I have been thinking a lot lately about the photographic art and craft that comes with it. Finally, this week I sat down to write my thoughts on paper, which I am now publishing here. I have also published a series of stories on my Instagram, make sure to give me a follow if you haven’t yet.

40x32 inches chromogenic photographic print on Fuji Flex

Let’s start with a cliche thought that – printing your own work really changes your perspective and improves the quality of your work almost exponentially.

Learning and trying various printing processes is equally important, same as experimenting with different light when working on a photograph.

Photographing with the final print in mind is an essential part of the whole process. Ignoring this significantly decreases one’s chances of creating great work.

Great advice from Tyler Shields – If someone paid you a million dollars for you photograph, is there anything you would change/improve in it? If the answer is yes, then go back and fix/reshoot it.

Print your own work, print it large. If you can’t afford to print the entire portfolio, pick just one of your best photos and print that one. Look at it for a week, live with it. If there is anything you want to change about it, then go back and redo it. If you can live with this print for a week, then someone will be able to live with it for 20 years.

Great advice from Rodney Lough Jr – Look at the scene and ask yourself - would you spend $500 of your own money to make this photograph? If the answer is no then it’s probably not worth it.

Frankly, there is just a handful of my own photographs that made it through that filter, others I wanted to scrape after a couple of weeks. A realization like this never occurs when you view your work only on a screen.

My website is a subject of constant refinement, some old work that no longer reflects my style and my personality may get deleted and replaced with the new one. It constantly goes through the aforementioned filter as I continue to print my work. At the end of this process, only the best work will stay on my website – the one that survived for much longer than a week on my own wall!

There is a big difference between making a photograph and taking a photograph.

Taking a photograph is like throwing a dice each time, sometimes you get lucky, but more often you don’t. Thus, the photographs are lifeless like a postcard. One may even develop a personal style and get the following, and still produce the same “styled” postcards. It is deceiving and it’s easy to get lost in this process.

Making a photograph is a constant process of learning, self-reflection, improvement, and refinement, sometimes over a long period of time. But in the end – your soul reflects in that photograph. People who see such work tend to feel and relate to it on a deeper level.

It is exponentially more meaningful to make one great photograph or a series in five years than take hundreds of pictures a year.

There is a fundamental difference between a photograph and a print.

A photograph is made in a darkroom using exposure, chemistry, and light-sensitive paper, even if made on a LightJet from a digital source, thus the image is “embedded” into the fabric of the paper. Nothing comes close to that in terms of feel and value.

Inspecting photographs made in a darkroom on a LightJet machine and Fuji Flex material.

A print is the result of “painting” on the surface of the paper (like an inkjet). Nothing wrong with that, it looks great, but it cannot be regarded as a photograph as a final product.

Pigment print made on Canson Platine Fibre Rag archival paper.

It is also quite difficult to justify a notion of a limited edition of a print due to the fundamental availability of the process. A photograph, however, is limited by definition.

Finding a great, master printmaker who is also a perfectionist in their craft is rare and is almost like finding a life partner, but totally worth the effort at the end unless you do it yourself.

In order to find a great printmaker, one must first understand the whole process themselves to the finest bits or be willing to learn. There is no place for arrogance here, only pure curiosity.

I will continue posting a series of thoughts or small essays like this in the future as I continue exploring the art of photography.