(Introduction to Black and White Pipeline)When you’re driving your car, do you consciously think of where your hands are, what your feet are doing? How about riding a bike, are you aware of how you stay balanced? Do you play a musical instrument? Are you thinking of where your fingers are, what they are doing, what you have to do next?
For the most part, the answer to these questions is no. Much of what we do routinely is just that- routine. As a result, we’re able to do one thing, and think about other things at the same time.
Working in my old darkroom was like that for me. Loading film into 4x5 film holders was a really good example. You obviously have to do that in complete darkness, and it’s actually a fairly delicate task to, first, find the sheets of film, find the empty film holders, pick up the film (without scratching it or putting your fingerprints all over it), slide the film, in the right orientation, into the little tiny slots of the holder, check it to make sure it’s in correctly, slide the dark slide shut, turn it over and start loading the other side. Repeat this, oh, about 100 times and you have the typical routine for preparing for a photo shoot.
Any number of things can happen. You can knock stuff over when reaching for something. You can actually lose something in the dark. You can get interrupted and lose your “place” in the process. (Phone rings, talk, go back to loading, ask self- “hmmm. Is that holder loaded or empty? Are those holders exposed film? Where was I?) The system I had to avoid this confusion was based on placement and position. If a film holder is there, it’s empty. If it’s over here, it’s loaded. My sheets of film are rotated to place the notches up and to the right, my film holders are positioned so that the slot is up. When a holder is loaded, it’s rotated, and placed over there. You get the idea. After a few thousand sheets of film, you don’t really give the process much conscious thought.
I’ve told this story before, but there’s a thing I like to do, when giving talks about building a process. I ask the audience to imagine themselves in their favorite darkroom, and close their eyes. I tell them to reach for the paper. Reach for the burn/dodge tools. Reach for the phone- then reach for their coffee. One day I’ll make a video of the scene- a few hundred people with their eyes closed, simultaneously reaching for imaginary coffee in an imaginary darkroom. It’s quite a sight. It’s like some strange, mass seated dance.
Here’s the point. Somehow, in Photoshop, it’s very difficult to get to that state of routine. Photoshop, in a lot of ways, defies attempts to standardize a process. There are so many tools, so many tips you’ll read, endless methods to achieve the same result, and just when you have a habit starting to form there will be an update that expands your abilities, increases the power of a tool, and maybe even demands that you relearn your entire process. It ain’t easy, in the digital darkroom. Not because of your digital darkroom’s limitations, but quite the reverse- because it’s almost unlimited.
In spite of this, the single most important thing you need to try to do is to standardize your process. You need to establish habits, to actually limit yourself to a few powerful tools, and eliminate the ones that will distract you. My friend Nick calls it “going down the rabbit-hole”, but it happens every time you read a new story on some new way to sharpen an image, to rescale, to adjust, or in the case of this book, to make a Black and White photograph. You read something new, decide to give it a try, and you’re off on a new path to a different process. I’m not saying you shouldn’t learn, or look for better ways, but I am saying at some point you have to make a decision to work out a process for yourself and stick with it.
For me, that process is based on Smart Objects, RAW files and Layers and Masking. For you it may be based on making adjustments to the file in Photoshop as Layers, or using a series of plug-ins and filters to get to where you want to go. There’s no right way, there certainly are some ways that I feel are wrong, but ultimately you have to find some way and call it your own.
Once you settle in to a process, you can start to build habits and skills. You’ll work faster, and you’ll work better when you’re not wasting time hunting for tools, looking for instructions, and trying to remember that tip you read on some forum somewhere. Once you have your process, you’re also going to be able to look at new tips and tricks and get a pretty good feel for whether they’re worth considering for you. Will they save you time, or really just add a step to your process. Will they give you better results? With a process in place, it’s easy to see, just by trying it out in a series of controlled tests.
If you have a very defined style of photography, or a typical framework for you work (such as the production line in a commercial studio), or a significant project you’re working on, you may find you are using a slightly different process- but hopefully a similar set of tools. When I’m shooting my personal, blurry, work I use strictly a Smart Object workflow, (as described in detail in Smart Object Pipeline), but when I’m on an assignment, power-processing TIFFs for the client, I may just be slamming out JPEGs from Camera RAW. The first steps of my process stay the same- sorting in Bridge, multiple-file processing in Camera RAW- it’s the “end game” that changes a little. The bottom line, for me, is that the Smart Object workflow is a remarkable tool that can accomplish virtually everything I need to do.
Like any good mechanic, you have your toolbox. You have your wrenches all organized, and your screwdrivers and pliers all neatly placed so you could reach them while you’re under the car, reaching blind into the drawer. You have a system. Every so often you have a job where all you need is a half-inch socket, sometimes you need to go back into the closet and find the micrometer and the impact wrench for a specialized project, but you’re working from a basic method, a basic set of tools.
Why is it that every analogy I come up with based on cars?
The key is, really, to understand what is the best tool for you. What works with your style? What feels natural to you? Do you really understand what you’re doing? Know your choices, pick a few good ones, and stick with them.
But, of course, you should know: This is coming from a man who shot the same film and processed it in the same developer for over 30 years. Tri-X. D76, 70F for 7 min with 1 minute agitation. Boring, yes. Also, quite predictable.
