Introduction(s)

These introductions explore the visual concepts and ideas that inform ways of making a photographic fine print.  A fine print is more than a physical representation of a photographic image, a fine print is an expression of all the things the artist ‘saw’, ‘felt’ and ‘responded to’ in making the image.  To nuance a photographic fine print, to make something that is extraordinary to look at, requires a set of problem solving concepts that can be technically executed using image editing applications and the correct choice of paper.

Photography is inherently an analytical discipline.  Where a painter starts with a blank canvas and builds a picture, a photographer starts with the messiness of the world and selects a picture. A photographer standing before houses and streets and people and trees and artifacts of a culture imposes an order on the scene – simplifies the jumble by giving it structure.  He or she imposes this order by choosing a vantage point, choosing a frame, choosing a moment of exposure, and by selecting a plane of focus.
(Stephen Shore, The Nature of Photographs, pp. 37)