It was only difficult from a technical standpoint; it wasn't difficult from the vision standpoint. He knows what he wants, and we just have to figure out how to put it together, that's our job. People say, "Why didn't you shoot this as large-format?" Because there was ever so slight breeze. Of course, the leaves are kind of moving a little bit, and I was shooting this probably at about 1/25th of a second, f/5.6 or something with the ISO 8x10. It would have been a lot slower if it were 8x10; it would have been a lot more mushy on the edges, and everything like that. So, the quality is there, and it will go bigger. It's a huge file, and constantly when I'm shooting, I'm thinking, "Okay, my maximum length is going to be 32 inches." Because we classically frame everything, so 52 because the paper... well, the glass size 40 by 60 height-wise. 32, that's where I've got to stop there. So, you just think of how what's it going to take to get it to that size, where the resolution is going to be just impeccable, and then you either have to 8x10 or multiple shots because you're not going to do it with 135 unless you're one of those folks who say, "Well, if you stand back," I don't know maybe two hours in the afternoon light was up shooting straight down on it. But there were all these leading lines that we're coming into it, you know, into the print with this tree just illuminated. I'm thinking this is going to make an incredible black and white if we can pull it off. Every area of extreme highlight that you see that needed you know, all of this up here; it needed to be burned down. It couldn't be as bright as this because when you lose you know the whole point of the image is incredible glowing trees. So, we ended up having to go back to some interesting techniques and used ruby lith masks on the paper to mask in and burn only this area and only this area. And then some of this over here after you've printed the digital negative because of this size it costs a lot to print the negative, and it will only go so far with your inkjet and you can only get so much density in those are to make it look normal. Sometimes you got to do both; you do a digital negative with you know a contact print its over and then also have to use some of the old-school burning and dodging techniques that you learned in high school, and the masking to really get that area to just sit on the edge of detail you can see when it does.

I was really bad in Japan when it came to themesthe Japanese would always say, "Well, what's your TemaTema?" Oh my god, I hate that word Temawhat's your theme? Because I just I couldn't stick with a theme like they're thinking 15 years from now are you still going to be doing seascapes you know around the world. I'm like no, I mean god (laughs). I get rid of my wardrobe every six months come on, I can't do that. I'm just not that's not me, I'm much more spontaneous.

I had a friend one time he said, "You know, the day that your signature becomes more important than what's going on in your work has lost its soul." And that is so true. And you just see that so often nowadays but most photographers when I ask them, "So, who are your collectors?" they go oh, I don't really have...so you're shooting for yourself. Well, your expectations are not going to be that good because you have to...you're cooking a meal for yourself it's going to be not like you're cooking for your best friends or people you're wanting to cook for. It always would just blow my mind when I'd talk to people about tea ceremony; it's like well, how long have you been doing this? 32 years...32 years? Finally, you figure out why it takes because of every single phase how you walk through it the motion, the movement, and that's what it's all about. At some point, you peak at some point, you peak into one little area but you get better in other little areas and you're not doing the extreme stuff you used to do but you're doing more subtle stuff. You know so and that's the length of an artist to reinvent yourself through different mediums or your style changes or you get a little bit better there, so just you know just keep going.

They say in Japanese - Isshoukenmei; you just keep one step, one step, one step. Get better, get better.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enOkay… we're at Zone 3 at 12 1/2so we're pretty much on axisokay I got that and I'm going to put this back downLowest value…so this is usually either going to beZone 3 or Zone…going to be on the shadow sideof these trees, these pine treesor its going to be that fenceso we go in there with this 1 degree spot meter…and lets say we hit that fencesomething like this, because we're pretty closeto that grass where you're trying to shootand that peak's probably what 4 or 5 miles away?We're going to drop this thing down to probably f/45Make sure nothing's moving(shutter sounds)there you got it!When I was in Japan I really loved thefabrics and textiles and things like thatI met like Issey Miyake andYamamoto Kansai, Yohji YamamotoI met these guys I was always in love withJapanese fabrics so the idea of beingable to print on these papers which youknow back in 2005 not a lot of peopleknew about that and they certainly didn'tknow about doing large platinum printsI think what it is is I cut my teeth inJapan so I always influenced byJapanese photographersand probably the one that influenced me mostwas Shinzo Maeda… incrediblephotographer lived up in Hokkaidoshot a lot of 4x5 and then he went toHasselblad square formatand then I would see all the locals you're talkingabout Kenro Izu and of courseSugimoto people like that moved to TokyoI had a degree in acupuncture soI went over there to further my studies inacupuncture and I decided thatit was going to be impossible to practicebecause of socialized medicine andI'd have to learn everything I already knewin English and Japanese whichI figured it was going to be another 7 years beforeI could take a test in Kanji so I kindof wentum - I think I'm going to justwait out a year and see how I like itherefell in love with the culture everythingwas new I mean it was literally like baby stepsI couldn't speak the languageyou would learn where you lived bylooking at buildings and you knowgeo-mapping with your brain (laughs)and then I just became involved more and more withthe cameras and you knowphotographing the countrysidethere were a lot offabulous shows that were always put onby department stores so you would gothere and it was…the photography was laid out just beautifullyjust wrapped around the entire department storemaybe sometimes five to seventhousand square feet big places you knowand then the photographer would be there andthe Japanese are kind of shythey would buy some booksevery now and then but you'd get tojust talking to these folks you knowHerb Ritts got to know him therefirst time I met Michael Kenna wasI was photographing in Meiji Jing and here'sthis guy was kind of curly hairwalking like right in the middle of where I wasphotographing I'm like ah…you know Michaeloh - so sorryhe just kind of fades throughof course he had shows at the Min Gallery at thattime and I think one of my breaks wasthatI was able to - my guarantors familyone of the daughters worked at a verylarge photo agency a stock photo agencycalled Amana at that timeit was Photonica Amana they were like thepremier one in Japan so I…she came up to me one yearthis is about the second year into Japanshe said you know I've seen some of your workyou could actually startyou could make some money doing thisI was like how do you make money takingphotographs of you know America in the Southwestand she goes well stock photographyyou had to have about 500 imagesin your portfolio showed thatand I think my first check at thattimewas like $1600I'm like god this is great you knowbut I mean I gradually worked intophotography I taught English for a whileI did transcribing because of whatI'd studied you know as far as medicalI was working with a lot of doctors whowere doing international speeches abroad soit was a very slow process you knowof going from transitioning into it sosomething you couldn't do overnight butI traveled and photographedworked up from 35mm to medium formateventually I was able to present a portfolioto Fujifilm which was 8x10 work and theytook me on to be a consultantfor some of their new films that they were coming outwith back in the days with the Proviaand the Astia those films andI traveled all over Americafor many many months with my now wifeand we would be gone for you know 5-6 monthsphotographing all over the States andCanada for FujifilmTokyo is what that time I think was 34 millionpeople I knew I could only go so faras a foreigner there I mean the bigcommercial jobs they werethey were taken up by the Japanese obviously it wasfunny I had a friend one time Mark Masonwho told me he says you know in Japan itslike most placesyou're nobodyuntil you're somebody from someplace elseI ended up moving back to Jackson Hole, WYin 2001 and we opened up thisgallery herebecause I've come through it I see work hereand I see work in Santa Fe in New Yorkand everything I thought was you knowI want to do a gallery I really want tostart all 8x10 workand I was able to do that because I was shooting andFuji was providing the filmdeveloping and they were doingmy shows in Tokyoit was all 8x10 and I thought wellI'll be at least one up on a lot of folksas far as quality I don't knowabout imagerybut you know quality soand about 2000 I think it was2005 or 2006 we started doing a lot more platinumwork prior to that I've been doing somesilver gelatin work with a lab calledHidden Light in Flagstaff, Arizonawith Stephen Saunders and Corey Allenand that transitioned intoplatinum and bromoil work tooin terms of prints that are challengingall prints for the printerthere is a challenge for the printer to understandwhat the vision of the photographer isbecause that's the onlything that mattersthe photographer wantsin my experiencethe print to beviewed by the client or by the viewerin a way that the viewer gets and understandswhat the photographer intendedand then once you're in sort of the photographer'shead a little bit you have the opportunityto technically produce the printsome of them are moretechnically demanding than others butyou can't even begin to try that tostart to know where you're going untilyou know this is what we're aiming forand sometimes you know you get a negativeor you get an image and you sayI don't really know where I want this to gowhere can it goand then it becomes thiscollaborative process of discoverywhere you sort of say you knowI've got this beautiful long exposureI don't know if I want it light or darkor ethereal or sharp where do we want to go with thisthere's so many variables that can beapplied to an image that you couldwind up with maybe a couple of different performancesfrom the same image andstill like them bothit's a pure palladium print which has a lot ofactually all of David's platinum palladium printsare pure palladium because of thecontrast and the aesthetic that we're looking forwe don't need the platinumfor this particular processand it's one of the more difficult ones to printone because of the size and two becauseall of these sort of continuous tones up hereand the incredible range that you havefrom the you know the really dark stuffunderneath the rocks and follow thatinto the extreme highlights it's verydifficult to get it to look rightand to get an even coat and to get it to do whatit's supposed to do so this is probably30 or 40 hours in this one printjust putting it togetherso from a pure palladium print they're typically prettywarm and they typically don'thave a lot of contrastfor platinum palladium prints butyou know they'll never compare tosilver gelatin contrast butwhen you have when you start adding platinum youstart getting contrastyou start cooling the tone a little bit and it gets alittle more interesting to developand this particular print is always done at140 degrees and so you lay the print downand you have to pour the developerand it has to go from edge to edgeand across the print in about a second orless and if you don't get it all the wayfull coverage you see streaks and theprint is ruined and you go do another oneand that's part of the processes you gotto learn how to do and that's one of the reasonsthat these enormous prints areso much more difficult than the little onesis you got to get because itdevelops instantlylike in a silver gelatin darkroom you can kind of watchthe print come up out of the chemistryand that's a magical sort ofexperience but with platinum palladiumor pure palladium in this case it's instantthis one was difficult but you knowit was only difficult from atechnical standpoint it wasn't difficultfrom the vision standpoint he knows whathe wants we just have to figure out away to put it together and that's our jobpeople say well why didn't you shootthis as large-formatbecause there was ever so slight breezeof course the leaves are kind of moving alittle bit and I was shooting this probably at about1/25th of a second f/5.6or something with the ISO8x10 it would've been a lot of slower it'dhave been a lot more mushy on the edgesand everything like that so the quality isthough - oh my god you could blow this -the detail's there and it'll go biggerit's a huge file and constantly whenI'm shooting I'm thinking okay my maxI'm going to go on length is going be 32 inchesbecause we classically frame everythingso 52 because the papers… well the glasssize 40 by 60 height wise 32 I've got tostop there so you just think of howwhat's it going to take to get it tothat size where the resolution is goingto be just impeccable and then youeither have to 8x10 or multiple shotsbecause you're not going to do it with135 unless you're going to be one of thosefolks that say well if you stand backit's probably about I don't know maybe2:00 in the afternoon light was up shootingstraight down on it but there were all theseleading lines that we're coming into ityou know into the print with this tree justilluminated I'm thinking this is going to makean incredible black and white if we can pull it offevery area of extreme highlightthat you see that needed you knowall of this up here it needed to beburned down it needed… it can't bethis can't be as bright as thisbecause when you lose you know the wholepoint of the image is incredible glowing treeso we ended up having to go back tosome interesting techniques and we usedrubylith masks on the paper to mask inand burn only this area and only this areaand some of this over hereafter you've printed the digital negativebecause of this size it costs youknow so much to print the negative andit will only go so far with your inkjet andyou can only get so much density inthose areasto make it look normalso sometimes you got to do both you do adigital negativewith you know a contactprint its over and then you also have to use someof the old-school burning anddodging techniques that you learned in high schooland the masking to really get that areato just sit on the edge of detail you cansee when it does and if we were to print this inplatinum it would look completelydifferent in pretty much every wayI was really bad in Japan when it came to themesthe Japanese would always saywell what's your TemaTema oh my god I hate that word Temawhat's your themebecause I just I couldn't stick with a themelike they're thinking 15 years fromnow are you still going to be doingseascapes you know around the world I'm likeno I mean god (laughs)I get rid of my wardrobe every six monthscome on I can't do thatI'm just not that's not me I'm much more spontaneousI had a friend one time he said you knowthe day that your signature becomes moreimportant than what's going onyour work has lost its soul and that is so trueand you just see that so often nowadays butmost photographers when I ask them I goSo who your collectors?they go oh I don't really have…so you're shooting for yourselfwell your expectations are not going to be that goodbecause you have to…you're cooking a meal for yourselfit's going to be not likeyou're cooking for your best friends orpeople you're wanting to cook forit always would just blow my mind whenI'd talk to people about tea ceremonyit's like well how long you been doing this?32 years…32 years?finally you figure out whyit takes because of every single phasehow you walk through it the motion themovement and that's what it's all aboutat some point you peak at some point you peakinto one little area but you get better in other little areasand you'renot doing the extreme stuff you used to dobut you're doing more subtle stuffyou know so and that's the length of anartistto reinvent yourself throughdifferent mediums or your style changesor you get a little bit better there sojust you know just keep goingthey say in Japanese - Isshoukenmeiyou just keep one step one step one stepget better get betteryou\n"