The arrogant-sounding title notwithstanding, this page explains the way I practice photography. My aim is to create honest images, mostly silver gelatin, or traditional black and white darkroom prints, that do justice to the scene shown.
This is photography the old-fashioned way. Most of my images are shot on film from which prints are made. Because each darkroom print is made one at a time, no two will be exactly the same. Color prints made in a darkroom are specifically and clearly noted, as are black and white prints that are printed digitally. I do not remove the color from a digital print to arrive at a black and white print, so any digital black and white images came from a film negative that was scanned and printed digitally, usually because of problem with the negative that I could not, or chose not to, overcome in a darkroom.
It is very important, especially in this digital age, that viewers know they can believe in what they are looking at. Most of my images are shot on film. Color film is, with a few exceptions as noted, processed and then scanned into a computer, color adjusted to reflect what the scene looked like when shot, and then printed. The exceptions are printed in the traditional way from the original color transparency (slide) or negative and will be clearly labeled as a wet lab print. Wet lab prints do look somewhat different in character from their digital counterparts simply because of the method of printing. Black and white film is processed and then I print it in a darkroom, one copy at a time. Images from my digital camera are color corrected to reflect the original scene and then saved for printing. I do not add parts to improve a scene or delete parts that seem to detract. The viewer must have faith that I am not building an image from parts found either in my other photographs or from elsewhere. This is WISIWYS photography- What I Saw Is What You See. If I add or remove pieces from an image it will be clearly noted with the image.
Thank you for visiting and feel free to send any questions or comments to me.
– Dafydd Jones