In Print

I have always felt that the photographic print completes the circle begun when I first snapped the shutter. I have also always felt that this was a fairly simplistic and self-evident idea that does not entirely address why I make prints from certain images.

This realization of the exposure via the print justifies, in some sense, the exposure itself; otherwise, why do it? Why bother taking pictures if I do nothing with them? Yet, why does making prints seem like I am doing something with them? Perhaps it’s a holdover from film days, when the only way for people to see an image was to print it, or get it reproduced in a book or magazine, a quasi sort of printing. That’s not the case now when you can go to my or anyone’s web page and see all the images you want.

The print is certainly more permanent, seeing that 95% of all the digital images floating around today will not be able to be read or translated in the future, and many more will be lost on fried hard drives and bent discs and in bankrupt cloud storage companies. Permanence is relative of course, and it’s difficult for me to conceive of 100 years, the average lifespan of pigment inks prints, as permanent.

Obviously there are lots of points and counterpoints to be explored, but to me there is an essential truth about printing that began when, like a lot of folks, I first saw an image emerge from a blank sheet of paper in a tray of chemicals. The print, for me, is an essential part of the photographic process. It is a method of engagement with the work that simply is not satisfied by taking pictures alone. Printing not only requires a skill level that is challenging to achieve, but it brings in numerous mental processes that involve retrospection, introspection, and selective memory.

The rendition of the image in a print can also be subject to my mood when making it, to the influence of books and movies and all visual and graphic arts, and perhaps most of all to an accumulated aesthetic approach, one that keeps changing and hopefully evolving. I see the photographic print as having a certain tonal and textural integrity that does not necessarily treat content with any more importance than the treatment of tone itself. In many of my images I notice that the content is there more to serve the tone. Many of the images I seek out to print have a tonal and textural potential rather than any specific contextual meaning or visual message.

This sounds a bit academic but it is sometimes necessary to put these aims into words to understand why one chooses certain images over others to print. Each person has his or her own reasons. Mine come from training and experiences I have undergone that make me believe that a print need establish a certain tonal resonance that satisfies my sense of seeing; these techniques and renditions might be recognizable to others engaged in the craft.

This is not to say that I have not strayed from this aesthetic occasionally, especially when dealing with “low sat” or “low clarity” images. I find these emulations of earlier stages of photography enjoyable and believe that digital processing encourages such behavior. While digital has certainly changed how one goes from image to print it does not really alter why one makes prints or what the potential of the image in a print might be. In fact, it enhances those aspects of printmaking.

Digital processing and printing shows why people call the digital file a negative—in the strictest photographic sense, like a film negative, it is a sketch or a foundation in which tones and details can be revealed or obscured and the full emotional vision and skills of the photographer can be brought to bear in its final realization, in a print.

The digital file, whether scanned from film or created by a digital camera, creates the first step towards the print. It might provide inspiration or a route to the final image, but without undergoing the printmaking process I don’t believe that a photographer can know why the picture was made, or what sits below the surface of the instinct to push the shutter button. Printmaking requires thought about the image and about myself.

What is perhaps most interesting about the print is what happens between the time the exposure is made and when the print is made—that interval might be a few moments or a few years or, with some images, forty years or more. The actual length of time is not that important—what happens to the instincts, aesthetics and rendition decisions made by the photographer over that period of time is, and it becomes a sort of diary of change, of process, of a visual life. It becomes a mirror into which a photographer can gaze, to make sense of or to just wonder about.

For me any narrative beyond this is speculation to which viewers should not be burdened. I tend to avoid self-description when choosing images to print, as that choice at any moment in time is necessarily instinctive and reactive to that moment’s mood. It is during the printmaking process that I have time to reflect, and when the print is made it becomes a record of all that went into it.

This is my only advice for photographers and printmakers: care for your images so that you will be able to have those moments of retrospection; always value what you have done in the past; use your images as a mirror of the present; and dive deeply into those periods of inspiration that may strike you.


Many of my prints have been cataloged at www.georgeschaubprints.com. Notes on size, print number and occasional mentions of paper surface or other considerations are at that site.

Other images and contact information can be found at www.georgeschaub.com

Notes on Digital Infrared Photography

Infrared light is by definition “invisible” light that resides above the threshold of human vision. It is not Kirilian, or aura photography, though it sometimes creates an ethereal, ghost-like representation that can be quit seductive. Like most things photographic that appear visionary, there is a bit of science behind the magic. This involves disabling the “normal” operation of the camera to allow infrared level light to record, something that is usually blocked by an IR cutout filter placed in the light path from lens to sensor. It turns out that without this internal filter the digital image would be “polluted” with IR, and would, for most people, create less than desirable image quality. In truth, digtal sensors often have considerably more infrared sensitivity than was previously thought.

In most cameras the filter is “hard wired” into the construction, which means that if you remove it you now have a fulltime IR capable camera that cannot be returned to normal use. This must be done by a service company that knows its stuff; it’s something you cannot do on your own. Some cameras come IR dedicated, mostly those used by law enforcement agencies for gathering forensic evidence. A very few can be do-it-yourself infrared, such as the Sigma model DSLRs, where you can remove the lens and literally pick out the IR filter (which doubles as a dust filter), albeit very carefully. Those who are true IR fans would do well to investigate the cameras used by police departments. Another course is having a custom IR setup put into the camera by a service company. This goes beyond removing the IR cutout filter; it involves replacing that filter with one that makes the camera IR ready and capable of shooting IR without placing a filter over the lens, which is what you need to do with a camera whose IR cutout filter has been removed. This is the easiest course to take as shooting with a dark IR filter over the lens can make it difficult to focus and compose.

To capture IR images with a cutout filter removed camera you place a filter over the camera lens, something that is uncommon for most digital photography (as most filter effects can be added later in software.) While you can shoot IR without any filters with a cutoff filter removed camera you will get a sort of reverse pollution of visible light, something that diminishes, but does not always completely ruin the IR effect.


There are three levels of filter that can be used, with one being quite expensive and, in my experience, unnecessary to gain the effect. The filters used include a red filter, something black and white film photographers might still have in their closet, (a Wratten 25A), plus two filters that block more and more visible light and do not allow for image recording below the infrared threshold. The two other filters, which go under various names and codes according to the filter maker’s markings, block light under 700 nanometers and 830 nanometers (and some higher) on the spectrum; in other words, progressively more refined IR light. The higher blocking filter gets very expensive and is only for both purists and aficionados.

You can choose to work in regular RGB mode or in Monochrome mode as you shoot; perhaps Monochrome mode would be easier as it removes the red cast over the image, but it certainly does not give you a real clue as to what you can do with the image later. That will come with experience. I always shoot IR (and all my images) in Raw mode.

The effects with filters can be amazing but you cannot see what’s going on in the viewfinder, which means that you have to frame and focus prior to exposure, or figure out some way to view over the top of the camera for an approximate view. The red filter, while not as “pure” lets you at least see what’s going on in the finder. If you are an IR fanatic then the blockers will be your choice—those who dabble in it, as I do, will find the red filter is fine. However, if you plan to shoot IR a lot, then get a camera that is IR ready, one that’s been converted by a service company.

The procedure some use for shooting is to purchase a filter that is a bit larger than the largest diameter lens they own (thus it can be used on all the lenses owned) and to first frame and focus the tripod-mounted camera, then hold the filter over the lens when the exposure is made. This can result in some light leak that is usually eliminated with some practice in proper holding of the filter. Exposure is set manually. Some bold photographers shoot handheld in the same fashion, viewing over the top of the camera pentaprism to yield an approximate framing and shooting a bit wider than they normally would for a “fudge” factor to which they can apply a more specific cropping later.


Exposure has nothing to do with making readings and using metering patterns, since you are not dealing entirely or at all with visible light. It’s a strange concept, but that’s also part of the IR mystique—being out of normal bounds of having to read exposures and balance highlight and shadow. The best way to work IR exposures is to start at somewhere around f/11 at 1/125 second and then review the image after exposure and adjust accordingly. The view in the finder is quite different than you’d expect, so you will have to gain experience with what a processed IR image looks like according to a certain exposure level. This is the only way you will be able to make predictions about what the correct exposure might be, or at least what it should look like upon playback.

There is something in IR known as a “focus offset”, which means IR light bends a bit differently and may arrive at the sensor plane in different fashion than normal or visible focusing. This will become critical when doing close-ups, but does not have much effect in my experience for photos made beyond six feet. I often shoot at f/11 or narrower with a fairly wide angle lens just to take up that slack, changing the shutter speed accordingly.


IR black and white has always been near and dear to landscape photographers, and now that high-speed IR black and white film has been discontinued by major film makers digital seems to be the only way to go.