A Question of Balance

Shelter, Monifieth

I suspect we're all guilty from time to time of obsessing about grain and sharpness in a print but how much attention do we give to balance? Good printers are aware of the need for harmonious tonality all the time. Eddie Ephraums was one of those who used to view his prints upside down and in a mirror to see if any imbalance in a specific area was pulling the image in the wrong direction.

Others will pin the image up on a board and live with it for a few weeks to see if any improvements start whispering in their ears. They're not concerned about sharpness and grain at this point but whether a bit of burning-in is needed here or some dodging there to achieve the best print.

Sometimes, it can be a corner of a print that is too light or a sky that is unintentionally heavier at one end than at the other. Occasionally, a well-seen crop, altering the format by a few millimetres, might just make the difference. It's for this reason that photographers tend to make "work prints", reasonable but not quite finished efforts, that give them the chance to ponder the goodness of their image, whether it can be improved and, if so, how.

I don't consider balance as often as I should. If the print seems to look good, it goes in one box along with others of a similar ilk. If it obviously falls short in some way then it goes in another box. The intention is that I'll pay them closer attention in a few days and maybe have another go at the negative to see if I can make the print better second time around. But this second look rarely happens. New negatives come on the scene demanding to be printed and a fresh neg always has a stronger pull for me than one I've become accustomed to seeing.

The image in this post was one of those that I would normally have filed in the "not quite" box but, for some reason, I decided to try a bit harder this time - there and then and not at some point in the future. It's a photograph I took on the Leica M2 and 50mm Summicron a few years ago. The film was Tmax 400. I was attracted by the light reflecting off the roof of the shelter and contrasting with the dark, stormy sky above. The graffiti on the roof also seemed to mirror the chaotic tumbling of the clouds.

The idea I had was to print it quite dark - including the grass in the foreground - to make the shelter stand out. My first attempt is below. It wasn't too bad a print but it fell down a little in quite a few areas. I didn't have to pin it to a board and live with it for a fortnight to see the deficiencies either.

• The sky at the left is too light
• The roof of the shelter is too dark, watering down the contrast with the sky
• Overall, the sky is too light as well failing to make the shelter pop the way I wanted
• An inconsiderate bright cloud was trying its best to elbow its way into the composition from stage right
• Although I wanted the grass to be quite dark, I overdid it with the result that the print was bottom heavy

None of those issues was particularly difficult to put right although my first attempt at rectification got them all done - except for the top right corner which I forgot about. That print went straight into the bin. When it came to the shelter roof, I dodged it for about half of the 16s basic exposure knowing that the tone would be replaced when I was burning in the sky but I'd be able to control how much light spilled over onto the roof.

The sky on the left and right was burned in via the usual hole in a piece of card. The basic exposure for the reprint was cut by 1/6th of a stop which was enough, I think, to reduce the heaviness of the grass. Finally, the path leading to the shelter was dodged a small amount to lighten it in relation to the grass.

I'm quite happy with the finished result. It's possible that another couple of improvements might suggest themselves if I live with the print on a daily basis so, instead of filing it away, I'll leave it on my desk and see what happens. I can easily see a pin board going up on the wall to my right as I sit typing. Getting the balance right in a print needs to become part of the workflow and not something I do when the mood grabs me.