Darkroom Days: 10+ prints in less than 7 hours

I am in the midst of putting together my first ever physical print portfolio and the "first draft" is just about finished. As with any presentation, ones work has to be carefully (and stringently) filtered down to their absolute strongest materials that best apply to the context in which they will be used. A portfolio is a presentation of who you are as a creative and the work you aspire to produce. The images included cannot simply be good pictures, they have to represent the realm you are attempting to work within. A collection of beautiful landscape images could be great but might not be the best fit for when applying product photography job. The images have to be sequenced in a flowing, logical manner and depict content that directly corresponds to its intended audience or viewer.

I am building this portfolio for potential editorial commercial & event clients, so the photos selected (and printed, in this case) have to not only be technically superb but also sell my abilities as a commercial photographer and demonstrate how the techniques deployed throughout previous assignments can translate to whatever scenario envisioned by the potential client that is reviewing the portfolio. A pretty tall order for any major edit, personal or otherwise, especially when put together in a week's time.

Rita Moreno, July 2014

As I started to assemble small sections and ideas it dawned on me that I need a collection in this portfolio of strictly personal work. The work that gets me out of bed every morning and not the commercial work, or lack thereof, that keeps me up all night. The work that's made simply because I'm driven to do so. For me, that work is found on the streets of nearly any city while roaming around with a simple 35mm rangefinder camera and Tri-X B&W film.

Daily Carry, regardless of where I'm going

I joked last week that I am completely obsessed with taking pictures no one will ever purchase on a medium that no one will ever publish. That was right before the Veterans Day Concert for Valor on the National Mall. Those photos will be ready sometime soon, well after anyone has any interest in seeing them but that's just the point of personal work. Photographing something because you simply can't imagine yourself not doing it. No deadlines and no expectations other than my own, coupled with the flexibility to experiment with my own vision and interpretations. It's like a proving ground for new techniques, new compositional experiments, new concepts and it all seems so very selfish, really, when you think about it. Just doing something because you yourself are driven to do it and the only real benefactor. Interesting concepts.

So, the images that made up the heart of my portfolio were identified, culled, touched up, sequenced and sent to the printer. 40 of the 48 images that will make up my first portfolio were of a digital origin, most likely taken on an assignment of some kind, so printing from digital archives did not present much of a problem. But the B&W film stuff? Different story altogether.

My personal work, which involves shooting, developing & scanning 35mm Tri-X film at home and sharing the results via the web has created a pretty efficient hybrid workflow that involves a V500 scanner, Kodak HC110 developer and fleeting moments of free time. The V500 provides relatively adequate scans of my 35mm negs for use on the web but would not be able to produce files large enough for 8.5x11 portfolio prints. So what's an entrepreneurial hipster photographer to do??

A trip to the darkroom! I gave myself the insane goal of producing 10 prints (from scratch) within a single 7 hour session. Oh, and it was only my second time printing in the darkroom. An INSANE endeavor for sure, but people like to hear of that sort of drive and motivation in a person, right? Maybe.

In any event, it was a fantastic experience and I think I kind of pulled it off. I did learn just how difficult my recent photographic tendencies are to print though. Most of my B&W film work from the past year involves harsh, contrasty, heavily backlit scenes that lead to my negatives being pretty cooked straight out of camera. Those take a while (and quite a bit of paper) to work through.

Another lesson? These are some of my favorite photos in my portfolio and should be printed much more frequently. If only for continued education, posterity and experimentation. Final lesson: keep relatively logical deadlines! YIKES!