Notes From The Editor

A few thoughts as we approach the five year anniversary of this newsletter

No, I don’t use this old beast to draft the newsletter. I do use an app and a typeface that resembles this typewriter, sometimes I even do use this machine to write a draft, not often. You’d be surprised how easily the scanner in Apple notes converts that document into text.

May 4, 2021, we published our first newsletter. Our goal and our intent from that very first newsletter was to celebrate and promote photography, specifically photography in print. We’ve done our best from day one to stick close to that. Of course there are photography topics covered that are peripheral to making prints we’ve covered but always tried to keep them connected to the primary mission.

From that beginning we’ve also tried to publish one newsletter every week. I think we’ve been faithful to that commitment made possible entirely due to the support we’ve received from our paid subscribers. We’ve never wanted to imply that paid subscriptions got “the good stuff” hence our publishing schedule. Four times a month with the fourth being available to those that support us financially, we would not be able to do that without you.

Later, we were able to add the DIY series. At first that was published bi-monthly. Later we published that series every month. Again, thanks to those that support the newsletter financially. As we celebrate our fifth year publishing the newsletter we hope to continue to improve it and expand the number of topics and depth in the weekly newsletter and the monthly DIY series.

In celebration of our five-year anniversary we wanted to thank the entire community, especially those that make our continued efforts viable. In recognition and thankfulness we decided to make the last newsletter of March 2026 available to all of our subscribers. That particular newsletter isn’t something “special”, but there’s no way we could do it without the financial support. Just a little help allows us to acquire the paper, the ink, and spend the time.

We’ll be publishing our observations on the rest of the Canson Arches line of fine-art papers over the next month or so, and we wanted to make sure everyone could follow along. Consider that series specifically brought to you by those that make the entire endeavor possible with their generous support.

Ten years ago

The genesis of the newsletter focusing on photography in print started not five years ago but ten. We made a decision that was very difficult at the time. We decided to make all of our workshops in-person, limited to four participants, and entirely focused on photography in print. Every one of our workshops was dedicated to producing a physical object and doing that with real people in the same space we were.

Why was that a hard decision? It was hard because everyone else was running hard in the other direction. It severely limited our scalability. It also limited our audience. Most photographers at that time seemed far more interested in Instagram and Facebook and…

Fast-forward, there’s a phrase that I continue to hear more and more. I don’t know who or where the original phrase came from, but I do hear it more frequently month by month. That phrase; ”touching grass” in spirit was our motivation a decade ago. I guess this newsletter encourages touching grass in a way, producing physical objects with the photographs you make and sharing those in-person with any sized audience. We hope you feel the same.

Why a newsletter?

A couple of reasons, actually many reasons, but the biggest is my increasing aversion to other forms of electronic communication. As time goes on, other forms of electronic media demand continuous engagement by design. We have no desire to engage an audience continuously.

A newsletter seemed like a more gentle way, a return to publications that would show up on a regular schedule to be consumed on the reader’s schedule. It also seemed a far better fit for longer form, more thoughtful content. I still believe email is the “killer app”. Yes, it’s abused by marketers and scam artists, but so was regular snail mail. Now that email isn’t treated like a pager or text messaging it might even be better. By its nature, mail isn’t urgent in the sense real-time communication is.

We have used both the audio and video features of this modern technology platform in moderation. Specifically, we’ve used video only to demonstrate things where we’ve thought it was more clear than words. We’ve used audio instead of video for things like interviews that can be listened to with people’s own words in their own voices. Unlike video, audio doesn’t demand sitting in front of your a device with all of your senses engaged. It can be consumed more casually, like radio vs. television.

This is a big reason we’ve not dived in to the messaging, notes, and real-time features of the platform we use for email delivery. When we selected this platform we felt comfortable with their model, and so far we still feel that way. I don’t feel spammed with irrelevant content or abused in my inbox, so I trust our community feels the same. If that changes, we will change too.

Someday...

Someday, we’d love to do this full-time. Someday, we’d love to publish in print, not just a version of this newsletter but something different. Someday, we’d love to host exhibitions and provide a venue for lovers of photography in print.

Are any of those things close? No. Does that matter? No, we’ll continue to increase and improve the content of the newsletter as long as we can with all of your support. While doing that we’ll continue to look for possibilities and hope the “somedays“ come to fruition.

That first newsletter almost five years ago was an attempt to reinvigorate the in-person exhibition of photography as we were at the tail-end of the big COVID shut-in. It was an allergic reaction to more than a year without in-person workshops and Zoom fatigue. We were a little too early, we learned a lot of things. We’ll continue to champion the physical manifestation of a photograph and the in-person celebration of photography.

Index of fine-art papers

We’ve shared our thoughts on quite a few fine-art papers. Consider the new series covering the Canson Arches line of papers an acceleration of that effort. In addition to adding more of our observations and comparisons of different papers, we’ll also share our thoughts on photo-paper pairing. We spend an immense amount of time choosing papers that will best showcase the photograph. We’ll be sharing our thoughts on that topic more and more as we go forward.

Checkout the new index of papers we’ve tested and discussed. There are many more to come. In a way it’s a golden age for photographers like us that don’t consider it done until a photograph is printed. The selection of papers for printing photos has never been better. On that note stay tuned for an announcement I would have never expected.

Thank you to our entire community for the first five years.