Summer. Hot sun, break from school and family vacations. What a wonderful time of the year!!

For photographers it is a chance to pull out some gear, overpack and try to sneak some photography into that family vacation. I should know, I have been doing it for over twenty years and have learned a few things along the way.

When you have a dedicated photography vacation, you can take everything you like with the only limitation being the weight you can carry. On a family vacation you need to find a balance. And this is where my years of experience comes in.

When I was young...
I would carry a DSLR with the 14-24mm, 24-70mm and the 70-200mm Nikon lenses. These pieces of glass were very expensive and I was proud of them and the quality of images they would take. Lightroom changed that...let me explain how.

Upon returning from a trip a friend taught me that Lightroom can organize your photos based on lens used. When I did this I found that 80% of my images were shot on 24-70mm with another 15% on the 14-24mm leaving a 5% in my 70-200mm range. So much weight for so little use!!! But what if I missed that shot because I did not have the right lens?!? This would be catastrophic!

As I grew older...
I began to understand that I am not a professional photographer. No one is paying me for that shot that I missed. So if I miss a shot, no one will know and I began to care much less. I also began to feel the weight of all those lenses on my shoulders and back. Yes I love the photos I captured over the years, but a good photographer changes the way they shoot based on their years. 

So I went to prime lenses and then I went to the Leica system. The goal was smaller, lighter but good quality glass and cameras. Plenty out there, I chose Leica due to a childhood dream but Fuji can do just as well. 

So now I sit in my office planning yet another trip. This one is just as unique as all the others. We need to travel light (that seems to be a constant), as we will be taking trains, cars and a ship. The goal is Paris, then to the South of France only to take a riverboat up to the middle country, followed by a train back to Paris. So I will go with a Sling camera bag, a 120 Film Camera and probably just my Leica Digital camera. I might through in a Leica film camera as well depending how everything feels.
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   2.  I put the film in a ziplock bag inside the Domke file bag. This makes it easy for TSA to pull them out and inspect them. 
  3.  Sometimes when you arrive at your destination there is another x-ray machine in place of customs inspection. I have seen this in Colombia, Argentina and Peru. Might be a Latin America thing. Point is that I keep this bag with me and will hand carry it around these x-ray machines. When asked I pull out the ziplock and show the film. Never been an issue so far.

The point is the keep the film with you, not in checked baggage, keep it in a Domke film bag and ask for a hand check.  In many countries this is not allowed. Don't fight it, don't lose your cool.  Just pass it through in the Domke bag and hope for the best. I have not had an issue with this.

In short, I have had more photographs ruined because of bad backing paper than I ever have due to X-ray following the above process. 

The Gear...
Key question...no I won't take a tripod. This trip has too many movements to justify carrying it. So I will just take my Rolleiflex 2.8F, Leica M10 and possibly a Leica M6 or M4. The key two cameras is that M10 for daily shooting and the medium format film camera for those really special shots. I will take a Sharpie to take notes on the film once shot and will use my iPhone for light meter readings.

Our ability to interpret our work in an independent and objective manner is essential for our "improvement". For me, photography is a hobby, one that does not require any income what so ever. Being a non-professional gives me a massive amount of freedom that I enjoy. Would I like to sell my work? Yes but not for the money, for the simple knowledge that someone likes my work enough to part with their hard earned money.  But do I need the money? No.  I am lucky and have a good paying job that keeps me in hypo and paper.

But I do have a desire to improve my craft. I want to become a better photographer than I was last year. I want to be a better printer than I was last year. I want to be better. The hardest part of this process is knowing what you did wrong...or how you are falling short of your own expectations.

Enter the self critique.  I have a very simple three step process.  Why three steps? Because I am an uncomplicated guy who likes things in three because it helps me remember things.

1. Impression. What does the image make me feel?  I will often ask my kids this questions and get odd looks. But that first impression, that emotional connection is critical for me and one of the hardest things to nail down. No amount of darkroom magic can make up for this shortfall. What is the subject? What is the message? What is the emotion? Is it a slap you in the face or a slow burn? 
2. Distractions. What is pulling the picture in the wrong direction?  I often times put the picture upside down and look for what draws my eye. I count the items that draw my attention and then look for the ones that are not pulling the viewer in the same direction. What is the composition and is it the strongest way to see that particular image. Here I will challenge myself to imagine different crops to see if I can make it more powerful.
3. Print. Does the print help or distract from the image? Here is where I look for differences in tone, contrast and detail. Do I have a deep black and a bright white? If I have a white that is as white as the paper, did I lose detail? Did my print dry darker than I expected and, in so doing, have I lost detail in the shadows. Is the contrast subtle or does it "cut" the viewer? This is about workmanship, quality and overall aesthetics. 

I like the color work, perhaps the blues are a bit too saturated but a small detail. The birds are a bit distracting especially the ones on the right. But overall a great capture but here, while technically well executed and overall acceptable display, the problem is that it is a postcard. Technically well executed but of little emotional value. The lack of a developed sky to balance the image is what kills this image. Not the photographer's fault but it is your problem. 

The Hit: All is Balanced
Let's walk through my three step system.  
Step 1: Impression. So here we have a dark print, this is giving a sense of the rainy, foggy weather that South England is known for. We have a sense of winter, cold and dark. A sense of aloneness. The bear trees, wet ground, foggy weather, dark tunnel and the leading lines of the fence gives this a wonderful balance.
Step 2: Distractions. Here we have a clean image. Nothing is pulling the viewer in a different direction. The tunnel effect (created by being in a tunnel :) ) focuses the viewer. The dark edges and brighter center pulls the viewer into the image. The emotive feeling aligns with the visuals. Nothing moving, nothing distracting. 
Step 3: Print. This is both a digital and film shot (I had both cameras with me) but this one is a digital version. The conversion is clean, the contrast fades as we move through the fog but is sharp through. The aperture was wide enough (f8 if memory serves) to give us a deep area of focus. Consider the blocks in the very center (remnants of a dock made from stone) is in focus but soft contrast due to the fog. The bare tree that helps frame the shot on the right side is clear and in focus but has some elements of the fog effect. The trees on the left have a deeper impact of the fog. All of this image is about depth. All the way to the foreground where we have the wet walkway and the fence and finally darkness. 

Overall this image works. It is emotive, well constructed and the subject was captured well. I am happy with the image. The one constructive argument I would made is that the foreground calls for something. A dog, a bike, an umbrella...something to make it whole but as it is it is a fine image and a good print. 

I struggled in a dead zone, a time in my darkroom journey where I was beyond the basics but not an expert. That "prosumer" category that camera companies coined years ago for those photographers that were not professional but were beyond a point and shoot. 

My journey began where everyone's starts....with a YouTube video that taught the basics. I bought a basic enlarger on Ebay for USD 100 and the seller through in two packs of old Ilford paper. No multigrade here, just basic photography paper from 1985.  And that is how I began. My first print the paper was upside down. Once I figured out which end went up I began to learn how to improve. 

The journey was fun but I needed to advance a bit. So I paid for a private class with a more experienced darkroom artist. I still wanted to learn and improve. But it began being more and more difficult to find things to learn. I purchased a number of books and found that many of them, printed before the Digital Revolution, were using commercial supplies I could not longer purchase. 

10 Print Challenge:
This dead zone has lasted about a year and then my mindset changed. I began looking to see how I could make my own chemicals, I began to print in larger formats than I had before and finally, I began looking at a single negative and gave myself a challenge to make 10 prints successively improving it from one print to another. This is 10 prints after the time for the print is selected. 

This 10 print challenge, pushes me to overlook the investment I am making (paper keeps going up in price) and forces me to really nitpick my photograph. I don't stop with a good print, I look for the perfect print. This then pushed me into niche concepts including making my own tone, split toning prints and hand bleaching portions of the print. 

The result is that now I am looking at details I otherwise would have overlooked. I am pushing my equipment and knowledge to the limit and beyond. I am using equipment that had been collecting dust in my darkroom again. I am using more trays as I resort to more chemicals to get the desired look. 

​Give it a try and let me know how it goes!