Technical Information

I personally print all the photographs in my own digital lab. I began printing digitally in 2004, after 30 years of traditional, "wet darkroom" printing using the Ilford Ilfochrome (Cibachrome) process. The Canon Lucia digital process that I now use is allowing me to achieve an even higher level of print quality. I am able to make much more precise adjustments to the tones in the print.

My original, medium-format Fujichrome film transparencies are scanned with either the Heidelberg Tango drum scanner, or the Nikon Coolscan 9000 ED, at up to 300 megabytes file size. The idea with ultra high-end scans such as these is to extract every bit of information that is on the original film, then bring it into the computer to adjust the tones. I don't "fake" or "pump up" or "enhance" the image in the computer. Rather, the goal remains the same as it always has been-- to create a photograph that faithfully expresses the emotion of the scene as originally captured.

I still shoot film, and waited a long time before making the transition to digital printing. I saw lots of early attempts and processes that were simply, well, bad. That is no longer the case. I have invested a great deal of time learning the new digital language, and have studied with some of the leading experts of our time to facilitate my learning. Ultimately, you do need to have a deep understanding of the technology so that you are the one making the decisions, and not the other way around. Anything short of that, and you are not a photographer, but just somebody pushing some buttons.

The photographs are double matted, using Crescent off-white cotton rag Museum Grade mat board, exclusively. It is the best you can get, and is much better than the typical "acid free" wood pulp mat board often used with photography. It is also about three times the cost. Cotton is a very pure form of natural cellulose. Plus, as an annually renewable resource it is Earth friendly, and requires minimal processing.