Just a few things I think about when pricing portrait sessions of multiple people for companies and associations...

Art Historian. UT College of Fine Arts. 

I've been doing a style of portraiture (below) for the last few years that I have come to like very much. I started doing it in earnest for a law firm after initial successes with executives from a medical devices firm. The style is to do environmental portraits in the offices of the company. I find what I think will make great backgrounds when put out of focus and then I put the portrait subject far enough in front of the background to ensure I can drop the details out as much as I want via aperture controls.

There are several parameters that have to be in place for this kind of interior, environmental portrait to be successful. You need to work in a space that is uncluttered and well designed. There needs to be some color contrast in the background. You have to have enough working space between the camera and subject in order to use as long a lens as you'd like and, even more importantly, you need enough working space between the subject and the background to effectively throw the background details out of focus in a convincing manner. You get extra points if there are some objects midway between the subject and the final background as these additions add to the perception of depth in the photos.

While my goal, as much as possible, is to make the light look natural I find that the more natural you want the light to look the more often you'll need to get in there and work with your own lights to make the overall look happen with any measure of success. Many locations have "can" lights in the ceiling that project unwanted warm and green (compared to daylight) color cast and can act as nasty hair lights.  In most office situations I find I must place a diffuser or even a hard scrim between a ceiling mounted florescent fixture or can light in order to control the negative effects of the raw illumination.  Once I've "killed" the unwanted top light I find that the subject needs more and better illumination. In my book that means a soft light from one side or another from a higher position so the light isn't lateral to the subject horizontally (see a b.h.s. shot below). 

So, I just wanted to set the scene for my real subject: how do you estimate this kind of work for a client? Usually a client calls and tells me that they've seen my work at XXXX website and would like to have it done for their company. They tell me they have (example) 15 executives who need to be photographed and they would like to do all fifteen of them in one day. How much will it cost?

Here's how I respond: 

"Project Description: 

Make 15 portraits at a client location in the style shown in the supplied samples. Images will be used in social media, on the company website and in public relations materials for a period of three years. We will be supplying digital files of one selected image per person directly to the ad agency or client.

Arrange to scout the location to see what potential sites within their offices can be used. I generally counsel against using views out of windows as backgrounds since all the portraits need to be lit and generating enough power to match the exterior light generally means that you get a lot of reflections in the windows between the subject and the outdoors. It’s best to find swaths of color and various shapes that can be put out of focus in the backgrounds (see the XXX website images…). The scouting allows me to see if best locations will impede traffic flow (can we make arrangements for that?), how we’ll run power cables, and whether otherwise good locations require clean up or special access on the shoot days. 

On the day of actual photography I like to load in my gear as early as possible. Client or agency will provide for garage parking in an adjacent or close by facility. We’ll position the gear in a central location in the client offices and set up and light various locations during the day to provide variation in backgrounds; variations in “look and feel” within the overall style. The first set up is usually the longest as we are getting adapted to the space. Figure about 30-45 minutes for the initial set-up. We’ll need about 15 minutes for each person we photograph. That’s fifteen minutes for each person in front of the camera. We should pick five different locations during the day and schedule three people for each location. Changing locations requires about a half an hour to move and re-light. We will be able to handle photographing all 15 people over the course of the work day. 

If time permits and the the client needs to add additional portrait subject each of those additions will be billed at $250 each to offset the additional time required as well as extensions of post production time and resources.

After the shooting day I’ll edit the entire collection of images. By “editing” I mean I will narrow down the total number of images by deleting close duplicates, images with blinks or unusable expressions, or other glitches. After I edit down the number of images I’ll globally color correct (no individual corrections at this point) the remaining files and convert them from Raw to Jpeg in order to make a master online gallery for image selection. The online gallery will allow anyone from client or agency side with a password to go through the images and make selections for final post production and retouching. The online gallery serves also as a back-up. 

The agency and client will make selections for each participant from the online gallery and I will retouch, color correct, correct for tonality, and make ready the files in post production. There is a charge for each retouched image. I will deliver the images via FTP in three formats per image = one .PSD, one Tiff and one Jpeg. Upon payment in full of our invoice the client will receive a license for unlimited exclusive use of the images for three years. I retain all copyright and rights of authorship including the right to use the images on my own website and for the marketing of my own services.

In order to color match the selected images and ensure a homogenous "look and feel" to the finished files I require the agency to provide all the selections at one time. This is part of our agreement. Should you need to provide the selections randomly or individually we will apply an extra charge of $25 per order.

Budget Estimate:

Scouting: $ 350

Shooting for one day on location with equipment package = $2,500

Editing and gallery creation = $400

Assistant fee for shoot day = $350

Post production / editing = $50 per image ($50 X 15 = $750) = $750

==============================================

Project total = $4,350. + applicable sales tax if billed direct to client.

This is my favorite kind of assignment and I hope we are able to work together on it. Let me know if I’ve gotten all the details right and we’ll go from there. 

Thanks very much! Kirk

The high backed office chair is (emphatically) not for the subject to sit in but 

for the subject to stand behind. The chair "anchors" the subject into position while 

giving them a reassuring place to put their hands. Like a portable podium.

I find the use of LED lighting advantageous when "blending" our lights with 

existing lights on location. Paired with a fast aperture portrait focal length

these choices add to our overall control.

This sort of assignment has long been my bread and butter for my photography business. It's a niche that I like and feel comfortable working in. 

New clients rarely understand the time it takes to do this well and the (invisible) time it takes to do all the post production. While this proposal was aimed at an advertising agency representing a company I find that giving all clients as much information as I can helps to mitigate any push back I get about pricing. I have had a number of clients try to negotiate our pricing down by as much as 10-20% but I am not willing to budge very often. I've done this long enough to know that there will be roadblocks all through each project that will take extra time and extra handling. 

My goal each year is to push my prices up by 5-10% (depending on the nature of the service). I know it sounds like this exceeds current inflation rates but I would argue that, for the things I like to buy and the restaurants I like to frequent, we're actually losing ground on real inflation. Client beat up everyone who worked freelance really hard during the last (great) recession. It's important to recover lost ground and to do it while the current economy is robust. End of numbers oriented post for the week. 

Think I'm charging too little? Let me know where you think I should beef up my charges. Thanks. KT

I was looking at images from the Sony RX10iii and found myself wishing someone made a camera with Sony's one inch sensor and interchangeable lenses. Little, tiny lenses.

And then I realized that Nikon had already made the camera but not with the Sony sensor (which may have been the downfall of that system). I remember thinking to myself when the V1 was introduced that there was no way I would pay what Nikon was asking for that small body, 10 megapixels and a few slowish lenses but after I handled it in a store I caved and bought the system. It was fun but it never worked out the way I wanted it to. I wonder how successful it would be if it was re-imagined today with a selection of smaller, faster prime lenses and one of the marvelous Sony 20 megapixel sensors.

I don't regret selling the V1 system but I am happy I did get to use one for the better part of a year. I did a lot of public relations work with it in situations where clients valued discretion over sheer quality. Now everyone seems to offer cameras with silent, electronic shutters. But none as small and nicely finished as the V1 body of that system was.

I shot into a mirror for the image above. It was taken at a public relations function for Easter Seals and Dell Inc. We came away with a lot of good candids of the executive staff from Dell interacting with Easter Seal's clients. It was a nice project. That was the right camera for that assignment. Much quieter than my bigger Nikons from that era.

The V1 will probably be considered an outlier collectible. I'll let someone else corner that market....

Staying with the 135mm focal length (or similar angle of view....) I thought I would mention an inexpensive Zeiss Contax version I liked a lot.

In October of 1994 I took my parents and Belinda to Paris just for fun. We spent about eight days there and made a few side trips as well. I was traveling light when it came to cameras and packed a Contax S2 and a Contax 139. The 139 was damaged during the trip and, this being the optimistic 1990's I walked into a FNAC and bought another body. It was a small and light body and it actually had a name instead of a model number. It was called an "Aria." It was not better or worst than my other Contax SLR bodies but it was light enough to hand off to family and not have them grouse about the heft. It camera with a little 28-70mm lens that was also very nice.

I kept that little camera in the bag most of the time. It was always intended to be a back-up camera. I used the S2 a lot more, and the lens I used most during that particular trip to the "city of lights" was the Contax 135mm f2.8. A small, solid and virtuous lens that seemed, in my hands at least, to be spot welded at f2.8. I snuck into the fashion shows at the Carousel de Louvre while I was there (actually, I bummed an invitation and press pass from a magazine editor I knew who was in attendance) and spent part of a day shooting some of the shows, spending some time also backstage at Karl Lagerfeld show, and generally just messing around with my small selection of lenses and a limited number of black and white 35mm rolls of film.

As I was leaving the area and heading back to the hotel I passed this woman having coffee at an outdoor table at a cafe. The 135mm was perfect for this shot. I love the fast ramp to out of focus in the background and in the foreground. Just right for a cloudy, low contrast day.

I couldn't leave the subject of 135mm lens equivalents without giving the Zeiss Contax 135mm f2.8 a nod.

My parents had a blast on the trip. I shot a lot of film, including some color print varieties. I made them a book when we got back home. 4x6 inch snapshots tipped in on black paper and captioned with silver ink. They loved it. I thought of it this week because it was on my father's bookshelf and I found it as I was packing up his belongings. It's only a few dozen pages but it's such a nice souvenir...

So excited about the announcement of the new Apple Mac Pro......

Somewhere in Rome. Working on overcoming my innate shyness with strangers. 

For years both the Apple "faithful" and the PC know-it-alls have been screaming, crying and lamenting about all the things that Apple computers "lacked." Now Apple has announced a line of Mac Pros that provide stellar performance, fix all the short-comings and supply all the power and throughput that one could ever want. There's just one problem. They made a product that is far out of the reach of most of Apple's customer base of individual consumers. Certainly these new and pricey and powerful computers will soon populate the dimly lit editing bays of multi-national entertainment companies, the chic movie editing suites, the caves of the motion graphics experts and the gleaming towers of those who render mighty, mighty 3D CADs, but they will probably never grace the modest offices of the workaday photographer or the weekend photo-warriors.

It's not that these machines are too expensive, historically, it's just that like cameras we hit the point of computer processing power sufficiency for applications like Photoshop and Lightroom about four years ago with the widespread adoption of iMacs based around Intel i5 and i7 processors. The multicore versions, along with ample RAM run most studios pretty quickly and make imaging changes about as quickly as one can click a mouse or touch a pad. Now all we really need is faster, better and more ample storage.

I'd love to have one of the machines but I'd love to have one in the same way I'd love to have a medium format camera; not because I need one but for the bragging rights and the idea of having the very best in a category. Do I need a brand new medium format camera to shoot portraits and to document live theater? Not a chance. I've shot shows with one inch sensor cameras, full frame cameras and everything in between and I can honestly say it doesn't make a lick of difference. Could I process a folder of uncompressed raw files quicker with one of the new Apple Super Computers? Sure, but then I'd have no excuse to get up from my desk every once in a while and enjoy a cup of fresh coffee, or witty repartee with my peers.

I think I would be too intimidated owning a computer on which post production is so quick that it's over before I can even start.

But, if I did happen to win the lottery you probably know I'd rush out to buy a couple of the new Mac Pros, and a couple of those sexy new monitors to go with them. Then, like a good Texan I'd also buy new, tricked out pick-up trucks for me and the wife.....and the boy before hitting the ATM and heading to Las Vegas.

For now? I've got my eyes on a new 27 inch iMac (not the iMac Pro, just the iMac) sporting one of the newest i9 processors. Not because I need one but because i9 sounds so much better than i7, and infinitely better than i5......

I know, I know, you can buy all the parts you need to build your own PC for only $99 at the nearest 7/11 and you can put it all in a beige box nearly for free. I'll get back to you as soon as I finish building my own car......

Any body here really in the market for a Mac Pro? Just curious what your rationale might be.....

Fuji 90mm f2.0 lens seems to work pretty well.

The second lens I ever owned was a 135mm f2.8 Vivitar lens. It was a manual focus model made with a Canon FD mount. I used the crap out of that lens and I was amazed at some of the images I got with it. I took it along on a backpacking trip to Europe in 1978, along with my Canon TX SLR and spent the trip bouncing back and forth between the 135mm and my other (only other...) lens, a 50mm f1.8 FD lens. It was actually a great combo for me, the 135mm seemed like just the right focal length for so much stuff and that made the 50mm look, in comparison, like a wide angle. I never have really warmed up to anything wider than a 50mm on a full frame camera and I often wonder if that's because of my early experiences with the longer focal length...

When I bought into the Fuji X system I fooled myself for a while and pretended that I'd only buy and use three lenses, a wide to medium zoom, a 70-200mm equivalent zoom and a normal lens, like a 35mm f2.0 on that format. But, of course, all that fell by the wayside and I started ravaging my wallet for credit crumbs and buying lenses as though all the makers of cameras and lenses were going to cease production in the very near future. I wanted to be ready for the impending gear drought.

I hemmed and hawed about the 90mm f2.0 just because of its ruinous price. Then, one day I walked into Precision Camera to find that Fuji had certain lenses on sale and the 90mm was one of them. At $300 off it seemed like a bargain so I dusted off that last remaining credit card and bought one. I was slow to embrace it. I let it sit in a drawer for a few weeks before giving it a tentative audition. The results were good and I started including it in my regular kit, with every intention of using it for --- something.  I took it to some play rehearsals but it was always just the wrong focal length. A bit too long for groupings and a bit short for tight actor shots on stage. Dialing in a sweet spot for use of a focal length can be a tedious process after one has been dumbed down by the seeming fluidity of a zoom lens.

Finally, I was asked to shoot in conjunction with a TV commercial production at the theater and I once again packed the luxurious 90mm but I started to feel that I'd never find that "use window" that would justify my outlay for the product. I started the four hour shoot with the 16-55mm f2.8 lens but sometime in the middle of an action packed evening I reached into the Airport Security roller case and pulled out the 90mm. I attached it to an X-H1 body and set the aperture ring to f2.8, reputed to be the f-stop at which the lens reaches its highest level of optical performance. And I started clicking off carefully selected frames. 

The quad linear motors were fast and largely flawless. Working on a dark set with black all around people in small puddles of light the lens and camera combination rarely hunted and usually locked focus quickly and accurately. I started feeling the potential of the lens. At a 135-140mm equivalent the lens picks out details and single person shots with ease. I found that even after years of using zoom lenses as crutches I was still able to use my actual feet to move forward or backward as dictated by the constraints of my immovable frame.

If you are anything like me you operate with a vague feeling of uncertainty. You know that what you are shooting should be sharp and of high quality but you suffer from self-doubt. Am I getting anything good? Is it in focus? Is the lens/camera combination really sharp? Will I see the difference between a $1,000 prime and any number of under $100 "vintage" lenses when I get this stuff back to my computer. Have I been duped once again by a shiny sales pitch? A fact-y advertisement? Or is there real merit to this lens?

While I am still working my way towards the right frame of mind to provide the right frame of a frame for the 90mm I am finding more and more sharp and detailed images coming out of the shoots on which I press this long lens into service. It's nice. The stand off feels good. The ability to retreat a bit and frame things more graphically is wonderful and harkens back to everything I learned in early days. 

I'm now packing the 90mm in my bag no matter what the assignment or self-assignment. I'd like to think it a bit magical but I know that's the ads talking. The real magic just comes from my appreciation of the focal length and my relative ease at using it as opposed to lenses I actively dislike --- such as any 28mm equivalent. I am still startled by the cost because I am getting equally wonderful shots out of the 60mm f2.4 macro and I paid less than half as much for it. But then again, they are two different focal lengths and two different philosophical conversations. 

For me the happy thing was to get highly detailed shots of dancers. It made the lens feel like it was earning its keep. 

The pursuit of being unnoticeable while taking photographs at corporate events.

Author, Phil Klay, at the AT&T Conference Center at UT Austin. 

Keynote speaker for the Texas State Bar. 

To be successful as a freelance anything you need to let clients know you exist and you need to be able to artfully toot your own horn. Your goal is to get noticed in a good way; a way that leads to profitable work. But if your work is about getting good photographs at corporate events your goal at the event is to blend in and be such an integral part of the "landscape" that no one breaks stride to stop and grin at the camera. 

The photograph above was one of several hundred that I shot at a reception in the large courtyard. The event was a gathering of lawyers and philanthropists who came together to raise funds for legal assistance to veterans. In one evening the audience of about 300 contributed well over one million dollars to the charity.

The event organizers value photography as it is a lasting reminder of the event and, even more importantly, because donors can be send a physical object, a print, as a "thank you."  At a well run event the photographer should make as many candid images as possible that show the true nature of the event. The photograph above gives a good, quick view of this part of the event. No one is taking any notice of the photographer or the big camera with battery grip and ample lens, or the little flash that provides just a whiff of fill light. 

After the guests get used to the presence of the the photographer and then progress to ignoring him we can move on to get quick and natural  looking arrangements of people (usually around the keynote speaker) that clearly show faces. A quick posed shot with the keynote speaker is the perfect post event souvenir to send along. But I think it's important to spend time building up the indifference to your presence first. And you do that by being low key and continuing to take photographs.

How does one become invisible? It's pretty easy: you arrive before any of the guests so that you are already part of the landscape as people arrive and orient themselves. You dress the same as most of the people in attendance. You work quickly and with a minimum of fuss. Every movement you make should seem natural and automatic. Nothing should add friction to your presence in the crowd. You appear to be a guest with a camera. If someone looks at you and you'd prefer a candid shot of them interacting, just smile, nod and put your camera down until they return to their social interactions. When shooting posed groups (a must, in addition to a good collection of candids) work quickly and act as though this is the most natural thing in the world. Work with authority but always with a smile and always asking, "Please, could I get a quick shot of your group together?" Snap two quick frames as soon as everyone is looking to the camera and then smile, say, "Thank you." and move on.

If you are tasked with taking photographs during the keynote speech and during the other speeches that are an inevitable part of most corporate events there are key things you need to do (or not do) to keep from attracting attention. In a crowded ballroom with spotlights on the stage you'll want to make sure you are wearing a dark suit and a non-white shirt (mid tone or darker). Peoples' eyes are drawn to the brightest part of every scene; the darker your apparel the less you'll stick out. Don't stand up in the middle of the room and wait to take a shot. If I'm photographing a speaker and waiting for a particular moment I'll take a knee in one of the aisle areas so that I am not even as tall as the seated guests. I stand only when I need to, to get the shot. If you stand the whole time you are near the front of the ballroom you'll pull attention away from the speaker.  One of the worst things one can do is to use flash during anyone's speech or presentation. One flash changes the whole feeling of a room.

When you've shot enough images of the speaker to cover yourself then withdraw directly toward the back of the room, never side to side and never in front of the speaker. A good withdrawal is a bit of an art. Best done during a pause for applause or during the laughter following a well told joke. Head down, not making eye contact with people at their tables as you retreat. The idea being that all attention goes to the speaker. 

Photographs taken during speeches are, to me, the only really compelling reason to depend on high ISOs. I'll happily head to 3200 or even 6400, if I have to, to avoid ever having to use flash. 

The only time I use flash in a ballroom setting is when someone is being presented an award, a trophy or a gift. In those situations I balance the color temperature of the flash with the color temperature of the spotlights and use the flash as a fill in to reduce contrast and to create more flattering light on faces. This use of flash also helpful in making very sharp images for subsequent public relations photos. For the most part, during the speeches, the flash stays off my camera and in the right hand pocket of my suit coat. 

If you want to be less noticeable then don't attach yourself to any groups, don't linger in conversation and limit interactions to getting the photographs and moving on. It's not the time to polish your resumé or to network. By the same token, if the event is over at, say 9pm, get whatever team photographs the client wants in the aftermath and then leave immediately. There is always a contingent of guests and event staff who will stay for another round and nothing good ever happens after the keynote speaker and the V.I.P.s leave. 

One security professional whose job is to protect high profile people like CEO's once told me, "I make sure my principal is in his suite and locked down by 10pm. Nothing good ever happens after 10pm. After that hour you are just looking for trouble." 

Pack light. Move with purpose. Lead with a smile. Exit with a "Thank you" and make sure the impression you leave behind is only obvious and apparent to your happy client. 

Willow Hall. The windows.

©Kirk Tuck. 

A black and white variation from the same session.

©1994 Kirk Tuck.

At one point in my career as an aspiring photographer/artist I was attracted to the process of hand tinting black and white photographs.

I photographed  this image in the Paris apartment of a friend's friend. My friend Penelope had been invited to have lunch with the father and daughter and she asked if I could come along. Penelope fired up her motorcycle, handed me a helmet and told me to "hop on the back and hold on tight." 

As we raced through wide streets my small camera bag swung from side to side behind me as I clung on for dear life. I survived, the lunch was pleasant, and I asked in my atrocious French if it would be okay to take a photograph or two. When I got back home and headed into the darkroom this one grabbed me right off the bat. 

I made a series of 16x20 inch prints and did some judicious and, I hope, restrained hand tinting with Marshall's Oil Colors and tightly rolled cotton.

I took the photograph with a Canon EOS-1 and the 85mm f1.2. It was the very original version of the lens which focused more slowly than any other autofocus lens I have ever used. It was a brutally expensive tool and not at all accommodating, mechanically, but I sure loved some of the images I got from it. Obviously, I did not use it wide open as the only thing that would have been in focus would have been the little girl's eyes. At f4.0 it was just right....

I sold the lens when I got home because life is too short to wait for a ponderous lens to get to its business. And at f4.0 I can think of any number of lenses that would have done just as nice a job. 

Lesson: some stuff is supposed to be super good. It's usually also super expensive. But if it doesn't work for you it's okay to kick it to the curb. 

No Comments on this one.

Always remember, whichever side of the political aisle you find yourself, that we the consumers pay for the tariffs. Not the Chinese or the Mexicans or the Germans. We do. The tariffs are paid on the imports by the American buyers and distributors. And passed on to the consumers.

Before you go off on the media be aware that Deutsche Bank is not a hot bed of liberals but the last bank with branches in the USA that would lend Donald Trump any money.

And remember that every single camera worth buying is made somewhere outside the USA...

What do you do when you've flown on an overnight flight and you get to your destination in the morning all jet-lagged? You go out and shoot.

I love to travel but I seem to be more prone to "arrival" jet lag than a lot of people. Even in my 20's I would arrive in an exciting city with one desire... find a hotel room and crash. Hard.

But if you do that your sleep pattern gets all screwed up and you wake up in the middle of the evening hungry and circadianly confused. It never worked well for me.

Now, when I travel, I make a point to dump my luggage at whatever hotel I've booked, grab my camera and a wad of cash, and head out the door to walk through my destination city and take photographs. I allow myself to sink into the flow of the streets like an old man lowering himself into a hot bath.

This image (above) was taken on one of my trips to Paris. I was traveling alone (yes, it is possible to take a shooting vacation solo, even if one is married, and I highly recommend doing so for photographers...) and hit Paris on a warm, Fall day. I was photographing at the time with Canon EOS film cameras (EOS 1n) and I was dragging along an 85mm f1.2, a 20-35mm f2.8 and a 50mm f1.4. All the cameras were loaded with Agfa film of one sort or another. My preference then was for the ISO 100 Agfapan APX but I also carried around rolls of ISO 400 as well. In a second camera body I was shooting Agfacolor Portrait film, a nice, ISO 160 film with a long tonal range and graced with the smoothest of gradients.

As I walked along one of the parks I passed by a large fountain and was amused to find people sleeping on the ground around it. In Texas one rarely sleeps on the ground for fear of ticks, scorpions, fleas and other critters. But Parisians are brave and hearty and omni-nap-ready.

I snapped a few frames and moved on but later something about the image sitting on one of hundreds of contact sheets from the trip caught my attention and I printed it large (16x20) to see why I was interested. I haven't gotten to any sort of final understanding but I"m still interested in the image. I recently put it up on the wall. Maybe it's just that it reminds me of how good it feels to take naps.

The shooting vacation was successful, did not impact my marriage, and helped me retain a certain wonderment and attraction to the process of making photographs. A "booster shot" as it were...

A Magazine called, New Texas, hired me to photograph a big game hunter. I'm not a fan of hunting; especially not "big game", but I enjoyed making the portrait.

The only challenge in making good environmental portraits is in gaining the willing complicity of the person you've been sent to document. Since I'm not a big fan of hunting any image I make of its practitioners is going to have some sort of subtext that questions the whole pursuit. While it may be too subtle to rise to most people's attention I made the image above as a caricature of a portrait hunter. A bit too serious and a bit too intense for a man sitting on a porch just outside a comfortable house in central Texas.

It was a different time in publishing when I made this image. We spent time. We had time. I set up a large soft box with a flash head powered by an 1200 watt second power pack. The box is just out of frame to the right and used close in. I didn't use any fill on the left side of the frame. I set up a Hasselblad camera on a tripod and made twelve shots with 120 film, using a 150mm f4.0 lens.

After souping the film in my darkroom I carefully printed the full square on a number of sheets of 8x10 resin coated paper until I narrowed in on the look and feel I wanted for the print. Then I translated the settings under the enlarger to print the photograph in a larger scale on 16 X 20 inch, fiber based paper. As was my practice in the day I made one print just a little light, one right on the money and one a bit darker. The reality was that paper "dried down" to a different density than what one saw in the developer or wash trays. The idea was to bracket what you saw in the soup so that one of the prints would, in its drying trajectory, hit the spot you wanted to see.

I was happy with the image after it dried (the lighter initial exposure worked best) so I made a point to print two more for myself. Sadly, magazines rarely returned black and white prints after use; I wanted to make sure I had a good copy.

Could I have done this digitally? Of course, but it was the work itself that had merit for me. The whole process is what sharpens the vision, not just the outcome.