Printing a book is a lot of work. Each time I go through the process of putting a new book together, there is a lot of unseen work that goes on in the background. Usually it takes about a year, in-between other work commitments to get a book ready.

Last week I spent a few days alone printing 390 limited edition prints. There are often errors and problems. Paper isn’t always perfect and I have to discard some images due to some paper malfunction or blemishes. Then there is the cropping and individual evaluation of each image to make sure there’s nothing wrong with it. And then of course, trying to make sure that when I sign / title them, I don’t screw up.

So today has been a day of doing reprints to make up for the loss of certain prints that didn’t fit the grade. Either because they were at the tail end of a roll of paper and got damaged in some way, or perhaps there is some ‘pepper’ grain marks on the source paper.

I haven’t signed them yet. And I have to brace myself for this as it needs to be done slowly and carefully. No rushing, because that introduces errors, and that means having to go back to printing some more, and cropping all over again.

But one thing that i love about printing is seeing the work laid out on a table. AS you can see in this photograph, nine of the images are laid out in stacks, and I’m often reminded that photographs don’t come from casual days out. They happen because you need to put the work in. Some of these images go back seven years, while others were made this year. Accumulation, the act of slowly adding to one’s portfolio is the only way to build upon your own efforts.

Good work, let alone great work isn’t created causally, or in a day. It is often the result of many years of trial and error. Of cutting out the images that didn’t work, and going back many times to a place to get what you want, or to keep on exploring.