George Schaub

Human visual perception is a wondrous thing—it allows us to see a wide spectrum of colors, with all the subtleties and shades, lights and darks, pastels and richness of the earth and the heavens. To see in black and white is an abstraction of that world, one that perceives luminance, or brightness, without the benefit of hue. Yet hue, or color, and its shades, often determine what tones, or grayscale values, will be seen in black and white. If one were always to see the world only in black and white it would be considered a deficiency of vision. But to see that way occasionally, and to be able to render what we see in a monochrome fashion, opens the door to different perceptions and feelings about the world, and yields a unique form of expression in the bargain.

Choosing the right paper for your prints is often a matter of surface texture and tone, but there’s more to it than that when printing for exhibition or display. It’s what the paper is made of, and the inks it can handle, that make the difference between a “warrantied” saleable print and one that might be used for quick display or repro. While there are no industry standards for print longevity as of yet, working with papers that could be dubbed “archival” by their very makeup is a good place to start.

The print completes the creative circle you began inscribing when you first viewed the image and snapped the shutter. The beauty of black and white printmaking is that you can share that vision through interpretive techniques that include expressive use of tonality, artful contrast and exposure control. Yes, digital images can be viewed on a screen and shared through the Internet to a worldwide audience. But nothing quite matches the intimate beauty of a carefully produced print, one that can be hung on a wall in your home or a gallery.

Each art or craft we engage in, as participants or observers, does something for our sense of being alive, our presence in and awareness of the world. Art feeds the head and the soul and it’s an important part of what makes us human. That’s why people should be rightly upset when art is removed from the curriculum in our schools. But for photographers, one major key to that awareness is a sense and sensibility about light. That appreciation starts to build in once you start considering what to photograph and when to make an image. In many cases, if you think about it, the quality of light is often the guiding hand. The bonus is that the love of light and shadow and its levels and color stays with you even when not walking around with a camera.