When you spend time with a photographer like Paul Strand you see what originality looks like, especially in the context of his times (1890-1976). In this book published in Aperture's Masters of Photography series, I saw photographs from 1915 that looked like they could have been taken yesterday. I was particularly struck by his abstracted studies of light and shadow. By the way, the quality of prints in this book was quite high. You could see a wonderful range of values and detail in all of Strand's black & white photos.

Later in the day I was surprised to discover that my own work holds up well when seen in print.

This week I bought my first photo printer, an Epson Stylus R2400. If you're familiar with photo printers you know this model has received consistently excellent reviews, especially for black & white printing jobs. It is also very expensive. I had a hard time talking myself into buying it. In fact I first bought the Epson Stylus R1400. But after printing a few color shots I could see that I wasn't getting the quality I'd hoped for. And I also knew from all the reviews that its black & white prints were weaker than the color. Since most of the photos I intended to print were B&W, it seemed shortsighted not to go ahead and get the best printer for the job. So I returned the R1400 and bought the R2400 instead. Today I set it up.

My first prints were of my Dualities. I didn't even bother with color but only focused on the B&W images. I printed seven of them on Epson's double-sided matte paper. I could not be more pleased! The tonality, range of values, crisp detail and accurate reproduction literally takes my breath away. To my eye, this series looks better in print than it does on screen.

Holding your photos in your hands is very different from seeing them on the computer. They become real. For the first time I feel like a real photographer. And it feels good. My intention is to print out and submit my Dualities to a respected photographic magazine that specializes in portfolios. I now see the investment I made in buying a high quality photo printer was worth it. And all it took was believing in myself. Why was that so hard?