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The Fine Art of Printing in a Digital World

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Doug Menuez and Sandro Miller on Staying Relevant as Professional Photographers

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Doug Menuez & Sandro Miller ©Doug Menuez's Leica
Doug Menuez & Sandro Miller ©Doug Menuez’s Leica

Doug Menuez and Sandro Miller continue to be creative, successful, and relevant after almost 40 years in the business of photography. On June  22, 2019, Doug Menuez and Sandro Miller generously shared volumes of valuable and entertaining information in an event hosted by Digital Silver Imaging and PhotoPolitic™. About 30 photographers and industry professionals gathered in Sandro’s beautiful Chicago studio. Also present was special guest Jim Stallman Senior VP and Creative Director of Leo Burnett and four industry movers and shakers, Patrick Rynell, EVP/ECD, Ainara Del Valle, ACD/AD, Jennifer Meinders, ACD/AD, Jon Lueken, Sr. Producer.

So how do these successful photographers define “The Art and Science of Staying Relevant?” The take away is condensed into these few brief paragraphs.

Stay Creative

Personal Projects | Pro Bono Work | Fine Art | Get out of your comfort zone

Both Doug Menuez and Sandro Miller pursue personal work as part of their work/life balance. Doug believes that working with nonprofit organizations can give an editorial photographer like himself the ability to photograph new and interesting subjects with fewer limitations. Doug has also published 4 books, most notably Fearless Genius, his unprecedented documentation of the digital revolution. Fearless Genius was #1 on the Amazon Bestseller list and it continues to provide exposure as a multimedia project, film, and a traveling exhibition of prints all produced by Digital Silver Imaging. 

Sandro Miller’s expansive personal work often starts with a project that becomes an entire large format fine art book. Projects like the one he did with John Malkovich or his trips to Cuba became books and many of the images end up as fine art prints for gallery sales and exhibitions. Although Sandro has a distinct style, and can be considered a portraitist, he is constantly finding new paths and subjects for his work.

Sandro’s spacious studio ©Andrea Zocchi

Stay Organized

Make a business plan | Strategically target your customers

According to Doug Menuez what put him on the path to success was a solid business plan and the discipline to stick to it. Both photographers emphasized that having the business acumen and the right people in that field was invaluable. Sandro Miller stressed focusing your promotional efforts on a manageable group of targeted clients/agencies and galleries. Casting too broad a net often doesn’t work and can result in work the photographer is not excited about executing. Miller stated that he focuses on about 20 potential customers at a time.

Refreshments ©Doug Menuez
Refreshments ©Doug Menuez

Stay Above the Crowd

Use prints and printed media to stand out

The consensus was that regular posts on social media were necessary but didn’t necessarily get you work. Doug said that one of his most successful and expensive promotions was his “F…You Book.” It was a portfolio of work he loved (not work that everyone advised him to show, that’s where the “F…You” comes in). He said that this piece got him more and better jobs than any other promotions.

The advice from Sandro was to send a signed print, as he said, “People just can’t throw away a signed print.” He also uses his books as a way to rekindle art director and ad agency interest in what he’s doing. Both photographers have an active fine art presence, with gallery representation and the print sales supplementing their income and increasing their exposure.

Jim Stallman Senior VP and Creative Director of Leo Burnett echoed what both photographers said. He underlined the point that as a creative director he is overwhelmed with emails and electronic communications. His advice was to do something tangible that shows your own creative genius, something that represents you, not what you think someone wants to see.

Stay Informed

Research your customers | Know the brand | Be prepared for the shoot

Before you start a job, or start to promote your work to a client, know what they do. In editorial, documentary, or product work the research is the first step. Sandro stated that he might shoot for an entire week before the actual photo session is scheduled. In the preceding week he will test lighting, concepts and other aspects before the client arrives in studio. Dig deep, acquire knowledge and be prepared.

Portfolio reviews were an optional component ©Doug Menuez
Portfolio reviews were an optional component ©Doug Menuez

Stay Personal and Connected

Pick up the phone | Meet people | Attend Events

Doug Menuez, Sandro Miller, and Jim Stallman all agreed that photography is all about making personal connections and keeping them fresh. Don’t send an email if you can call the person by phone. Expanding your community in person makes you memorable. Knowing that you can work with a person and they can work with you makes all the difference. 

This also extends to the photo shoot itself. Don’t just start blasting away. Talk to your subject. Again both photographers emphasized the pre-shoot preparation. If you know your subject you can make conversation and the shoot will be more successful.

We hope that PhotoPolitic™, Doug Menuez and Sandro Miller will choose to repeat this event in the future. It might be the best $189 dollars that you can spend on your career. We’d like to thank Doug Menuez, Sandro Miller and Jim Stallman as well as Chris Armstrong from PhotoPolitic™ for asking us to play a small part. The entire day was videoed and is available to PhotoPolitic™ members. To stay informed about future events follow us, Digital Silver Imaging and PhotoPolitic™ on social media.

DSI Portfolio Awards – 2017

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©Dylan Everett 2018
©Dylan Everett 2018

The DSI Portfolio Awards is a shared platform providing three recent graduates of photography with financial assistance in printing a professional portfolio. This year’s awardees share a strikingly sophisticated and nuanced eye with a keen awareness of their concept and its context. Collectively each crystalizes their unique finds of specific investigations. Their discerning and original choice of final output formats complement and underscore their work’s intent. My appreciation to my fellow jurors, Debra Clomp Ching and Stephen Marc for their thoughtful and engaged contributions to the selection process.

Dylan Everett recently graduated from Brown University and is now completing an MFA from Rhode Island School of Design. Structural Photography, is his series of aerial topographies. Seductively these engaging abstractions are at first a pleasing amalgam of color, form and texture. With time the viewer comprehends the actual residential housing mazes, agricultural industries and strip-mines within the capture. Everett concretizes our complicity in the development of this humanly altered landscape. Stephen reflects on this compelling work; “A strong and unique concept, containing a mystery, consistent vision, and bold use of white space.”

©Michelle Rogers Pritzl 2018
©Michelle Rogers Pritzl 2018

Michelle Rogers Prtizl has studied photography and earned three art degrees, most recently as a MFA graduate of Lesley University College of Art and Design. She is widely exhibited and known for her use of alternate and historical processes. In Not Waving But Drowning, whose title references Stevie Smith’s poem of the same name, Pritzl explores Fundamentalist Christianity’s tenets that serve to control and manipulate women. Her image titles reference Kate Chopin’sThe Awakening, and are a tribute to the artist’s autobiographical freedom from this restrictive belief system. The combination of the collodion process and an oval frame in collaboration with contemporary digital media practices mirrors her conscious choice to evolve, taking some aspects of the past while exercising her self-determination and embrace of the modern.

It was an insightful honor being one of the jurors for the DSI competition, and congratulations to the three award recipients. The process was challenging and rewarding due to the range and depth of the images submitted. I wish all the best to each of the entrants, and I hope that our paths cross again. – Stephen Marc

©Emily Schiffer 2018
©Emily Schiffer 2018

Emily Schiffer is a mixed media artist and photographer interested in art’s ability to initiate community engagement and foster social change. Kin is an intimate portrayal of family life. These unposed portraits capture moments in her interracial and cross-culturally blended family. Her images hold a space between documentary narrative and documenting feeling. Stephen’s comments: “Each could stand alone but tie in an intimate narrative. I was impressed with these documentary style portraits because of the alternating interactions, environmental details, and dynamic lighting that project a mood of domestic warmth.”

J. Sybylla Smith

 

Postscript

Award winners will receive $1250 in printing services from Digital Silver Imaging. The Jurors and Digital Silver Imaging would like to thank everyone who submitted work. Although we had our lowest number of entries for the 2017 award, we feel that the quality of the work was exceptional. In this slideshow, we’d like to recognize a few of the photographers who made excellent work, but unfortunately, did not win

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Gum Bichromate & Ziatype Workshops

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Two Gum Bichromate Images ©Anne Eder

Gum Bichromate Workshop

Gum bichromate is a 19th century photographic process using gum arabic, photo-sensitive dichromate, and watercolor pigments to create monochromatic, duotone, or full color images. The results are each unique and 100% archival. This workshop will take participants through the steps from generating large format color separation negatives to final printing. All the materials needed for this workshop will be provided.

Date: Saturday July 29, 2017
Time: 10:00-6:00 with a break for lunch
Place: Digital Silver Imaging, 9 Brighton Street, Belmont, MA
Fee: 249.00

GB Workshop

Student Discount: Currently enrolled students can receive a 10% discount. Use promo code: Student10 at checkout. You will be asked to present your valid student ID at the workshop, if you do not have a valid ID you will be charged the full $249.

Images produced at a previous Ziatype Workshop

Ziatype Workshop

Ziatypes have the look of platinum/palladium prints but are not as difficult or expensive to produce. This beautiful alternative processes maybe the perfect match for your photographic imagery. The Ziatype Workshop is for beginners and photographers with basic knowledge of the ziatype process. Expert instructor, Anne Eder, will take participants through the complete process of making ziatypes from digital image to finished ziatype print.

Anne will step participants through the entire process, starting with making a contact negative on an inkjet printer, coating of light sensitive paper, exposure with sunlight, and the final archival wash.

During the course of this day-long workshop participants will focus on:
• Perfecting negative conversion curves for better print results
• Creating a negative to express your vision
• Understanding ziatype chemistry
• Creating additional color and tone in your ziatype

If you are curious about the advantages of ziatype printing here is a brief list:
• Ziatypes utilize a printing out process (POP), images can be evaluated as they print, resulting in far fewer underexposed or overexposed prints.
• Greater contrast control without graining
• Greater paper acceptance, prints well on most papers.
• Greater color control. You can “dial in” various shades of brown to red brown, purple to neutral grays.
• No developer needed.
• Excellent blacks (dmax)

All materials needed will be provided, prints will be made on Hahnmühle Platinum Rag paper.  Participants need to bring 3 to 4 images on a flash drive, CD, or their laptop. Images should have good tonal scale in both the highlight and shadow areas. Two negatives will be made, one larger and one smaller, so a larger size file is better as it can always be reduced without image degradation. Files should be 300ppi, actual size. Participants will be able to keep, the prints , negatives, and custom curves made during the workshop.

Date: Saturday August 19, 2017
Time: 10:00-6:00 with a break for lunch
Place: Digital Silver Imaging, 9 Brighton Street, Belmont, MA
Fee: 249.00
Zia Workshop
Student Discount: Currently enrolled students can receive a 10% discount. Use promo code: Student10 at checkout. You will be asked to present your valid student ID at the workshop, if you do not have a valid ID you will be charged the full $249.

Instructor Bio: Anne Eder, holds a masters degree in Photography and Integrated Media, and has studied with Christopher James, author of the Book of Alternative Processes. Her gum bichromate images and studio practice are featured in Gum Printing: A Step-By-Step Manual Highlighting Artists And Their Creative Practiceby Christina Z. Anderson, published by Focal Press/Routledge 2017. Her work has been exhibited internationally and is held in both public and private collections.

2016 Digital Silver Imaging Portfolio Award Winners

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Digital Silver Imaging is please to announce the 2016 winners of our Portfolio Awards. The winners were selected by our 4 esteemed jurors, Steven Kasher, J. Sybylla Smith, Marianna Rothen, and John Lehr. The winners were selected in an anonymous review of the images, each submission was given a number, and no biographical information or statement was given to the jurors.

This is the second year Digital Silver Imaging has awarded these three $1250 printing grants to recent graduates. We hope this award will allow emerging photographers to continue producing photographic prints at a critical time in their development as artists.

This years winners are, in no particular order:

Ke Peng DSI Portfolio Award 2016
©Ke Peng

Ke Peng, BFA 2015 Rhode Island School of Design, visit her website

©Emily Sheffer
©Emily Sheffer

Emily Sheffer, BFA 2015 Massachusetts College of Art, visit her website

©Rachel Cox
©Rachel Cox

Rachel Cox, MFA 2013 University of New Mexico, visit her website

Congratulations to our talented winners. For more information about the Digital Silver Imaging Portfolio Awards follow this link.

Ben Folds

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"Me n Elvis" ©Ben Folds
“Me n Elvis” ©Ben Folds

When we received our first print order from Ben Folds we were a little star struck. After all, this was the genre bending solo artist, the lead man of the Ben Folds Five, the hip and insightful judge on The Sing Off. With such a diverse portfolio of talent, what would Ben Folds the photographer be like?

Turns out that Ben Folds is a very talented photographer, who has created an extensive body of work much like he has done as a musician. Ben has a long history with the photographic craft. He himself is an excellent printer and often shoots film. When it comes to photography, Ben refers to himself as, “an obsessive freak,”  and he always has a camera close at hand, usually an old Rollie, Leica range finder, or digital Leica Monochrom.

"Door to Nowhere - Savannah" ©Ben Folds
“Door to Nowhere – Savannah” ©Ben Folds

On his web site Ben states, “…my interest in photographs has expanded to equal that of music and I find one art form always informs and inspires the other.”

It makes sense that someone as creative as Ben Folds would bring his sensibilities of composition, contrast, expression, and craft to all artistic endeavors. His elegant black & white photographs do not disappoint.

"Luckiest" ©Ben Folds
“Luckiest” ©Ben Folds

With the release of his album “So There,” Ben produced several versions on vinyl that included signed prints of XX photographs both on RC and Fiber DSI Digital Silver Prints®. We were fortunate to produce the prints for Ben, and we probably should have included an ice pack for his signing hand.

Many people, including myself, are fans of Ben Folds the musician/singer/song writer. As an artist he is always pushing boundaries, and I think that’s a good example for anyone involved in a creative endeavor. As a photographer Folds appears to be exploring a different side of creative expression. But what else would you expect from Ben Folds.

For more on Ben Folds, the photographer and musician, follow this link.

SPE 2016 Las Vegas

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SPE 2016 Las Vegas was another great experience for Digital Silver Imaging. Our booth was busy with interested photo students, educators, and artists. This year we invited John Reuter from New55 to demonstrate their instant positive/negative 4×5 film. John photographed individuals who visited our booth. John made over 50 images and the gallery below shows some of the great portraits he created in less than optimal conditions of a hotel convention hall.

As always the programing was diverse and interesting, with this year’s theme being “Constructed Realities.”  The organizational skills of SPE’s Nina Barcellona Kidd insured that the 4 days of lectures, portfolio reviews, panels, and trade exhibition went off smoothly and efficiently. Thanks to everyone at SPE for another wonderful national conference.
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We also enjoyed spending time with our old friend Jim Stone. Jim was this year’s SPE Honored Educator. Jim is currently teaching grad students at the University of New Mexico, and his roots go back to the New England area where he taught at the alma mater of DSI founder, Eric Lunden, Boston College.  Jim is a longtime friend to both DSI partners Eric and Andrea Zocchi.

Digital Silver Imaging has attended and supported SPE (Society of Photographic Educators) since the inception of the company. One of the partners, Andrea Zocchi, is a “Talbot Level” donor to SPE.