Technology helps, but digital photography is still an art

Over the coming days, as art lovers take in the hundreds of images mounted around town at FotoWeek D.C., most of them will probably look a fair amount like photos always have. The technology used to produce them, however, will almost certainly be new. They will have been shot and printed digitally.

David Adamson, a 58-year-old Englishman, played a part in that change. Twenty-five years ago, as a budding computer geek, he got his hands on what he thinks was the first Macintosh computer in the District -- bought, Adamson says, in the vacuum-cleaner section of Hecht's department store, with money he made working as a skilled lithographer. He never imagined the future it would bring.

Even a decade later, when Adamson became one of the first people in the country to make digital art prints, he didn't think the technology would ever be within the means of amateurs. His first digital printer, built around the complex Iris technology, cost him $150,000, and he paid for it by making prints for some of the biggest names in contemporary art and photography: Chuck Close (his first star client), Robert Rauschenberg, Kiki Smith, Jenny Holzer, Annie Leibovitz. "We were the only game in town -- in the country! . . . In the pantheon of artists, I guess I've worked with most of them." (Such art-stars still travel to Adamson Editions in downtown Washington for his services.)

Now that printers can cost a thousand times less than they used to, and any hobbyist can turn out an impressive image, I asked Adamson about the ubiquity of digital photography, its virtues and pitfalls.

Here is some of what he said:

What do you see as the biggest benefit of digital photography?

You used to go out with a camera with 35 shots in it, so you had to consider each shot -- a lot of people think that was a very good thing. Yet the other side is also true: If you had thousands of shots, you could shoot limitlessly, then go back and edit and cull out the best, whereas considering each shot might stop you from making the perfect shot -- that's my belief. The best thing about digital is that you can just shoot hundreds and hundreds of images and then at your leisure go back and pick out what you felt were the best shots, or the best accidents.

What are the biggest benefits of digital printing, specifically?

In digital, you can go down to the pixel level, and control the density and contrast and brightness and sharpness throughout the film plane. So you have absolute control over an image.

What is the most common flaw you see in digital printing?

Over-processing -- you have the facility to control all the minutiae, and some people run wild with it. And gradually the image gets eroded by the constant processing, by the backwards and forwards of playing with light and contrast, sharpness and blurring. And finally the image becomes quite obviously digitally manipulated.

Is there too much digital retouching?

We did definitely go through a period where, "Wow, I can put this person here" or "I don't like her head there, but I like her body in this shot. Let's swap." I think people are pulling back to a more honest way of shooting, and only using [retouching] in extreme situations, where something has to be fixed, or something has to be taken out. I'm seeing less and less of what was overtly collaged together, and a return to a more honest look.

Now that everyone can make a decent print at home, why do you still have work?

I remember being invited to Vienna, Austria, to see the first Epson [inkjet] printers. It must have been around 2002. At that time I have five Iris printers, maybe $700,000 in equipment -- no one else does, because who's crazy enough to do this? And then I go out, and see these printers that are producing images that are demonstrably better than the Iris prints -- larger, flawless. It used to be that we'd keep two out of every three prints off an Iris; these things were repeatable ad infinitum. And the machines cost $7,000 each. I thought: "That's it. End of my studio. No one's going to be even remotely interested in using the studio once they see these -- they're going to go out and buy one, and that's it."

And for a little while, something like that did happen. But people started to realize that the economies of having the printer themselves were not really that great, unless you were a professional photographer using it full time. It was much more sensible to come to someone and have a perfect print done. And the other thing is that the artists that I really targeted -- like Chuck Close and Jenny Holzer and Roni Horn -- are so busy doing what they do, that never in a million years are they going to want to set up a print studio in their workshop. And they're very used to working with another person to get their work done. They trust my eye and ability.

FotoWeek D.C. continues through Nov. 14 at venues all across Washington. Call 202-337-3686 or visit http://www. fotoweekdc.org.

Want more tips from David Adamson? Check out his visual lesson in digital printing.