cleaner, which kind of helped, sort of. Also a mixture of 100% rubbing alcohol and Windex, which also sort of worked. But generally I just look at the machine with undisguised loathing and become preoccupied with revenge fantasies which should embarrass any nominally civilized person."

Walter McQuie (partial comment): "Quality costs. I'm sure my prints aren't as good as Ctein's but better than the online printers. The experience of making my own prints is worth quite a lot to me. With said intangible benefit, I'm pleased with my printer and its ink needs, given that I'm able to sell enough prints to pay for the paper that my printing habit requires! Have a look this page at Red River for an analysis of ink costs."

Ed. note: The full texts of "partial comments" can be read in the full Comments Section, accessible at the bottom of the post or by clicking on the post title.

Franz Amador: "For B&W printing, probably the best and most economical system is a used Epson 3880 and the Piezography inks. I've been using this for a while and find it excellent. It does take some futzing to set it up, and you'll need a set of genuine Epson cartridges (empty is fine) to get the chips off of, but after that all you need to buy are the ink bottles, which last a long time. And I've not had clogging troubles even though I'm pretty lax about running test sheets."

Kenneth Tanaka: "Re 'How am I going to make prints going forward?' You pose a quandary shared by many photographers! First, let’s dispel some of the 'fear of failure.' Printing at home has never been simpler. Ten-plus years ago print systems, inks, print drivers, monitors, etc. were all in constant flux. Today they’re far more stable, almost to the point where you’re nearly assured good results nearly from the start. But high-quality home printing is still a relatively costly proposition. My Epson SureColor P800 has been the best printer I’ve owned. It’s been very reliable and, thanks to WiFi, it can be sited anywhere in my home. But it has a big belly which must be periodically fed nine ink carts at around $55 ea., plus a maintenance dump tank. And that doesn’t even include paper, which can be $1–2/sheet depending on size and brand. Personally, printing represents a significant slice of my enjoyment of photography and I’d be loathe to give it up. But…Ouch!

"So back to you. Ctein is too costly…understandable, since he’s providing both printing and retouching services. If you just need a printer the world is your oyster. There are many high-quality photo printing services available online. As a few examples...Adorama acquired a good printing service called Printique (I have no affiliation with any print service!) some years ago. They’re located right in NYC and Brooklyn and are closely affiliated with the big Adorama photo superstore. On the other side of the country is the independent Bay Photo Lab, a very reputable printer dating back to the 1970s. I’ve never seen any disparaging remarks about their work! Overseas we have Whitewall, an excellent lab for large and specially mounted printing work that I’ve used. So with winter’s jaws fast-approaching I’d encourage you to experiment with one of the images Ctein just printed for your sale. You have a reference standard to compare against! Start yer' shucking'!"

Jean-Pierre Koenig: "I own the Epson P900 (my third Epson printer). It is fantastic and so much easier and more fun to use than the model it replaces. I would strongly encourage you to use it. The ink cost is not prohibitive I have found; I suspect the smaller droplets makes it more efficient. Replacing cartridge is expansive if you do it all at once, but in practice some only need to be replaced at any one time. Strongly recommended."

Gordon: "You only just touched the surface of costs for home printing. I belong to a small cooperative photo gallery in Sacramento where I try to keep a drawer of prints regularly updated. In order to do that you need to add the cost for archival mat board and fancy plastic sleeves. I recently had to purchase more 20x24 mat board and nearly fell out of my chair at the price. It had gone way up since my last purchase from the same vendor. These costs have taught—well, forced—me to be much more selective about the images that deserve all that expense. I don’t sell anywhere near enough prints to recoup the cost for all those I put in the drawer. As for printers, I’m on my second Canon Pro-1000. I had owned two Epsons previously and had no end of clogging trouble with them. So far the Canon has been fairly forgiving about my seldom printing. At least the Canon allows you to change the print head if it ever fails, although my guess is that if it came to that it might still be economically preferable to just buy yet another printer. Finally, while you might not think of it as such, there is an expense to just having the space to print, mat, and store photographs. We have an entire bedroom made into a dedicated office where our two desks, the printer, and several shelves of printing and mounting supplies are kept. We recently went looking for a new home and it was a requirement that we find one with enough rooms and space for all this stuff."

darlene: " I worked in advertising for a few years as an ad artist and was part of a team of creatives. I had to sit through many sales meetings with account executives and presentations with clients. I learned a few things from those experiences and applied them to my business. You never want to imply anything negative in your marketing campaign or transactions with prospective sales or clients. Negativity comes in all shapes and sizes. With that said, your 'Vultures' image would benefit from a different title for the general public, IMO. When I purchased the 'Vultures' print, I called it 'Circle of Life' (or something like that) because the title 'Vultures' makes me cringe. I guess you titled it after the birds in the picture, but you could have titled it something else. The word vultures can conjure up negative thoughts quickly, and you have about five seconds to grab someone’s attention. If you were selling a horror movie, yes, it would work to establish a thought of vultures eating flesh, but not to sell a beautiful image. I am not stomping on your creative license here; just suggesting marketing reasons. I understand your point about how marketing can cause misrepresentation or push people to purchase things they may not need (self-control IMO). Still, it can also help honest people market their products more effectively. It all depends on someone’s intentions."

Ed Hawco: "Six or seven years ago I posed essentially the same questions right here in this blog (in a comment). My fear was getting mired in arcane settings and endless tweaking just to get a nice print to put in a box (or maybe up on a wall).

"Ctein responded to my comment with a sparkling comment of his own, which can be paraphrased as 'get a good Epson printer, use the default settings, and tweak if you’re not happy but most likely you will be happy.' Best advice ever. I got an Epson 3880 and never looked back. I now have boxes and walls full of prints that I’m pretty happy with. Some have even been gifted and now hang on walls on three continents. I never expect to get my money back, but being able to print, and print nicely (on nice but expensive Hahnemuhle paper; my paper of choice) has been a wonderful experience. Having spent a lot of time in the darkroom back in the '80s and '90s I thought that learning digital printing would be a painful and arduous process, but in fact it was very (creatively) rewarding and not difficult. I would not put one of my prints up against a Ctein print, but I will happily put it up on my wall and call it my own. Sadly, that printer has broken down, so now I need to decide whether or not I want to buy another and continue, or to leave it behind as I once did the darkroom."

John Abee (partial comment): "I am thrilled that we are talking about printers. I have never given up printing and have been happy with my Canon printers and DIY cartridges after suffering through the same HP B9180 (twice) and a number of Epson horror stories, but my latest Canon is getting a little long in the tooth and I've started plotting my next move. Let's keep this discussion going."

Stephen Price: "Retired printer engineer here. About ink prices...I worked on really big 'production' printers. The last machine I worked on was a four-color machine that took three-liter cartridges of ink, and had two of each color so that when one ran dry, you could replace it without stopping the printer. I just looked up the current price. You can get eight cartridges (24L) for $1520 ($63/L), pigment or dye at the same price. That old machine has been replaced by one that takes 10L cartridges which sell for as little as $200 ($20/L). These are not photo-quality inks but it still boggles the mind how much ink costs for our small printers. I see B&H is selling P900 ink for $880/L. By the way, that newer printer runs paper at 494 feet per minute so it would blow through a 40,000 foot long roll in less than an hour and a half. Just think how quickly you could complete your printing chores!"

kirk: "From the commercial point of view as a working photographer no client has asked for a print in well over a decade. No friend or associate currently makes or sells prints. Prints are dead. From a commercial point of view. I gave away my last wide-carriage inkjet printer, an Epson 4000 Pro, over ten years ago. It made some nice enough prints but cost way, way, way too much to run, and clogged relentlessly. I no longer print in the studio or office. I send the corrected and profiled files to a service which outputs them on a printer that's good, and the inks are not on my payroll. But I do this so rarely, and only for my own use. You can't do everything. Send out the time consuming and frustrating stuff to a service. And the time consuming and frustrating stuff = printing. We're not in the 1980s anymore. The print is no longer the 'gold standard.'"

Eric Brody: "I fell in love with 'serious' photography as a teen and with time out for training, work, and children, still am. I recall John Sexton recalling the thrill of seeing a print 'come up' in the developer. I spent 40 years doing darkroom printing with everything from Minox to 4x5. Then I loved it; now, not so much. It seemed endless: make a print, make another, and then another and then another. What to do with all those 'almost OK' iterated prints?

"Now, with digital, I have no film costs, no chemical costs, just ink and paper. Not trivial but doable. I've been through a few printers and just got an Epson P900 when Roy Harrington, the author of QTR RIP, said it would work with QTR, my preferred black-and-white technique.

"When I did a workshop with my favorite teacher, Charles Cramer, the book he gives out is titled, 'Optimizing Images for Printing,' a telling title. Charlie is a master photographer and printer, and the best teacher I've had. He encourages printing sooner rather than later and reminds us that the screen is fundamentally different than the print. Now I make a print and, if it's not good enough, I adjust and make another. The print is the reference, not the screen. I no longer go through the endless iteration of the darkroom. It's common for the first print to be spot on (calibrated NEC monitor) or really close.

"So, as someone else said, 'it's not a photograph until you can hold it in your hand.' I completely fail to understand folks who spend a fortune on cameras and lenses and the show their images only on a screen. When our photo group has a print sharing, we all look carefully and slowly at the images for critique, not by some silly rules but rather on content, composition, and technique. That takes time. When we show images with a projector, they're on the screen for a few seconds, and can't possibly be evaluated properly. The photographer then misses out on a potentially helpful learning experience.

"So Mike, get a printer, learn how to use it, look at QTR or Cone inks to do your monochrome prints and you'll be happy!"

My friend Peter Turnley is probably the most popular photographer we've ever done print sales with in the past—and "Paris, 1991," a.k.a. "Rooftops," is no doubt the most popular single print we have ever sold. It's also arguably the most iconic picture of Paris taken since the 1960s. In poster and printed form it has sold many hundreds of thousands of copies. Peter's 2022 year-end sale is by far the best, least expensive way to get a signed original print!

This is not a TOP sale this year, but I told you I'd alert you when Peter's sale is ending—and that would be today, at midnight. Click on through to see the large variety of prints on offer this year, both classic as well as new work. For more about Peter, in case you haven't been reading here for long, see the reorganized "Publications" tab at the link.

Peter Turnley, Paris, 2012

Mike

Tomorrow Is Another Day

Ever have one of those days where nothing seems to go right?

We're under a low, thick layer of overcast today and it's been raining steadily. The land is at its least attractive—the farm fields have been harvested and the stubble's been plowed under, the leaves on the trees are gone, and the prevailing colors of the wet land are a green that looks like a dark gray, a brown that looks like a dark gray, and dark gray. Everything's gone wrong for me so far. Played some pool this morning and missed so many easy shots I made myself mad. Took a nap, had a nightmare. (A napmare?!) Read some more pages in my current book, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich by William L. Shirer, recommended in that GQ list I mentioned a couple of days ago, and it did nothing but impart a diffuse and dreadful agitation about the evil in the world. (I'm kicking that one to the curb. Life's too short and the book's too long.) Went to a restaurant and bought a meal, and it gave me Montezuma's revenge. Bought something on sale at half price, and got charged double. Drove slowly all the way home. Just in case.

I'm laying low for the rest of today. Not gonna say anything, drive anywhere, buy anything, invest in anything, or get in any arguments. Not going to work on my book. Not going to write a post. Not going to call a friend. Not going to open any mail, or even have anything more to eat. I'm just going to hunker down, stay in, try to keep warm, do nothing, and get through to bedtime with as little as possible happening. Even the moon is setting early tonight.

I'll try again in the morning.

Tomorrow's a new day!

Mike

Featured Comments from:

Nigli: "Actually yes. I went out on my cyclocross bike today, in a brisk 2°C. After falling off for the umpteenth time, looking at the 5' long, 2" thick stick that had thrown itself into my front wheel, I did wonder what the heck I was doing. Somewhat loudly and colourfully."

John Hunter: "Well, Mike, It's funny you should mention it today, because I'm having that kind of day, too. The mood just ain't right. The weather is cold, wet and dark. I made a special trip down to Cobourg just to buy something that turned out to be out of stock. I got called away to help with something silly that I really didn't want to do, in the rain. The supper that I worked so hard on, turned into something else that I didn't have the appetite for. ('Bit of a cock-up on the catering front.') Now I'm hunkering down,too, not wanting any more goofy stuff to happen before bed. Putting my jammies on, maybe reading a bit...I feel for you, man. Yup, tomorrow's a new day. The wood stove is making me feel cosy, and I'll be ready to fall asleep soon. Sweet dreams, my friend."

darlene: "This morning I packed up my van for a few days at St. George Island. Got up early to prep the food, clothing, and cameras. Set up the kitties' water and food feeders. I am looking forward to shooting some 4x5 B&W pinholes of the Gulf of Mexico waves and dunes with the digital. All set to go, and !@#$, the van won't start. Ugh! I got a charged-up battery booster jumper thingy, hooked it up, and got a red light; it will not start. ☹ I called my friend to tell her I won’t be showing up and then canceled my campsite; I will get the van serviced tomorrow. I bought it in February 2018, so I am sure it needs a new battery. I read four years was the expected life of a car battery under normal conditions. I do not drive the van that much ( < 18k miles to date), mostly camping/photography trips. After I showed back up and took their feeders away, the kitties looked confused. I was disappointed but glad it broke down at home. Better luck next time to us both, although your story has a lot of interesting twists and turns, whereas mine is dead in the garage."

Kirk: "Must be in the air. I was in the studio packing for a shoot tomorrow when I glanced at my calendar and realized that the job was really scheduled for the 30th, not the 28th. I'd already declined an invitation for something fun tomorrow. I was...deflated. I spent the rest of a sunny day sitting inside staring at the computer and wondering if I'd already crossed over into...general mental decline. This day just had a bad vibe all the way around. And it wasn't any better for being here instead of there. Some days just conspire to suck.

"Tomorrow might be better. I'm hoping for it. Funny that a bad day can cover so much geography."

Peter Wright: "By the time I got to the end of the main paragraph, I was laughing out loud! What a litany of woe! But nothing too serious, and I am glad of that. We get very similar weather here in Southern Ontario, to you in NY state, but if I was feeling a bit down in any way, your post cheered me up and made it a better day! Thanks!"

Mike replies: You're welcome. By the bye, things got worse yesterday despite my best efforts. By accident, I hit the wrong @#$! button on the thermostat, and now I cannot change the temperature in the house. The whole #$% @^%& thing's in Portuguese now. I've spent some time on Amazon this morning furiously looking up "simple thermostats." Which probably won't actually help—I'll just end up calling the plumber (he does HVAC) and asking him how to reset the thermostat. He'll act like it's elementary and something I should have been able to figure out myself, on account of they're all in cahoots. But then he'll tell me. And then I'll be able to take off my outdoor jacket while typing.

Grant: "I'm sure the HVAC guy has fixed your thermostat by now. Just in case he needs time to brush up on his Portuguese first, a quick Google search provides this: 'Common methods for resetting a thermostat include installing the battery backward for five seconds, pushing a recessed reset button with a pin or paper clip, or shutting off the breaker to the thermostat for 30 seconds.'"

Mark: "It was a great day! Afterglow from the U of M vs. OSU game...."

Mike replies: Funny article about that, by an OSU fan, in the WSJ.

The Turnley Twins' Print Sales

Both our old friend Peter Turnley and his twin brother David Turnley, photojournalists par excellence (you can search for the "60 Minutes" segment on the two of them, among of my favorite videos about photographers), are having holiday print sales.

Peter's sale includes prints that are very familiar to TOP readers, some of which you might already own—Peter's biggest sale holds the record for earning the most money of any of our past sales (Ctein holds the record for most prints sold).

Photograph by Peter Turnley

Peter's sale can be seen here and ends Tuesday, November 29th.

Photograph by David Turnley

David's sale can be seen here and ends Wednesday, December 14th.

Photo by Peter Turnley

I have this print hanging in my kitchen / dining room!

Photograph by David Turnley

I'll alert you when these sales end.

And a suggestion: even if you're not interested in a purchase now, go to the respective sales pages and see if you can decide which three you like best of each brother's offerings. This is the old "exercise in delectation" put forward by Thomas Hoving, Director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art (a.k.a. "The Met") in New York City from 1967 to 1977. Hoving felt that to hone our taste we need to exercise it. Works for me!

Peter's pictures

David's pictures

Mike

The Two Things You Need to Have a Print Collection

The first thing is, a box.

That's right, a box. An archival box. It can be a plain box or a fancy box, but you need a box—a box as big as the biggest print you reckon you'll want to include in it.

Here's my print box:
The second thing you'll need is to...take it down and look through what it contains every so often. Show your print collection to visitors. Share it with other photographers. Or just look through it yourself and enjoy it. A box full of prints that just sits there untouched is something you might as well not have. Enjoy your prints! Take the box down and look at the prints you've collected every now and then.

I actually have a bunch of boxes. But this is the "current" one, the one that's actively being added to.

That's it. Those are the two things you need to collect prints. Well, except for...some prints.

Mike

Featured Comments from:

Peter Komar: "Spot on Mike as usual about prints and viewing. I have several of that type of print box you shared, also several other types. I often go back and view them exactly as you noted. It not only motivates me to go out shooting, but it’s a great memory jog for me. Many of my prints are darkroom B&W and mostly were taken 40 years ago. I can still remember the locations of individual prints, camera type (there were many), film type, developer, etc. Once I start not remembering the details I will start to worry about old age and memory loss. I hope with your new B&W camera system you start filling up additional print boxes with prints that bring you inner joy."

Niels: "Any buffer sheet between prints? The few prints in my collection comes from various sources, not always something I can count on being a 'fine archival print.' I don't really know if I should worry about cross contamination from a poorly washed print, for example?"

Kenneth Tanaka: "In answer to Niels’s question, yes you should place an acid free sheet of liner between prints stacked in a box. Museums typically use glassine paper."

Jim Meeks: "When I worked at an art museum, we stored our prints in archival boxes like Mike's. We matted our prints to standard sizes and placed an acid free sheet between the print and window mat while in storage. That sheet was just slightly smaller than the size of the mat board. We also chose to use acid free paper with no buffering for interleaving, vs. glassine. I've read that glassine should be used for 3–5 years and then changed out. We used gloves for the most part, but other institutions prefer washed hands or neoprene gloves. We had a policy (which we recently discussed here) of display and rest. As for temperature and humidity levels, our standard was 70°F and 50% relative humidity. Most households can maintain a fairly constant temperature, but RH is hard to manage unless you have a very sophisticated HVAC system and a well-sealed house. I wouldn't worry about the latter; just store them the best you can."

Open Mike: A Book Is an Event

["Open Mike" is the occasional and occasionally far-afield Editorial page of TOP.]

-

I had a really nice time last night—good company, and a glorious Thanksgiving dinner with all the trimmin's, at the lakeside home of my neighbors Philip and Ilene Wexler. Their daughter Ava has just made the brave step of returning to America, after living in Israel for most of her life (she went there when her parents did, as I understand it, but stayed after they moved back). She was delightful, like her extraordinary mother. Another guest was a young carpenter Ilene met during the building of a new house nearby. He could expound at length on the tonal properties of Chinese language and how that worked in music lyrics, but when I complimented his erudition he didn't know what the word meant—but was not the least bit hesitant to admit that. Readiness to admit ignorance is a reliable indicator of intellectual courage. He and Ava are both right around the age of my son, who will turn thirty on his own first child's due date, this coming February. Which means 30-year-olds are now "charming young people" to me. Even the youth (the Jamaicans pronounce it "da yoot," which I love) keep getting older!

I've always thought that as a writer I would be best suited to be a columnist. As a freshman at Dartmouth I was briefly a columnist for The Daily D, at the time the only daily college newspaper in the U.S., or so we were told. I like commenting on the passing scene. And I'm interested in a lot of things. I'm like the clever corvid, who will pick up shiny baubles and carry them off, delighted. Whatever has happened recently is an event to me, and I'm alive to it.

My friend Jim Schley taught me that even a book can be an event, and should rightly be understood that way. How can that be? We make a mistake when thinking of books as merely their material embodiments. We conceive of them as solid objects reliably in stasis. A book is completely contained in itself, a carefully considered and orderly string of words that doesn't change, preserved in a stack of papers kept bound together in strict order. It can be counted on to sturdily stay the same old book over impressive stretches of time if protected. It just sits there, waiting patiently, hibernating. But when you read it, it comes alive. Making your way through it is like a voyage for you, and it occupies a prominent place in your life for the time it takes to read. Everything contained in its words intersects and interacts with everything you bring to the act of reading; and that's what makes it an event.

There's a strange alchemy to books. To find something that speaks to you and that you love, it has to be something that fits you in particular—dovetails with your current intellect, your opinions, whatever open-mindedness to new ideas you possess at a given time, your interests, your concerns, your psyche. It also often needs to fit your current stage of life and development. Every reader should read at least a few carefully chosen books at different times of life, just to see how that works. One of those for me is A Christmas Carol, which is the story of a spiritual awakening. (The first edition was published on December 19th, 1843, and had sold out by Christmas Eve. Remarkably, it has never been out of print.) At the very least, though, every reader has had the experience of finding a particular book to be particularly vivid and meaningful at one age and stage of life, but lacking that radiance at some other juncture; or enjoyable at first reading but not so much on the second. Derek Lundy's Godforsaken Sea totally captured my imagination on first reading—it made me feel like I was right there on the Southern Ocean. It was scary and dramatic. I loved every page; my imagination was all-in; reading that book had a physical effect I could feel in my body. But when I went to reread it years later, the spark didn't "catch." My imagination didn't engage. The book was limp and distant. This transformation alarmed me so much that I put it aside a third of the way through—I preferred to remember it for what it had been for me the first time. The same thing happened with the movie "Star Wars," which I found highly entertaining the first time I saw it but didn't enjoy at all the second time. Kubrick's "Barry Lyndon" was unique for me—I was enthralled the first time I saw it, nothing but bored the second time, and deeply appreciative the third time. Criticism helped: between viewings two and three, I read the excellent critic Mark Crispin Miller's fine essay "Barry Lyndon Reconsidered," a paragon of movie criticism in my humble opinion. John Camp was the one who suggested to me that movies are the novels of today. That feels right. I no longer distinguish much between them—although some stories are better suited to one medium than the other. Groundhog Day and American Graffiti had to be movies; Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance and anything by Henry James have to be books. Popular phenomena like Harry Potter or To Kill a Mockingbird (recently chosen by readers of The New York Times as the best book of the past 125 years)—and A Christmas Carol, for that matter—get to be both.

I think some books dovetail not just with individuals but with whole segments of cultures or particular historical periods. James Whitcomb Riley, whose sarcophagus was given pride of place at the crown of the hill in Crown Hill Cemetery in Indianapolis, was a huge celebrity in his lifetime, well known to the public, but I doubt many people have heard of him today, much less read his work. Although many may have heard of his most famous creation, Little Orphan Annie. In 1980–81 I went to Reed College, in Portland, Oregon, for a year, and was somehow put in charge of their Rare Book Room. One of the college's possessions was a collection of the number-one bestsellers going back decades. This made a neat list, and I caught the obvious idea from it: that I would read them all. Well, I started in, and read, I don't know, a dozen or 15 of the hundreds of books lined up in their custom-built case—from the 1940s, when the collection began. Most of the books just astonished me. Not only did I like nary a one of them, I also could not for the life of me figure out why they had been popular in their time. The author who put the nail in my project was a certain James Gould Cozzens. His number one was Guard of Honor, an incredibly turgid and way, way overlong account, in excruciating detail and without discernible organization, of three successive days on an American Air Force base, stateside, during WWII—three days in which nothing happens. Or, at least, in which nothing had happened by the time I put the book down. I doubt a single American finishes Guard of Honor now in any given year. If one does, I'll bet he has a great deal of trouble finding someone to discuss it with. In searching for Cozzens' name on the Internet—I didn't recall at first—a light bulb turned on, and I realized that most lists of literature of various types we see now are comprised only of authors people still read. The forgotten are left out, no matter how popular they were in their own time. Cozzens' book won the Pulitzer Prize in 1949, which only goes to show that somebody liked it once. Well, all those people who liked it, they're dead now, so we can no longer ask them why in the world they felt that way. My point is merely that books that speak to one generation in one cultural context might not keep their magic intact for the next.

Every reader has also experienced that feeling of something gone missing from their lives after finishing a good book. My boyhood friend Jim Holt, perhaps trying to stave off the inevitable, much preferred to read very long books. A good book for him was 800 to 1,200 pages long, the longer the better. Finishing a good book is like the departure of a companion. Its feeling-tone lingers for days and maybe weeks, and you miss its company. We've all heard stories of readers who consume the main part of a book voraciously, only to screech to a halt when they realize that soon it must end; then they slow way down to mete out the last pages stingily, hoping to make it last.

GQ magazine recently had an interesting idea—they made a list of 21 great books you have their permission to not read. They suggest you not read The Catcher in the Rye (which does seem for some odd reason to have been an inspiration to a rogues' gallery of the weak-minded, including John Lennon's killer; not getting anything much at all out of The Catcher in the Rye might be an indicator of good mental health. Or maybe I just say that because that book was a dud for me). Others you're allowed to not read include Huckleberry Finn, Gravity's Rainbow, The Lord of the Rings, and Life by Keith Richards. Then they nominate books they think you should read instead. Although not everyone will agree with all of their choices either way, it's an inspired idea, and I've put several of their nominations on my reading list, or ordered paperbacks from eBay.

The huge majority of books are ones we'll never read. No human in one lifetime can read all the books the publishing industry churns out in a given month, or a better taste of the classics than you can get of a ham by licking it. The great advantage of the Bible for several hundred years was simply that so many people knew it. Or had heard snippets and bits of it at least, or stories from it. (I've read it twice.) The average self-published book today sells five copies, and the average print book (Americans, at least, still prefer to buy printed paper books) sells 200 copies on publication and 1,000 over its lifetime. It has seven months to sell, if that much, before it goes out of print and is banished from bookstores, surviving only on Amazon. So someone like our friend John Camp (pen name: John Sandford), who can sell 900,000 or so copies of one title, is really beating the odds with a cudgel. Book publishing, like everything else, photography included, has become a tsunami; books get lost now mainly amid surfeit, getting overwhelmed by all the other books. Lost in the shuffle, I think the expression is.

The thing that I most regret is that there is so little shared experience now. What book have most Americans read? Or most Brits, or most French people? Or most boys or girls or Black people or Mexicans or athletes or college students? The best-selling trade book of all time is Don Quixote, from 1604—how many Americans alive now have read that? Not as many as have seen Avatar, I'll wager. Popular movies probably stand the best chance to be familiar to the largest number of people in the same culture. We've all seen Star Wars, even me, although I only saw the first one. I saw the first Harry Potter movie too. Books are teetering on the perilous edge of no longer being shared experiences, culturally speaking.

But they can still be events in our own lives, and I guess that's enough. I'm currently on the hunt for my next good book!

Mike

ADDENDUM:

-

Little Orphant Annie
(known to most Americans in the closing years of the
1800s and the opening years of the 1900s)

by James Whitcomb Riley

Little Orphant Annie’s come to our house to stay,
An’ wash the cups an’ saucers up, an’ brush the crumbs away,
An’ shoo the chickens off the porch, an’ dust the hearth, an’ sweep,
An’ make the fire, an’ bake the bread, an’ earn her board-an’-keep;
An’ all us other childern, when the supper things is done,
We set around the kitchen fire an’ has the mostest fun
A-list’nin’ to the witch-tales ’at Annie tells about,

An’ the Gobble-uns ’at gits you
Ef you
Don’t
Watch
Out!

Featured Comments from:

Alan Whiting: " I tutor (mostly) High School kids in (mostly) math and science, students from a variety of national and ethnic backgrounds. I'm no longer surprised that they just don't have a lot of the cultural material you and I take for granted. It was a shock, however, when a third-year Spanish student of European descent had never heard of Don Quixote. But think: how many Americans had actually read it, even in translation? Very few. It was just sort of in the air, so 'tilting at windmills' was understood somehow. You could say the same about the 1001 Nights, and many other things. I wonder what has taken their place. (I have read Don Quijote in the original, and can confirm it is a masterpiece. But not a task for everyone.)"

vinck: "What book have most French people read? One of the classics taught in school—isn't it the same everywhere? By the time they are out of high school, most French people are acquainted with works by Molière, Racine, Flaubert, Balzac, Zola, Camus. Proust if particularly unlucky (though this one was stuffed down my throat later on, while on a math and physics curriculum!). I would place my bet on Molière being the most widely read, but there are several titles competing for first place. I don't doubt these books have literary value, but frankly they all feel a bit stale. Sure, now there's Youtube, video games, and countless TV channels, but I'd say the school system has its part in how few people read books nowadays. They teach you how to read, but certainly not to appreciate the activity of reading books. The Three Musketeers would be our own Don Quixote: epic story, we all know the characters, the references, but few have read it. But the book that holds the most universal appeal throughout the country is probably Le Petit Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry."

Mike replies: That last one is popular here too.

RubyT: "I hated The Catcher in the Rye and have never tried again. I loved both Don Quixote and The Brothers Karamazov [Susan Sontag's favorite book —Ed.] in college; enjoyed both less (in different translations than in college) in my 50s. The Brothers K in particular seemed overfull of long-winded philosophical musings that served only to interrupt the story.

"I have been making a point the last two years to regain my reading skills with a minimum goal every day. Some days are easy, I read and read, other days I am lucky to read a few pages, particularly if something stressful happens, like running over a screw and having to call AAA. I am also making a point to revisit old favorites, because there is only so much time. Movies get almost none of that time. I only very rarely watch movies, perhaps one or two a year. I am sure I am missing some great work, but so often I can just see where it's going and I lose interest.

"This post really resonated and I look forward to reading the comments as they come in."

Geoff Wittig: "Back in the Reagan years, E.D. Hirsch made a cottage industry and a bunch of money from his adroit concept of 'cultural literacy.' By this he meant a shared knowledge base, at least a dim awareness of concepts like Don Quixote and Ebeneezer Scrooge, Appomattox and the sinking of the Lusitania, that permitted individuals in a culture to understand each other on some level.

"Of course, Hirsch's list was very heavy with dead white males, and defined a notion of culture that was breathtakingly narrow in our increasingly diverse civil society. But he was really on to something.

"Nowadays the Tsunami of increasingly segmented and granular published and on-line information, not to mention ever deeper political silos, threaten to Balkanize our culture into isolated pockets. It reminds me of a possibly apocryphal factoid about the five (or six) Native American tribes of the Iroquois Confederacy. Their languages are similar but vary geographically, so that neighboring Onondaga and Oneida could easily understand each other, but the Western Seneca and Eastern Mohawk might struggle to communicate. The further our culture atomizes, the fewer tropes and concepts we hold in common, the fewer books we have all at least skimmed, the harder it is to understand each other."

Mike replies: Very true, and that goes for generations as well I think. Because of the cultural Balkanization you speak of, I suspect each generation is less familiar now with the shared experiences and tropes and concepts of other generations. YouTube feeds me some very generational-specific stuff, and then I watch it because it's being presented to me, leading to me getting more of it. I feel fairly safe in guessing that its algorithms are assuming I wouldn't be interested in the things that fascinate and entice other generations, even though I would be.

Happy Thanksgiving!

A happy Thanksgiving to all my fellow Americans and anyone else who celebrates on this day. A day of rest, reflection, and gratitude. And possibly some American football*. We'll be back tomorrow. Peace and good wishes.

—Mike

*Maybe even some World football, from Qatar, a word which cannot be pronounced correctly. (How to pronounce "Qatar.") As you of course know, the most momentous sporting contest, pitting the European Union against the United States**, doesn't begin until November 30th.

**The Mosconi Cup. "The Mosconi Cup is an annual nine-ball pool*** tournament contested since 1994 between teams representing Europe and the United States. Named after American pool player Willie Mosconi, the event is comparable to the Ryder Cup in golf and the Weber Cup in bowling." (Wikipedia) There are two controversies in the Mosconi Cupt this year: despite his dominance in events he was allowed to play in—as a Russian he was banned from some International tournaments—Fedor Gorst, 22, of Russia, was left off the European team; and the controversial Earl Strickland, 61, who won five U.S. and three World 9-ball titles from the '80s to the early 2000s, was named to the U.S. team despite—or perhaps because of?—his volatile and erratic behavior while playing, sure to tee up the Mosconi Cup crowds. Anyway, enjoy your Thanksgiving and whichever form of football you prefer!

***I never write about pool on TOP. Which is a shame, because then you have no way to find out about extraordinary and delightful demonstrations like Fedor Gorst's seven racks in less than 27 minutes, Shane Van Boening's impressive runout (starts at 33:02), or Justin Bergman's 18-rack package (i.e., streak). On a bar box, but still. Your loss I guess...you'd think, as clever as I am, I'd find a way to sneak those links in somehow. Happy Turkey Day!

Custom Printing: Threat or Menace?

Guest post by Ctein

I'd originally planned this as a comment to one of Mike's previous columns about our current print sale, but then I realized it was better as a standalone column. Still, think of it as a response to some of the excellent questions that several readers asked.

Understand that the questions aren't new ones—we've discussed them in the past, in fact at great length a mere dozen years ago. I am truly surprised y'all don't remember the details of those extended conversations (grin).

For those who are masochistic enough to want to review these longissimus, non legi [too long, didn't read —Ed.] dialogues, the links are at the bottom of this column.

For the rest of us...

There's a very simple answer to the questions in the vein of, "Should or shouldn't I value a print made by the photographer more than a print made by somebody else?"

Do what your heart tells you!

News flash: Art is not a rational process. Loving art is not a rational thing. The marketplace for art is especially not a rational thing. Any attempt to philosophize your way to a logical answer is doomed to failure. All of you are right!

Jim Marshall prints
Let me give you an example of just how irrational the market is. I was Jim Marshall's color printer for the last decade of his life. In the last two years I finally convinced him to let me make digital prints as well as dye transfers. In most cases I was printing the same photographs in both media, because they were the popular ones, so we have a kind of controlled experiment here.

You would probably guess—correctly—that the dye transfer prints sold for many of thousands of dollars more than the digital prints, anywhere from $3,000 to $10,000 more. Because, y'know, DYE TRANSFER (insert "ooooooooohhhh, aaaaahhhhh" here)!

By any logical metric, this should not have been the case. The digital prints were in most cases larger than the dye transfer prints. Technically they were unquestionably better, being more faithful to the tones and colors of the original slides—when that was the goal.

(An aside here, Jim worked almost exclusively with 35mm Kodachrome II and A. Those are Jim's "originals," and they have never been for sale. If you want a Jim Marshall photograph, you buy a print...made by someone like me. Which messes with a whole lot of arguments about originality and ownership, I would think.)

Where was I? Oh yeah. In addition, the prints were more true to Jim's intent and artistic vision, because of course I worked with him and he critiqued what I did. In some cases the changes were subtle, and others they were massive—the print of Johnny Cash in the studio is the only one of this photograph that was ever printed remotely correctly, because the studio had fluorescent lights that photographed as a bilious green.

So we've ticked off size, technical quality, aesthetic intent, and originality boxes. What's left, rarity? Because, you know...dye transfer (ooooohh, aaaahhh)!

Except...because we only got started on digital printing at the end of Jim's life, signed digital prints are far rarer. In most cases there are exactly two in existence—one in my collection and one in Jim's estate. Whereas there are between five and seventy signed dye transfers, depending on the popularity of the particular photograph.

By what logic does a Jim Marshall dye transfer print sell for much, much more than a Jim Marshall digital print of the same photograph? None, because it's not logical. It's not supposed to be.

Art has no intrinsic value—its value lies only in the pleasure it brings to us and we have no way to quantify that. (Thank the gods for that, because if we did some soulless capitalist entity would lock up the property rights and start charging us for it.)

If you did go back and reread all those oh-so-long discussions, you will of notice that they didn't resolve anything and that we are asking exactly the same questions today that we asked a dozen years ago. And, I have no doubt will be asking a dozen years hence.

To quote a great philosopher—"Don't worry. Be happy."

Should Mike print his own pictures?
Now, permit me to address the issues I can answer, raised by more than one reader:

1.) "Mike, you could save a lot of money by doing your own printing."

If Mike were to do his own printing, he would earn more money if he did this sale entirely on his own. The way this works is that he gets 60% of the net proceeds and I get 40%, because both Mike and I firmly believe that the artist should get the lion's share of money for their work. Still, Mike is leaving 40% on the table.

But consider that to get that other 40%, he would have to purchase all the materials, do the printing, do all the order tracking, do all the fulfillment, do all the shipping, keep the books, etc. That takes me about 85% of my time, easily more than half an hour per order when all is said and done. I doubt Mike could do it faster. [Ed. note: Mike certainly could not do it faster! Mike might not even be able to do it at all. That's an experiment you probably don't want us to run. —Mike]

Is that really how Mike wants to spend his time? Money is fungible but the 24 hours in a day aren't. And, as Mike recently wrote, "I'm 65, so the way I figure it, I get to live between zero and 40 more years...."

Mike has talked often about balancing the time he spends doing all the things he wants and needs to do. Do you think he really wants to add running print sales to that?

That is a rhetorical question.

(If you're thinking along the lines of, "Maybe Mike could do all the printing and Ctein could do all the order fulfillment, etc.?" Nuh uh—wouldn't save him much because I'd still need at least 30% rather than the original 40% to cover my time.)

2.) "Mike, you would get a better print, one more true to your artistic vision, if you did your own printing."

Nope. For one really simple reason. I'm a much better printer than Mike is. That's not immodesty speaking, that's accuracy. I do it for a living, and it's one of my areas of expertise. There are rare occasions when I don't do a single thing to the file Mike sends me to improve. It doesn't happen often. The great majority of the time, though, I am improving upon what Mike has created, by his artistic judgment. Not mine, his.

Sometimes the improvements are very subtle. Sometimes they are not. After I went in and "fixed" the "Wet Asphalt" photograph, entirely on my own initiative and intuition, Mike wrote this comment back: "That looks better than mine actually...I think I flattened the tone of the road a little too much. You added some more life to it and it doesn't detract from what I wanted the picture to do. And yours looks more like wetness."

I intuited the need for that wetness and I knew how to get there (it was very easy for me). I helped him realize his own vision for his own picture. It happens with a lot of my clients, even very famous ones.

In short, You won't be getting anything that Mike isn't utterly happy with. In truth, none of my clients ever do.

Because that's my job.

Ctein

Links:

"What is Custom Printing?"

"Do 'Real' Photographers Print?"

"Custom Printing and Artistic Ownership"

"The Importance (or Not) of the Print(ing)"

Ctein was was one of the world's few master dye transfer printmakers for many years. When Kodak announced the discontinuation of dye transfer materials, in 1992, he mortgaged his house and laid in a massive supply of dye transfer materials. He told me in the early years of inkjet that he would switch when digital inkjet could exceed the quality of dye transfer; before his supply of dye transfer materials had run out, he had switched. He closed his darkroom in 2013. He now makes custom digital inkjet prints for a wide variety of professional and private clients.

Featured Comments from:

Bob Johnston [no relation —Ed.]: "Anyone can make a print but it takes an awful lot of knowledge, effort and practice to make a fine print. This is just as true today as it was in darkroom days. Mike is very fortunate to have Ctein print for him."

William Schneider: "I believe that printing benefits from the 'two heads are better than one' principal. It is easy to overlook (or even wistfully ignore!) a printing decision made while working alone. In the past, another printer and I would meet twice a week to look over each other's darkroom prints. A fresh set of eyes could instantly spot issues to which I had become blind."

Jeff: "I’ve always made my own black-and-white prints, darkroom and digital. But I’m just an amateur enthusiast, not a professional requiring volume production. All of photography requires understanding of tools and techniques, but primarily depends on critical judgment and decision making. I would no sooner outsource my printing than I would my shooting. It’s all part of a whole, reflecting my skill and judgment, and the final framed print is my reward for the effort. When a print ‘sings’ (occasionally), that’s special. Sure, someone else might do it differently, or better, but that’s not the point for me. I especially enjoy deciding on the print size, typically smaller than others might prefer, and aspect ratio (where the edges are placed); what feels right for each picture. But the result isn’t final until I custom cut the mat for each print and assemble the framing. All mine, from start to finish, for better or worse. Joy.

"That said, I can surely appreciate why others take a different approach; no right or wrong. Seems that there has always been far fewer great printers than great photographers. I might not qualify as either, but I sure do enjoy the process and the resultant output. Meanwhile, my vintage silver print collection serves as aspiration and keeps me humble."

Daniele: "Thinking about it from my perspective, as a guitar maker, I can't put too much value on the autocracy of the art product: in my field, the end result is the performance (either recorded or live); it really needs both an instrument maker and a musician, both highly specialized in their profession. While technically and actually true that a maker can perform and a player build his own instrument, in practice it produces good results extremely rarely, if ever at all; great results, I can't think of any."

Cookin' With Gas (OT)

I woke up this morning and...cooked.

I'm a terrible cook. Good cooks think it's impossible for anyone to be a terrible cook, because "all you have to do is follow directions." It's invisible to them how much of any recipe is assumed knowledge. And aptitude! For instance, this morning I prepared the red beans part of a red beans and rice sauce for the slow cooker, and it started off having me cook chopped onions for eight minutes in 1/4 cup of "vegetable oil." I used olive oil, because it's what I had. Olives are vegetables, right? One hour later, a vague memory glinted through my brain-pan like a ray of the setting sun after an overcast day...didn't I read someplace once that you shouldn't sauté in olive oil? A cook would know. I have no idea.

And then there's "...to taste." (That's the aptitude part. I'm a good photographic printmaker mainly because I'm very good at perceiving small visual differences and I have settled and well-established ideas as to what a print should look like. Good cooks can perceive small differences in taste and have settled and well-established ideas about what tastes good and what doesn't.) Many recipes tell you to add ingredients or spices "to taste." Well, I'm bad at tasting (and I was bad at it even before COVID-19). I have no idea what "to taste" means. Or rather, it means little to me. Vague instructions like "add 1/2 to 1 tsp. sage (optional)" are useless, and maddening, as well. (I flipped a coin and added it.)

I'm trying a couple of other things to help myself with cooking. One is to clean up right away. Historically, when I cook, the kitchen is a mess for hours and maybe days afterward, which is a bummer. Cleaning up right away is meant to break that association. Another observation is that cooking makes me tense. So I've been trying to relax and take it easy when I cook. Don't stress out; try to enjoy it; don't get mad; don't yell at the dog; no swearing; don't allow the feelings of tension in my innards to rise. Breathe. Let's just say I'm working on it. 

Why are we fat?
A really interesting new article in the Times (remember I'm American—"the Times" means the New York Times) yesterday talks about a scientific meeting at the Royal Society (now that would be Great Britain) called "Causes of obesity: theories, conjectures, and evidence." Turns out that researchers have no idea why everybody's getting fat, but they know one thing that isn't to blame: us.

"The three-day meeting was infused with an implicit understanding of what obesity is not: a personal failing. No presenter argued that humans collectively lost willpower around the 1980s, when obesity rates took off, first in high-income countries‌, then in much of the rest of the world. Not a single scientist said our genes changed in that short time. Laziness, gluttony‌‌ and sloth were not referred to as obesity’s helpers. In stark contrast to a prevailing societal view of obesity, which assumes people have full control over their body size, they didn’t blame individuals for their condition, the same way we don’t blame people suffering from the effects of undernutrition, like stunting and wasting."

Starting in 1980, people started to get fatter. Not only are people in every single state in the U.S.A. fatter now, but the people in the slimmest State, Colorado, are on average fatter than the people in the fattest State in the Union, Mississippi, were in 1970. The article claims that the standard trope, "eat less, exercise more" is as useless as "take two aspirins and call me in the morning." Are we obese because we don't eat less? In these 40 years since 1980, our pets have gotten fatter. Are we obese because we don't exercise more? Marathoner runners now are heavier on average than they were in 1970. The trend is global, and pervasive. Not a single country in the world has been able to reverse it. Not a single demographic or ethnic group has escaped. As popular as the idea of "personal responsibility" is—we are very much in love with the idea that we're in control—that ain't it.

Personally, my experience aligns with the scientists who argued that "the problem is less about what we’re eating and more about what we’re not." In more than nine years of experimenting with my diet, what I've learned is that the body needs plants. Plants are overwhelmingly what humans ate for two hundred thousand years; it's the diet we evolved to fit. Plants are compounds that contain hundreds if not thousands of phytochemicals in complicated combinations. Many of them are simply things our bodies are adapted to use, and that we need. When I'm able to eat a sound diet of the seven healthiest foods, I don't have to regulate how much I eat, and I both lose weight and am less hungry. But what do I know?

I still struggle, because I'm a sugar and alcohol addict. And lax, if I'm honest.

And, well, a terrible cook.

Mike

Download 7 healthy foods

Sad UPDATE, the next day: The red beans and rice was very tasty—I had one large helping once it was done. But...unfortunately I somehow neglected to turn the slow cooker off. I don't know how I did that. But it ended up being cooked for an additional eight hours, to a total of 15. It did not survive this mistreatment, and I threw it all away this morning.  :-(

But at least I know how to make it now. And now I finally know how a dishwasher works, thanks to Aakin! (I know, "RTFM.")

Featured Comments from:

Brian O'Connor (partial comment): "Most processed 'foods' including sucrose (sugar) are not actual food. So a critical thing to figure out is 'what is food?'"

Mike Ferron: "Maybe I am wrong but the answer seems simple to me. In 1970 there were far fewer fast food restaurants available to most of us and we mostly ate at home. Not all the foods we ate at home were healthy but still we consumed more quality foods than we do now. Obesity is now an accepted standard here in the USA. Just watching the folks at work, especially the young ones raid the snack machine full of sugary junk washing that junk down with monster drinks and coffee drinks with whip cream or eating 1000 calories worth of fried food from the place across the parking lot reveals the truth. I encourage all to spend time studying healthy nutrition."

chris_scl: "There is sincerely no problem at all in using olive oil for sautéing. So, yeah, just relax and enjoy your cooking!"

Chris H: "An entertaining and thought provoking read! I'm a good cook. Possibly the greatest, in my humble opinion. One big stressor at play for cooking (and many other endeavors) is not allowing enough time for the job, and being rushed at the outset. I'm not sure what kind of superhuman can actually prep and cook a meal in the time frames quoted in a typical recipe, but I suspect those are all complete lies. Yeah, if you're on your game and have a few repetitions of a dish in your past then you can get there or close. Otherwise it's like looking at the distance times of a professional runner—not good for the ego. Taking the relaxed approach, as you say, and as part of that leaving plenty of time for the job, helps a bunch in my book."

Jay: "I've recently moved back to the USA after almost 30 years in Europe, mostly in Spain. Portion sizes here are approximately double and there is much higher consumption of fast food and packaged foods. There are basically no obese children in Spain and adults are generally thin or moderately overweight. You may draw your own conclusions...."

Benjamin Marks: "I have often thought that cookbooks are a good example of the limits of language for certain practical purposes. You can read the instruction, 'Brown the onions in a saucepan over a medium flame until carmelized.' But almost every noun and adjective in that sentence requires the cook to already know the punchline to the joke. To follow those instructions, you need to already have an intuitive feel for (or practical experience with) the following: What type of onion, how finely chopped, how fresh? Browned in oil? What type? Or in butter? How thick is the bottom of your saucepan and what's it made of? What fuel makes your fire (propane does not burn as hot as natural gas, and not all stovetops are created equal)? Then how do you know the distinction between 'carmelized' and 'burnt'? I feel for ya Mike! But don't take it too hard. The cookbooks are stacked against ya."

Kye Wood: "I'm stealing your genius. Anything optional from now on will get the coin flip arbiters decision."

Christopher Perez (partial comment): "Living in Europe, I can tell an American with 80 to 90 percent accuracy simply by body shape. Americans carry weight differently than, say, other overweight nations, like England. Most Americans I see here could be considered overweight."

Graham: "Mike—olive oil is perfect. In our house we virtually never use anything else, unless there is a specific (flavor) reason. Ditto for the entire country of Spain. And most of Italy.

"Cooking together has been the foundation of most of my friendships in adult life, not by design but by default, and for my wife and me it is a way of life.

"I find that by far the most important thing for good results is to use the best ingredients. This is hugely important, to the extent that I buy based on what looks good rather than what I had in mind. You won’t find this at chain stores or even most grocers; it really means getting to know the vendors at your local farmers markets on a first-name basis and enjoying the shopping process itself. I’ve only ever found one grocer that can rival the markets, blessedly close to us here in San Francisco—and I can go there just to enjoy being there, even if I don’t need anything.

"Other things that make a big difference for me are 1.) cooking with music, and 2.) cleaning up while cooking, always and immediately, every little thing (I don’t even like leaving things out to dry).

"Some of the chefs I’ve learned the most from focus on technique—Pepin, for example, says you really have to learn to use a knife so that you can cook with speed—if you get slowed down it all falls apart. Thomas Keller recommmends practicing pinching salt so that you know how much is in each pinch, again so that you don’t get slowed down measuring things. He’s also honest in saying that he can’t tell you how much oil to put in the pan—'you just have to know that,' he would say.

"Lastly, I’d offer that I find it quite hard to cook only for myself. The social aspect is part of the cooking for me, and vice-versa. So many happy memories."

Stan B.: "I remember looking at photographs of 'circus freaks' in the seventies, wondering how it was possible for human beings to ever get that large. Now you see people who easily surpass their size on any given day, on any given block in any given city or town."

Dogman: "During my first photography job at a weekly newspaper, I virtually lived on red beans and rice. A little sausage tossed in right after payday. Seasoned with a liberal amount of Tabasco or other hot sauce, it was always tasty and satisfying. There was also lots of cheap beer available in those days to keep it company. Ah, memories! How did I survive?

Monochrome Camera Print Offer!

[Sale ended 11/25/2022 at one minute to midnight]

I'm very pleased to offer for sale a small selection of fine prints made from a monochrome digital camera. The camera is a Sigma fp converted to monochrome by having the CFA (color filter array) stripped from the camera, a service that can be performed on any camera that has a Sony sensor by Daniel Morrison at Monochrome Imaging Services in Vancouver, Washington (among others). It is a 24-megapixel full-frame camera. The conversion increases both sensitivity and sharpness such that the prints look more like they were made with a 36-MP camera.

The prints are gorgeous. I'm so pleased with the way they turned out that I've decided to commit to working this way into the future. I've loved black-and-white since I first discovered, as a boy, that the local pharmacy would make black-and-white prints to special order. I drove their technician crazy! Not long afterward, I set up my first B&W darkroom in the bathroom under the basement stairs in my parents' house in Bethesda. My love of B&W continued through a career as a custom B&W printmaker for galleries and museums, and as a darkroom expert writing for such magazines as Darkroom Photography (US) and Black & White Photography (UK) among others. When I first started the "Collector Print Program" at Photo Techniques magazine several decades ago, the idea was to offer beautiful pictures that were also outstanding examples of various specialized, exotic, or unusual photographic techniques, so readers could see for themselves what good examples of those techniques look like. These monochrome-sensor prints follow fully in that tradition.

After the Rain, Keuka Lake, from Hammondsport
["Lake" on the ordering page]

Vultures Eating the Remains of a Deer
["Vultures"]

Car Coming
["Car"]

These prints were made under my supervision in Daly City, California, by Ctein (it's his only name—he's mononymous—and it's pronounced "kuh-TINE). Ctein is a longtime custom printer who transitioned to inkjet printing from dye transfer; he wrote the standard textbook on photo restoration, and we hope he will write one on inkjet printing. He certainly could. They were printed with Epson UltraChrome HD pigment inks on Epson Exhibition Fiber paper. The prints are BIG—for me—printed on 17x22" paper with approximately 1" borders.

The cost is $265 per print, and SHIPPING IS FREE TO ANYWHERE IN THE WORLD. Your satisfaction is guaranteed—if, after seeing it, you choose not to keep it for any reason or for no reason, simply return it for a full refund. We will accommodate your wishes.

For those who order two prints in any combination, there is a choice of one of two free 8.5x11-inch bonus prints...

Corn at the Harvest
["Corn"]

Wet Asphalt
["Asphalt"]

...and anyone who orders three large prints in any combination will receive both free bonus prints.

The sale is not limited in number; it is LIMITED IN TIME. We take orders only through Friday, all the way to midnight. If you have any questions, please contact Ctein or myself or leave your question in the Comments.

Please click through from the sales page to the large JPEGs that Ctein has put up. They will give you a better idea of what the prints look like. There is a big difference between seeing these little JPEGs and the magnificent full-sized prints. Hopefully, these will help convince you, as they have convinced my grateful self, that monochrome, a.k.a. black and white, is still alive and well, easier than it used to be, and as beautiful as it ever was.

Mike
(Top photo by Dan Whicker)

Featured Comments from:

Nikhil Ramkarran: "Ordered, with great pleasure."

robert e: "They may be just JPEGs, but I can see why you're jazzed, Mike! Boy, the more I see of 'Vultures' the more I like it—there's so much visual variety and many points of interest, but all within a harmonious whole. Congratulations on all these prints and on finally obtaining your dream tool. Good luck with the sale!"

Mike replies: Thank you.

Stan B.: "That's one handsome set of prints!"

Mike replies: Thank you!

Darlene: "I ordered 'Vultures' because I like the image. I call it Circle of Life (or something like that). It is a beautiful image, and I cannot wait to see the print. Happy early holidays to you, Mike."

Mike replies: And to you as well.

Rodolfo Canet Castelló: "Well, I've just ordered my first fine art print! There's a first for everything. I liked 'Lake' the very moment I saw it, and I believe having a master-printed copy will be extremely useful to educate my eye for my own printing. During these years The Online Photographer has been very important to let me escape from the oversharpened, oversaturated amateur photography of today and this should take my education to the next level. Thanks Mike and Ctein!"

Mike replies: It's a good reason to keep a collection of prints or even clips. When I was a custom exhibition printer, specializing in B&W, I kept a large folder of examples of excellent B&W close at hand—some were original prints by others, some were my prints, and some were tearsheets from magazines. The purpose was to "calibrate my eye" before a printing session. I used it infrequently, but I could usually sense when I needed to do so. Five or ten minutes of looking through those examples and I would feel grounded and be ready to start tackling the negatives I had to print that day. (I probably also used that time to formulate a mental plan as to how I wanted to approach that day's negatives.)

Open Mike: Going Gentle (OT)

I saw a headline the other day that said something like, "the hardest thing about growing old for most people is accepting that they're growing old." Made me laugh. True for me. The strange fact about getting old is that I honestly can't quite wrap my head around it. It doesn't seem...right, somehow.

I don't feel all that different from in here. But I also don't hang out with young people, and forty-year-olds look like twenty-somethings to me (and twenty-somethings look like teenagers!), and I've become surprisingly prudish, and the other day my feet felt so cold so persistently that I took the bull by the horns and soaked the ol' dogs for five minutes in a Rubbermaid tub of hot water like a sick guy in an old Norman Rockwell painting. (Big surprise:  it worked. My tootsies felt warm the whole rest of the afternoon.) That certainly isn't something young people do!

If you make a comment about your age, most people will reply with some homily like, you're only as old as you feel. Something that, deep down, means, "fight it." You know, the old Dylan Thomas lines: "Do not go gentle into that good night. / Rage, rage against the dying of the light."

I don't know about that. I think the harder fight might simply be accepting reality. "When I stopped living in the problem and began living in the answer, the problem went away...acceptance is the answer to all my problems today." Does "you're as young as you feel" mean I'm...two? Because sometimes I feel like I need a nap. LOL.

My consolation is that I might have a good life as an old guy ahead of me! I'm in good health. And the DSM defines middle age as being from 45 to 64. And I'm 65. So that means I'm a young old guy, right? Hello? You still there? Wake up!

I'll take it. As my bro' Dr. Charlie says, consider the alternative.

Mike

P.S. Our Print Sale starts at 10:00 a.m. today, but remember, that's PACIFIC TIME. So: noon in Chicago and Dallas and 1:00 p.m. in New England and Florida...and here at TOP World HQ in the heart of the old Burned-Over District. I'm excited!

Featured Comments from:

SteveW: "Thank you Mike, that was a the OT I needed today."

Herman Krieger: "For my 96th birthday, I changed my two-wheel recumbent for a three-wheel one."

Mike replies: Our friend Herman is TOP's honorary official oldest reader, and has been for years! Long may you prosper, Herman.

And thanks to all of you older guys who inspire me to not worry and keep enjoying life. I really liked the comments—I think there were two—about the seventies being the best decade so far. I'm going to aim for that and work toward it. I've had some not-so-good decades in my life, for sure, so it's a good time to aim to set that right.

Open Mike: Woodwork, Etc.

A.
It only snowed here Saturday overnight, and just a little, but they got 77 inches (that's not a typo) in Orchard Park, where the Bills play, in the Southtowns of "Nickel City." That's 86 miles from me as the crow flies. They say the only plane that left Buffalo Niagara International Airport on Friday was the one carrying the Bills to Detroit, where their game this weekend got relocated to. Ironically, climate change was implicated in the snowfall; conditions are ripe for lake effect snow because Lake Erie is unusually warm after our uncommonly warm October. I went out photographing on yesterday, my day off, but it's a funny thing—when it's 23°F (–5°C) and windy, suddenly there aren't any good photographs more than 30 paces from the car. I don't know where they all go, but there aren't any. 'S true.

B.

Just as a matter of aesthetic preference, do you like woodwork in houses? Just out of curiosity.

C.
Do you do this? I like to keep the same card in the camera across two, three, or even four stints or spells of photographing. That way, not only am I less attached in my mind to my hopes for any one day's shooting, but I have more to look at, and hence, more chances to find a few good ones. When I go out once, come back, can't resist downloading the card, and find I got nothing, it's discouraging. In those situations, I'll sometimes work on pictures I know in the back of my mind aren't really that good. Clinging to my false hopes. Wanting to have gotten something. When you review your work, it's better to be in a realistic frame of mind; and that's easier when you actually got a few.

Mike

The best card ($45 each)

Featured Comments:

Adam Isler: "I generally keep the card in my camera all week and shoot at least something almost every day, but have an extended shoot only once or twice a week. Then at the weekend I download the images from the chip to Lightroom, automatically organized into date folders, and work on Lightroom's 'most recent import.'"

Dogman: "I wanna see it now! I download immediately and give everything a look in Lightroom. If I like anything I immediately do whatever fiddling around I deem necessary, and delete the losers. The card goes back in the camera, is formatted again and is ready to go next time. SanDisks are the cards I use. I've yet to lose a photo due to card failure. My losses are due to photographer failure."

Grant: "The Buffalo storm is nothing new. The Queen city is pounded by big storms every few years. I recall storms in 2000, 2001 and 2006, that had the border with Canada closed numerous times. Toronto has sent snow clearing vehicles to Buffalo more than once. The nice folks in Buffalo have helped out Toronto a few times too.

"I lived for many years in a 1920s house with a staircase very similar to the one in the photo. There was a stained glass window at the stair landing. I liked it, except that it had a dark stain, which I guess was the style at the time. I would have refinished it to something lighter, but for the fact that all the woodwork in the house was in the same dark stain. Far more effort was required than what I wanted to do.

"A number of years ago I started using 64 GB cards. I have multiple cameras and I still shoot like I only have 36 exposures on the card. This allows me to go a long time without a care in the world. My blasé attitude has only caught up with me once. I recently got to a really nice location, carefully composed my shot, squeezed the shutter and got a message 'No memory card.' That's when I remembered that it was still in the card reader at home. Being a photographer with many years experience, I had a backup plan, a long walk back to the van to get the other camera.

"How ironic that when I got home and sat down to that day's installment of TOP, the lead story was about a photographer in the Finger Lakes who had had the same experience. Great minds think alike?"

Mike replies: I've now got one of these (it's light), with two spare cards in it, in the side pocket of the camera bag.  :-)  The pocket on the other side contains a spare battery.

Kent Wiley: "It's been nearly 20 years since the most recent of these photos was taken, but you might say I appreciate woodwork in homes, since I did most of the wood trim in these views. I had some help certainly, and wonder what these dwellings look like now. At the time, my carpentry skills were certainly better developed than my photography skills."

Mike replies: Wow, that's impressive! You are a master.

Kristine Hinrichs: "I shoot every day and download the files (11+ year 'Project 365'). Even after eleven years, I feel like it’s Christmas morning waiting to see what the images look like. I am so often surprised by the gift of an image that found me. Often enough I’m disappointed as well but I know there’s always tomorrow."

Mike replies: You packed a great deal of wisdom and truth about what it's like to be a photographer into very few words in that comment. Thanks for that.

scott kirkpatrick: "It has been attributed to Brett Weston and was apparently a family observation that the weight of a large field camera had the same effect on pictures that you see with sub-zero temperatures: They either come close to the car out of curiosity or run away."

Gear and Materials for the Monochrome-Sensor Print Sale

That last post took a looong time to write. See what I do for you?

Further announcements about the upcoming print sale, about which I am very stoked:

F It will start at 10 a.m. Pacific Standard Time (Ctein-time) on this coming Monday, November 21st.

F There are three prints, made on 17x22-inch Epson Exhibition Fiber paper with at least a 1-inch border.

F There are also two bonus prints, of this image and this image, made on 8.5x11-inch paper. Anyone who buys two large prints can choose one bonus print, and anyone who buys three prints will receive both. The bonus prints aren't available separately.

F The prints are made on an Epson P800 using Epson UltraChrome HD pigment inks.

F We've noticed that a lot of our customers are repeat buyers, so Ctein would like regulars to know that this time, he will respond to order emails within 48 hours rather than 24, although it might be much sooner than that, and the prints will ship in 45 days rather than 30, although, again, it may be much sooner. The reason for the latter is that we had a few unavoidable delays caused by COVID-related issues during the last sale, and Ctein would like to build in an abundance of caution this time.

F There's one exception: if you need your prints as Christmas gifts, you need only mention that in your order email, and he will make sure you get them on time.

F The sale runs for four days, ending on Friday just before midnight Pacific Time. That's it!

I take tomorrow off, not because I don't like you but because housework. So I'll be back on Sunday. Please put Monday at 10 a.m. Pacific (1 p.m. Eastern, 6 p.m. in London) on your calendar. If you're in Sydney you can be excused for waiting a few hours, because for you the sale starts at 5 a.m. Tuesday! I guess you can sleep in if you have to.  :-)

Kind regards,

Mike

 

 

Color Management Made Very Simple (for Beginners and Others)

[There were several bad typos in this. Hopefully all corrected now, thanks to Jeff Schewe and Carl Weese and others. If you find something, please let me know. —Mike the Ed.]

-

Life used to be simple. You had sRGB and AdobeRGB, and you tailored your workflow to one or the other depending on the final destination of your pictures. Now there's P3 and other interlopers out there.

But we'll get to that.

First, if you are unfamiliar with color space, take a gander at this diagram. I shall then 'splain.

Common color gamuts (courtesy Myndex
Research, CC by-SA 4.0)

CIE 1931 is the big color blob in the background*. It basically graphs all the colors the human eye can see. The triangles superimposed on it represent a number of standard color spaces or gamuts. The CIE, or International Commission on Illumination, founded 1913, is the international authority on light, illumination, color, and color spaces.

Now then—in most still camera menus, if you navigate to "Color" or "Color Space," you'll see you have a choice of sRGB or Adobe RGB. The simplest form of color management, and one which works surprisingly well these days, is to set your camera on sRGB, shoot JPEGs at the best JPEG setting, view your images on a computer monitor that covers 100% of the sRGB color space (so you'll be seeing all of what your camera captured as you edit your pictures), edit in sRGB, and then export your pictures for viewing to the Internet. sRGB is the cookin' color space of the Internet. If you occasionally get a print made by one of the big commercial services, such as Shutterfly, Amazon Photos (I'm an Amazon Affiliate), Mpix, Snapfish, Printique, etc., you're still doing what you should, because all or almost all of those services calibrate to sRGB whether they tell you so or not.

If you don't shoot in sRGB and save your images as JPEGs, then you probably shoot raw. Raw is good. The advantages of raw are greater headroom, for corrections in post (post-processing, that is, in the image editing program), and better dynamic range. So why do we set our cameras to Adobe RGB if we're shooting raw, given that the raw file isn't tagged with a color space? Simply because it affects some of the camera settings, such as the histogram. The histogram and certain other affected settings will more closely represent the raw file if the camera is set to Adobe RGB.

But if we're printing at home, then we take the corrected raw file and convert it into Adobe RGB (or ProPhotoRGB). Or the editing programs we use do so. And here's why that is:

Courtesy ViewSonic

CMYK, as you probably know, stands for cyan, magenta, yellow, and key. "Key" means black, black being the key plate in a printing press, the plate to which the others are registered. CMYK are the basic colors used for the dots in printing presses as well as the basic colors of ink used in inkjet printers. Printer gamuts vary, but the graphs above makes it clear why we use Adobe RGB in preparation for printing. On the left we see typical printer CMYK colors overlaid on the sRGB color space, with the out-of-gamut colors filled in in black; and on the right, the same thing, but laid over the Adobe RGB color space. As this illustration makes clear, Adobe RGB can include many more of the colors available to the printer.

And that's why, if you're printing at home on a good pigment-ink printer like an Epson P900 or Canon Pro-1000, you want a monitor that's capable of showing 100% (or almost 100%) of the Adobe RGB color space. If you're only shooting for the Internet and perhaps Shutterfly et al., then sRGB is where you want to be, and that's when you can get by with a cheaper IPS monitor as long as it covers sRGB.

Color management made simple
Photography is a chain, and it's best to think of it that way. The standard term is workflow, or "the sequence of steps involved in moving from the beginning to the end of a working process" (Merriam-Webster), and I'm sure there are several words that would do as well—the "chain" means "the whole process from which camera you use to the final presentation of your image." The big advantage of specifying your own chain is that if you know where you want to end up, then you know where you have to begin, and what you need along the way.

If you conceive of a chain as a number of essential links, with each link having from two to hundreds of options, then there are many thousands of possible combinations. But let's take a look at two "chains" that reasonably typify two types of photography enthusiast, whom I'll label "hobbyist" and "maven." (Those aren't standard terms. You could make up your own names, such as amateur vs. advanced amateur.)

Hobbyist

Camera with APS-C or smaller sensor : kit zoom lens or in some cases a fixed** zoom lens : camera set to sRGB color space : shoot JPEGs set on "High" or "Fine" or whatever the top setting on your camera is : 24", 25", or 27" IPS monitor that covers 100% of the sRGB color space : basic free, low cost, or bundled Photo Editing program such as Corel AfterShot, Adobe Photoshop Elements, Photos for Windows 10, or Apple Photos : presentation through private device-to-device sharing or posting on the Web, augmented by occasionally having smallish prints made by one of the various printing services such as Shutterfly, Amazon Photos, Mpix, Snapfish, Printique, Costco (which still does prints online for members), etc., virtually all of which are standardized to work with sRGB files.

Maven

Camera with FF or larger sensor : selection of good-quality interchangable lenses : camera set to AdobeRGB color space : shoot raw : 27" or 32" IPS monitor that covers all or almost all of the AdobeRGB color space : at-home monitor calibration using a colorimeter such as the DataColor SpyderX : sophisticated purchased or subscription photo editing software that incorporates a raw converter, such as Adobe Lightroom, Phase One Capture One, DxO PhotoLab (which as of v.5 supports Fuji X-Trans files), or Corel PaintShop Pro, working in 16 bits : pigment-ink Canon or Epson home printer, commonly the Epson P900 or Canon Pro-1000 or higher : largish prints on fine papers such as Canson Platine or Epson Exhibition Fiber : stored in an archival clamshell box or museum solander case.

A simple way to control color is to settle on sRGB as your color space and JPEGs as your file type. Those are both camera settings: you choose them in the camera menu. It used to be that these choices sort of horrified the maven, who considered them inadequate. And they were, once upon a time. But that's dated information now. The fact is that JPEGs are very good with today's high-resolution cameras, and offer a reasonable amount of correction and recovery, and yield nice prints. If you need more, you'll know soon enough.

So what the heck is P3?
If you're shopping for monitors, one thing you'll come across is that some monitors don't specify the percentage of Adobe RGB they cover. Instead, they'll give the percentage of coverage for P3. What is P3?

Go back to the illustration at the top of the page. If you look at the P3 triangle, you'll see that it's roughly the size of the Adobe RGB triangle, but offset somewhat. P3 has its origins in DCI-P3, a color standard devised by Digital Cinema Initiatives, yet another group of experts like the CIE or the JPEG (Joint Photographic Experts Group, which created all the various JPEG standards), this one working for all the major movie studios. DCI-P3 is a standard for digital movies intended to be shown in darkened theaters. 

So then shouldn't P3 be called DCI-P3? Not so fast; it isn't, exactly. Back in the top illustration again, see those little dots labeled "~6300 white point" and "D65 white point"? The DCI-P3 color space specifies a non-standard, slightly greenish white point. Why? To take into account the characteristics of typical xenon-arc digital movie projectors!

Starting with the iPhone 7, Apple allowed for P3 tagging in images and videos, because, you know, video has been infiltrating and effing-up our previously cozy little still-photography universe for some time now. (Ahem. Editorializing, Mike?) But it didn't want a greenish white point. So it created "Display P3," which is DCI-P3 but with a standard 6500K (K in this instance standing for "Kelvin," not "Key") white point. "P3" is short for Display P3. In 2017, Instagram followed Apple's lead and now makes accommodation for P3 workflows.

So a monitor that specifies P3 coverage and not Adobe RGB is just a manufacturer acknowledging that the monitor is more likely to be used for video than for still photography. If you want to know how much of Adobe RGB it covers, it might be easy to find out, or it might not be.

End of P3 digression!

In summary
So if you are a phone shooter who wants to get more into photography, or a color photographer who has a good camera but is stumbling around in the dark when it comes to color management (that's been all of us at one point or another, let's not lie), the trick is to start from the final disposition you intend for your pictures and then work backwards from there. If you mainly look at your pictures on a monitor, send them in emails or texts to friends, and only occasionally have a print made by an outside service bureau (as they used to be called and might still be for all I know), then sRGB is for you. Set your camera on sRGB and shoot JPEGs, choose an IPS computer monitor that covers 100% of sRGB, and save your edited pictures in sRGB, and you are the master of all you survey. I would still recommend calibrating your monitor regularly (meaning, every two to six months), using something like the SpyderX. You might think this is excessive and extravagant for your modest mid-range camera and a modest workflow, but it isn't—it's what separates the adults from the juveniles***. The whole Internet is standardized to sRGB, and it's not only how they see you that is affected. How you see them is affected as well! Wouldn't you rather see pictures as professional content providers intend them to be seen? I should think that if you like photographs, you would. A decent-to-excellent monitor without regular calibration is like Bugs Bunny without a carrot. That's why the best monitors come with calibration hardware, in some cases built in.

If you want to print your own pictures at home, on the other hand, then set your camera to Adobe RGB, shoot raw, and have fun with your super-powerful editing program, your beautiful if high-maintenance home pigment printer, and especially, all those awesomely gorgeous papers we can buy now! (But if you can do all that, this particular article has been too basic for you.)

And if you really want color management made VERY simple, as the title of this post promises? Why, then, do what I do—shoot with a monochrome sensor and work exclusively in black-and-white!****

Mike

*Well, the x-y coordinates of it, anyway—CIE 1931 is actually a three-dimensional plot, the Z dimension being luminance. For every point on Z, there is a different and unique x-y.

**A fixed lens is one that is permanently attached to the camera, whether it is a zoom (variable focal length / angle of view), such as the excellent Panasonic LX-100 II, or prime (single focal length / angle of view), such as the excellent Ricoh GRIIIx.

***Formerly "the men from the boys," but no longer gender-biased.

****You laugh, but that may be the only way color management can really be made truly simple. As I said last week, "Color management is a strange subject—you can get by with almost any amount of sloppiness if you're a slacker, but if you want real precision, you can get very far into the weeds with it."

Featured Comments from:

ADDENDUM: As I tried to reaffirm at the end of this piece, color management is actually not simple. But I disagree in substance with commenter Patrick Dodds, who writes, "Somewhere in all of this, the fun starts to dissipate." My experience in photography over many years is that you just do what you have to do in order to do the work you want to do. Cartier-Bresson said that it took him three days to master the Leica. When digital matured, Peter Turnley bought two DSLRs and hired an expert to help him master them; they put in three long days of intense work until Peter knew enough, and then he resumed his photography, picking up where he left off with film. Mark Klett managed to master Polaroid Type 55 Positive/Negative film, a touchy and cantankerous material that offered limited control, making beautiful and distinctive work with it (actually, come to think, he was the only one I know of who did). Richard Misrach  felt he had no choice but to tame Cibachrome by mastering masking technique. It really doesn't matter where the difficulty arises; you just have to master your materials and methods to the degree you feel you need to. The corollary is that you don't have to master what you don't need: learning a great potpourri of techniques you'll never use is just a distraction, a different pursuit than the pursuit of pictures.

Again and again in my life, meeting great and good photographers, I found that most were deep masters of the specifics of their chosen techniques and surprisingly ignorant of others. That extended even to pros—I've written several times (because it amused me) about a studio pro I worked for who had $150,000 worth of pack-and-head strobes and other sophisticated lighting equipment in his studio and didn't know bupkus about on-camera thyristor flash units that mount to the hot shoe—the items most people call "a flash." He didn't use them. He knew nothing about them. He knew what he needed to know.

Almost no matter what "chain" you use, you will encounter specific questions and specific difficulties. You just need to keep gnawing at them until you either understand, or have to give up, or find a workaround. Technique is part of photography. We persist: we keep after it until we get it. Mastery is mandatory. Simple or involved, up-to-the-minute or antiquarian, narrow or broad, prestigious or "low-fi," highly technical or anti-technique—it doesn't really matter. All that matters is the work. Figure out where you want to end up, and then keep learning until you know how to get there. Just my suggestion.

Featured Comments:

Ernest Zarate: "Re '…the trick is start from the final disposition you intend (for your pictures) and work backwards.' In my 67 years, I have found that this approach works in many situations. Have used it for decades, and found very satisfying results. I stumbled upon it when I noticed a lot of people worked the other way: they’d get something and then try like hell to figure how to get it to do what they wanted. A very frustrating experience. Good article, Michael, with a terrific way of making a lot of this accessible."

Phil: "Thanks for this, Mike. It fills in several gaps in my knowledge about colour spaces, etc. And now I'm convinced, I really should get a calibrator for my monitor."

Mike replies: You really should. There's a reason many of the best monitors come with calibration hardware, or, in the case of the upper-range EIZOs, have it built in. The trouble is that there's not a lot of positive reward; it merely prevents a negative penalty. So there's not a lot of reinforcement for what feels to most like an excessive expense.

Monitors really run the gamut, no pun intended. Bad ones are remarkably horrible (well, for photography anyway), and good ones can be impressively wonderful. I'm working to write an article about how to buy an inexpensive monitor, but, after composing a list of minimum requirements, I've struggled to find a specific model that encompasses them all. Each one seems to have one little area where they skimp to an unacceptable degree on something—color space, bit depth, resolution, something. Different models skimp in different ways, but none of them quite come all the way up to my chosen minimum standards. Then I'll find one—only to discover that it isn't exactly cheap! I've been calling manufacturers and reading spec sheets till I'm bleary-eyed. It's really hard.

Niels: "Thanks! Now I don't feel as bad shooting JPEG only. I always get shamed if I mention that on an online forum. I didn't see the benefit of shooting RAW, only storage cost and wasted time in front of the monitor, so I stopped a few years ago."

Mike replies: I believe Ken Rockwell shoots JPEG-only as well. I've shot raw since Bruce Fraser's book came out many years ago, and still do, but I think JPEG in most camera is a much better option now than it was then.

David Haynes: "Many comments on this post mention ProPhotoRGB, which is the largest color space available in Photoshop and most other photo editing programs. I fit best in the 'Maven' category and shoot raw, use DxO PhotoLab to develop the raw files (exporting to ProPhotoRGB 16 bit), use ProPhotoRGB while editing, then convert to AdobeRGB for printing or sRGB for online uses. Photoshop is my primary editing tool, but my workflow includes quite a few other programs or third-party filters (Escape Motions, Topaz Labs, and so forth). I have found that using ProPhotoRGB while editing allows the tools to output the widest range of color, even though some may be 'out of gamut' for both the screen and printer. Converting to AdobeRGB for printing, or sRGB for the web, takes care of that. Perhaps I am going overboard and not really gaining anything by using ProPhotoRGB. However, the workflow works for me, and that is the bottom line."

Moose (partial comment): "Color management is fairly easy, if you don't care about absolute accuracy. Were I a catalog photographer, this would be crucial knowledge and skill. My employers would not want returns; 'Not the color in the catalog.' An argument may be made for photographing art for reproduction. But, do I want to have the reproduction in a book to look like the original in the quite dim, oddly balanced lighting in many museums these days? Or perhaps in the lighting in which, for which it was originally painted? In the bright lighting museums used to use, to make the art pop. Same problem with color portraiture. Hold up print next to subject; but our skin colors vary, with age, time of day, health, and so on, and is it in the light in which the photo was taken? Who can know exactly what color that dahlia, that house, that goldfinch, those fall leaves, that water, actually was? The answer is no one. Then (sigh), if you follow recent developments in human vision, it becomes clear that we see color in a very different way than do cameras. It is far from the neat, three color model we tend to imagine.

"It seems valid to me to adjust the photo, including color balance, saturation, etc. to reproduce what I saw in my mind's eye, even as I knew the camera would not capture than, but would capture the raw material for creating something close to it. So, sure, a reasonably well calibrated monitor, and decent printer profiles, etc. are useful, but not worth obsessing about."

Mike replies: That's very true. But if your "chain" of equipment, materials, and methods are giving you fits, and actively frustrating you, such that you're not able to "adjust the photo, including color balance, saturation, etc. to reproduce what you saw in your mind's eye," then rudimentary color management might be the thing that makes things easier. All a matter of balance, though, I agree.

'In a Printer Mindset, the Screen is an Intermediate Tool'

Christer Almqvist wrote: "I plowed thru my computer files and found this: Ctein on digital printing:

Optimizing for the screen and optimizing for the print are two very different processes. The color spaces of a slide and of a print are quite different. What you see on the screen is not what you will see on your print, even using soft proofing. You need to process your files in a way that doesn’t always look good on screen but will be optimal in the print. In a printer mindset, the screen is an intermediate tool. Never get invested in what you see on the screen. I recommend you simply pull up an image you like on your screen, straight out of camera, and make basic edits and corrections. Just get the tone and color roughly correct; don’t try make it look perfect on screen. Print that photograph in A4/letter and let it lie a little. When you come back to it, note what you don’t like about it. Is the contrast wrong? Too dark? Too light? Does it need dodging or burning-in? Write notes on the print; use it as a learning tool. Go back to the computer and correct what doesn’t feel right on the print. Then print again, let it lie and re-evaluate it. After you’ve printed three or four of these, the picture won’t look good on screen but the print should be much better than the first version. As I said, with time and experience, you will be able to make perfect adjustments in just one or two iterations.

Mike adds: It's good to remind ourselves of this in the discussion about monitors and calibration. I'd venture to say that there comes a time in every printing process that you have to let go of any by-the-numbers approach that is only meant to get you close, and look at (and "feel into," as my ex-gf would say) the picture in front of you, and then give it what your best judgement says it needs—regardless of what the numbers say. I have a print I love of the "green light" before a thunderstorm, and if I "correct" it according to calibrated neutrality, it robs it of any sense of that greenish light. I know the green in the print is technically overdone, but in that particular image it captures the magical and elusive feel of that particular light very well. It looks and feels like the way I experience that light.

I think this happens to figurative artists too. They paint according to the reality of what they are looking at, or whatever their visual source is, but at some point they have to let go of the real world, or the pretext, and start looking at the painting and letting their sense of it dictate how they proceed. I know I personally use my well-developed sense of the real light in real scenes as a strong guide of where to take the print, but there often comes that time when I need to let go of my memory of the reality of the scene and look carefully and well at the print, take it as a thing in itself, and give it what I think it needs, or heighten the effect that I want to emphasize. That might entail a departure from the strict reality of the light or a literalistic description of a scene.

Mike

P.S. Just as an aside: Don't you wish Ctein would write a textbook on digital printing? I do. He demurred years ago because the hard- and software was too volatile and the products that would have to be discussed got out of date too quickly. But it seems like things have settled down sufficiently that perhaps a book might work. One solution to the problem of evolving products could be to get Epson or Canon to subsidize the book, which I visualize as being about the size of Canon's EF Lens Work III. Of course then the examples would be limited to that company's own products—but the upside of that is that then it could be up to the company to keep it updated in successive printings. Are you listening, Epson? (Ctein uses Epson printers, inks, and papers, so that would be the natural pairing.)

Featured Comments:

Keith B.: "There is no further elaboration of digital printing needed beyond what's in the Ctein quote. (Ctein was right that the world of software and hardware is too fugitive to make a book practical.) The calibrated monitor gets you closer than a junk monitor, but the operator almost always has to tweak and adjust to get the print to look the way he or she wants."

Rob de Loe: "I would say, 'Yes, but....' I think Ctein's advice is solid, but it's easy to go off the rails because of errors in one's printing process. One wrong setting in the journey to clicking the 'print' button can send you back to making all kinds of unneeded or inappropriate corrections to what you're seeing on the monitor. A case in point is a lot of fiddling to 'correct' what I saw in the print, when most of what I saw in the print was due to me forgetting to apply the right ICC for that paper. My friendly amendment to Ctein's advice is to add, 'Assuming that you're sure the print is set up properly....'"

Geoff Wittig: "I have never made a darkroom print, never personally developed a roll of film. My first printing experience involved using Hewlett-Packard's first generation slide scanner and Epson's first serious pigment printer, the 2000P, which had truly ghastly metamerism issues. Yet I am very fond of Ctein's book Post Exposure, which details his incredible darkroom chops and his philosophical approach to printing. His logical, methodical approach is a revelation. I would consider sacrificing a limb for the digital printing equivalent."

Monochrome Print Sale Coming Up!

I'm pleased (very) to relate that the upcoming Monochrome Sensor Print Sale is now hard-scheduled. It will commence on November 21st and last for four days only.

If you're unfamiliar with our sales, what we do is to prepare the picture(s) for printing so we know for sure what we have, then open a brief window for pre-orders. After the window closes and all the orders are in, we can make the prints in one or two runs, saving greatly on the time, hassle, and hence the cost of the old-fashioned "gallery model" of sales. It's a win-win: customers get a fine custom print more inexpensively than a bricks-'n'-mortar gallery could sell it for, but the photographer and printer both get paid well too. We've sold thousands of prints over the years following this model, with a great many happy customers. I know because people send me pictures of the prints framed and hung on their walls! One particular joy is all the people, and couples, who have bought original art for the very first time in one of our sales. There have been many of them, too, over the years.

The downside is that you have to order during the order window to get a print at this extraordinarily low price. Once it closes, that's it—lost your chance.

More information to come on Friday. All the information, plus instructions on how to order, will be repeated in the main announcement on Monday the 21st of this month. That's the day you'll be able to see the final selection of pictures. The sale will then close at 11:59 p.m., Pacific Standard Time, on "Black Friday."

Please come back on Monday to see the images and read more about them. The full-range B&W prints are gorgeous. To say I'm extremely pleased with them, and with the potential of the converted monochrome sensor, is honestly an understatement.

Mike

Foxy Vixen Booty Call (OT)

I was out in the pool table shed yesterday around nightfall, knocking balls into the pockets, when I heard the most ungodly sound—a wild, haunting cry like something out of a horror movie; something between a shriek and a yowl. It seemed to come from close by. Butters, my nine-year-old dog, who was out in the pool shed with me, became agitated. I heard other dogs barking at the noise from much farther away. Butters dropped his ball and began whining and whimpering excitedly, racing between the door and the window. Again and again it sounded. I listened intently, trying to discern what it was. It seemed to be coming from somewhere down the road south of the house.

The first thing that occurs to me in such a situation is, do I need to help? But I quickly realized the sound was not human. Could it be a dying animal? Something run over by a car? Possibly. It was a mournful sound that seemed to trail off in a sort of moan; it seemed to imply that some sort of violence was occurring. I decided to get Butters inside—I have a slight fear of wild coyotes in the woods at night, as they are known to occasionally prey on domestic dogs. As we went through the back door I found myself shuddering at yet another of these cries and thinking, whatever the heck that is, I am not going to investigate. It's out there, and we'll just stay safely in here.

Then it struck me what it could be. And I thought: I am going out to investigate! Maybe I'll get a chance to see it? So I got my coat and boots on and grabbed a powerful flashlight. Leaving the dog behind, I headed off between my outbuildings out to the road. The scream sounded again, very close.

The temperature was just barely above freezing. It had been raining most of the day, and everything outdoors was wet. It was all but totally dark—there was just enough light left to discern that the sky was still overcast. The Summer people have all departed, so there were no cheerful porch lights or window lights anywhere—the houses were just hulking masses of blacker black against the fast-falling darkness. And the trees are all leafless now.

I stood listening in the cold, wet darkness. Nothing. Did it know I was there? Stepping gently and softly, I walked slowly down the road, barely able to see, keeping the light off so my night vision would improve. I reached the bridge over the creek, looking back into the gloom of the creekbed as it receded up the hillside, and paused again to listen.

On the bridge I was above the creek, but the creek comes down a gully or ravine, and, especially on the south side, opposite my land, the bank juts sharply upward and looms over the road. The big trees that cover it tower far above that.

The howl sounded again, loud, and seemingly right across from where I stood! 

I made my best guess, pointed the flashlight, and switched it on. It illuminated, dimly, the craggy line of the top of the steep bank, and cast a circle of light on the bank and the lower parts of the trees nearest me—right in the middle of which, unmistakably, were two animal eyes staring back at me, shining brilliantly with reflected light!

I looked for a moment and turned the light off, so as not to ruin my night vision, and the animal howled again, softer than before. Switching the light back on, I saw the two bright eyes watch me for a few seconds then turn away. As the animal got up and began to walk, she came out from behind the stump that had been obscuring most of her body and I could see her entire profile. Although she and everything else looked faint and greyish in the weak light, I saw her entire body from nose to the extravagant tail, called a brush. A red fox.

That's what I had realized it might be, back at the house. Conditions here this year have been kind to foxes—I've seen more of them than any other year I've lived here. And foxes scream—that's a usual term for the noise I had been hearing. The male, called the tod, or reynard, or dog fox, will scream to warn other males off his territory, but the ones who mostly scream are the females, to signify to nearby males that they are there and ready to mate. It's actually a little early for that yet, so maybe the one I saw was a male staking his claim to his turf; who knows?

So it's no wonder Butters got worked up at the sound of the screams—foxes are distantly related to dogs, fellow members of the canidae family. 

She—or he, as the case may be—disappeared into the woods and didn't scream again. The next time we hear that scary scream from the woods in the night, I will know exactly what it is, and I'll know not to worry—it doesn't mean some sort of horrible violence is has occurred in the night. It's the foxes, sending messages only other foxes can properly decode.

Mike

Featured Comments:

Mark Sampson: "When I lived in Alexandria, Virginia, red foxes were common in the neighborhood, and sometimes in the evening, or at night, they would scream like that. My wife said 'like someone was murdering a baby.' It was a quiet, if crowded, neighborhood of town houses...one evening I heard a fox's scream just before taking the dog out. As we went by the next row of buildings, I saw two policemen walking from their car. I asked 'what's up?' and one said 'we had a call for someone screaming.' I said 'I've just heard a fox.' And one cop said 'Yeah, that's what we thought, but we have to check it out, have a good evening,' and we went on our respective ways. There are stories about our dog getting loose and chasing the fox, but those are for another time...."

Mike Ferron: "Way back when there was a blood-curdling, non-human scream from the woods behind the house one night. It sounded otherworldly and yes it was disturbing. Just might have been a 🦊...."

Dave Millier: "I live in London. There are foxes everywhere. If you drive around the neighbourhood, you will see 20 in 10 minutes. A family lives next door to me. The cubs are hilarious; I can often watch them from my bedroom window, rolling around and play fighting. Not so amusing when one of them broke into our Eglu and ate the chickens. And they do make an unearthly horror-movie wailing and screaming that sounds like murder being done. They are not closely related to dogs (which come from wolf stock); more closely related to raccoons. There is a fox selective breeding experiment where foxes developed dog-like appearance and behaviour within a few generations. It is fascinating in itself but when I checked the details for this comment, it appears things may not be as they seem. Some light reading."

Mike replies: Or not so light; but thanks for that. The Russian Farm-Fox Experiment was featured in the NOVA documentary "Dogs Decoded," which I loved and recommend to anyone who will listen. (It's getting hard to find.) It was nice to catch up with that a little.

Metrics

I just did some delving into the site stats for all of our history since 2007. TOP exceeded 30,000 pageviews 49 times; but the post I've always named as being our all-time record, "Sony vs. Nikon vs. Canon," from Wednesday, 17 December 2008, which attracted 54,575 pageviews, is actually only in 7th place all-time. The runner-up post by the actual numbers, which attracted 86,517 pageviews, was "Are UHS-II Cards Worth It?" published on Friday, 16 January 2015. The all-time draw unfortunately concerned a scandal: "The Sad Fall from Grace of Nicholas Nixon" drew 103,723 pageviews on the day of publication, Thursday, 05 April 2018, and a whopping 210,993 views the following day. At least I assume that must have been the attraction; the next day's post was about a tree that fell in my backyard, which I can't see being of interest to 210k people even though the picture was kinda nifty. Often, with a really heavily looked-at post ["popular" didn't seem quite the right word here], especially one for which the traffic is driven by referrals, the biggest traffic happens the day after.

The only way we could have gotten such an overwhelming number of visits on one day is for one or more much larger sites to link to our post, but I wasn't aware of what was happening at the time. Anyway, it's nice to know what the all-time record was, although I could wish that our most-viewed post was about something more...positive. I'm surprised it came so late in the arc of TOP's lifetime.

Yesterday's count was 13,566 pageviews. That's about two-thirds of the average daily traffic TOP got during the "glory years" of roughly 2011–2015, but I'm happy with it. [UPDATE: I forgot that there are also 9,275 people signed up to receive the feed, although it's more difficult to know how many of those read any particular post. I suppose a lot of people look at the title and don't read it? Like any newspaper.]

Another Nixon
And speaking of Nick Nixon, in looking into his current status I came across a recent annual installment of his series "The Brown Sisters"—as you no doubt know, Nick took large-format portraits of his wife and her three sisters annually beginning in 1975. He did one in 1974, but it was in 35mm and he threw it away because he didn't like it as a picture. Well, here's the one from 2020, the first year of the pandemic, taken "socially distanced":

Everybody's had to adapt.

I also ran across the following, which I thought was interesting, in a LensCulture interview, a description of how he became a photographer:

When I was in college, I had a bunch of jobs, and one of them was in a bookstore—a big, fancy art bookstore. In my spare time, I started to look at photography books and art books. I saw that Ann Arbor offered a summer course in photography for people who weren’t in the art school. Because I had seen Cartier-Bresson and I had looked at some of the books, I thought, “Oh, wow. I should do that.”

I signed up, and on the first day, that was it. The first day, I thought, “This is what I’m going to do.” All of a sudden I wasn’t a coach anymore—I was a player. Even if I was going to be a bad player, I’m a player. The future was uncertain, but it was instinctual. I thought, “I don’t care, I want to do this. I love it.” I was just smitten. I went down to the local drugstore, which was also the camera store. They had a Leica M3 in the window, a used one. I loved Cartier-Bresson already, but I didn’t know anything about him. I didn’t know this was his camera. I saw that thing and I thought, “Boy, that looks like a way to make pictures.” I went right in and I put $270 out of $300 I had in the world right down on the counter.

Whether he knows it or not, or accepts it or not, he will never outrun his disgrace, and the meaning of his life's work will forever be touched with it. A shame.

Mike

Open Mike: The Proof Prints Arrived, and...

"Car Coming" at 15x20 inches, first proof from Ctein

The proof prints for the monochrome print offer arrived yesterday evening, and...

It was a momentous life event for me, no fooling. I took a short look at the big prints and I knew it. "This is the way I'm going to work for the rest of my life."

I had been apprehensive about seeing the prints, because I've been enjoying shooting with the monochrome Sigma camera* so much that I had some trepidation about how the prints might look. If they revealed flaws or shortcomings in the equipment—to my very personal definition, mind you—it wouldn't necessarily have been the end of everything, but it would have thrown cold water over my happiness about the shooting I've been doing since late August. And my feelings about the Sigma fp(m) and its workflow.

Thankfully the opposite happened. The prints are beautiful. I like them better than I thought I would. They're very much like 16x20-inch prints from 4x5-inch negatives—not exactly the same, because the two media are very different, but, remarkably, not very far off, either. I love 'em!

Ctein and I have a little tweaking left to do before they're perfectamundo, but they're very close, close enough for me to know what I need to know. And he gets there, because that is what he does. (Before we're through, I'll explain the process of working with a custom digital print maker.)

A big moment in my life, then, yesterday evening, when I opened the package from California. I'm 65, so the way I figure it, I get to live between zero and 40 more years (the oldest human in the U.S. just turned 115, but 95% of super-centenarians are women; for men, by and large, the jig is up by the age of 105. No, I don't guess I'll live that long—it's the outer edge of the range of possibility). More realistically, my life expectancy is 18.1 years, according to the Social Security Administration, who have some data on the subject. Give or take five years, say, for good or bad luck. Well, for whatever portion of that time I remain vigorous and sentient enough to be photographically active, I've found the way I want to be working.

And I'll tell you what: I'm going to be grateful for it every single day. No kidding. Ansel Adams said, in The Negative, 1981, "I eagerly await new concepts and processes. I believe that the electronic image will be the next major advance. Such systems will have their own inherent and inescapable structural characteristics, and the artist and functional practitioner will again strive to comprehend and control them." I remember reading those very sentences when they were newly published back in '81. (The Negative was inspirational for me, as it was for so many others.) Now I live in the future. Now I live in that future. I get to carry around a handheld "4x5" that yields gorgeous, gloriously detailed, exceptionally sharp, tonally lovely prints, and I don't have to develop the film(!). That part tickles me—if you only knew how much film I have developed by hand in my life, and how much time I spent doing it.... And I get to put my virtual large-format camera on a tripod only when I feel like it. Science fiction, plus a little daydreaming thrown in, from 1981.

So yesterday was a red-letter day in my life. No joke, I'm being totally sincere. Stay tuned to TOP for the details about this print sale.

Mike

*For those who haven't been following along, last August, Jason M. loaned me his Sigma fp rig converted to B&W-only by Monochrome Imaging Services in Vancouver, and I subsequently bought my own. I've been getting to know it ever since. I also received a Leica Monochrom on loan from Chris H., and yes, we will be doing a comparo...I've been reluctant to, only because I can't afford a Monochrom and, if the Monochrom is better, I kinda don't want to know it! But we will investigate sooner or later, don't worry, for those of you who are more interested in the Leica solution.

Featured Comments:

Jim Roberts: "Very happy for you Mike. As one who has enjoyed your writing for many years, here’s to the next forty!"

Greg: "A while back I had two 16x20 prints exhibited side by side: one made from a 4x5 negative on fiber based paper, and the other made with my Nikon D850 and printed with an Epson 7800 printer on high quality paper. Not one person was 100% sure which was which including a handful of photographers."

Jim: "I completely understand your excitement and satisfaction of seeing your prints, Mike. For years, I made black-and-white photographs using a Calumet C-1 8x10" and a 300mm Schneider Krueznach lens on Plus-X 4147. My version of OCOL, but for many years. Anyway, I had only seen them as contact prints. In 2004 I moved to Alexandria, Virginia and decided to have a negative scanned and a large print made. I had a 30x40" print made; when I first saw it, I got a lump in my throat as big as a goose egg! It was so astounding I could hardly wait to share with everyone I knew! I hope you will continue to share your excitement and enthusiasm over this new chapter."

D'Oh! (Two Little Extra Notes)

Just two little extra notes to the foregoing about monitors...I feel rather like a dope, but I'm going to mention it, just in case anyone out there doesn't know it already. The downward-facing ports on the back of my NEC monitor were really hard to see and even harder to get at with the monitor set up in its usual position. Which bothered me. Until I realized, while watching a video tonight, that the monitor turns to a portrait orientation. Once turned, the ports are all on the side, and become easy to see and easy to access.

Ahem. Now you know, in case you didn't.

And secondly, if you are interested in the Datacolor SpyderX Pro Colorimeter so you too can experience the joys of a calibrated monitor, it's on sale at Amazon for $40 off. At B&H too. I assume by "Holiday Savings," they mean Thanksgiving, Homer said sternly!

Homer Mike