I think I'm ready.

[Darkhorse]

Thanks for the tips.

Looks like I didn't fix that first photo long enough (it was the last print of the day) and there's a pinkish stain on it now. Oh well.

My new dilemma is now, ok, I have the enlarger and the chemicals and all. Great. What I'm I going to do with all of these prints? How am I to present them? Just stuff them all in a box? How do all of you handle all of your prints?

 

[Fawley]

What I'm I going to do with all of these prints? How am I to present them? Just stuff them all in a box? How do all of you handle all of your prints?

The answer to that is purely philosophical and different for each person. Why do you take pictures? Answer that question and go from there. I take photos and make prints purely for my own enjoyment. Part of it is documentary in nature. Most of my photos do indeed end up in a box, but I don't have a problem with that. I take them out and look through them fairly frequently and hopefully someone will enjoy them in the future. I could just look at them and display them digitally but I much prefer to look at, and hold, a print. The best ones get hung in my home and I am trying to develop a system for informally displaying them in a way that doesn't require them to be framed; the idea being to be able to constantly replace them with new prints. I read that Edward Weston used to display his new prints in this home right away. He had a lot of visitors so he constantly got feed back.

Don't give up on your photography or your printing just because you have a stack of prints building up that few people look at. It's not about being practical. 🙂

 

[Darkhorse]

OK I think I have a good idea on where to proceed. I do want to show people prints, but not so much in a gallery setting. I want something more immediate, more tangible, and something that feels more hand crafted. I made a few prints last night on 5x7 fiber based paper, and I really love how they look. Many of the photos genuinely feel that they could've been photograped today, or thirty years ago. They're nice to hold and the tones are very rich.

However I live in a dry climate, and they were all curled up this morning so they're being pressed under a few books right now.