I came across this quote from Michael Kenna. It expresses a lot of how I work, too.
"Printing in the darkroom, spending hours interpreting and exploring the potential of negatives, is an essential and magical ingredient of my creative path. When photographing, I give little consideration to how a final print will turn out. I am not interested in pre-visualization, and have found it more important to follow the muse, rather than have any dogmatic approach to the printing process. In the case of this image, now titled “Nine Birds", I started with printing the whole frame of the negative which consisted of a temple rooftop with many more birds. I was not satisfied with the result and began to focus on a certain part of the negative. I raised the enlarger and printed a small section. Once again, I was not wholly satisfied, so I raised the enlarger even higher and concentrated on just a few of the birds. After some hours of fine tuning, and even more severe cropping, I ended up with this grainy image of a minute part of the negative with few details. The finished print looks almost like a wood block. I often find photographs inside photographs."
~ Michael Kenna
"Printing in the darkroom, spending hours interpreting and exploring the potential of negatives, is an essential and magical ingredient of my creative path. When photographing, I give little consideration to how a final print will turn out. I am not interested in pre-visualization, and have found it more important to follow the muse, rather than have any dogmatic approach to the printing process. In the case of this image, now titled “Nine Birds", I started with printing the whole frame of the negative which consisted of a temple rooftop with many more birds. I was not satisfied with the result and began to focus on a certain part of the negative. I raised the enlarger and printed a small section. Once again, I was not wholly satisfied, so I raised the enlarger even higher and concentrated on just a few of the birds. After some hours of fine tuning, and even more severe cropping, I ended up with this grainy image of a minute part of the negative with few details. The finished print looks almost like a wood block. I often find photographs inside photographs."
~ Michael Kenna
