Good morning! 👋 

I hope you had a great weekend. Hopefully, you took some photos 📸 and maybe watched a little football. 🏈

We got some actual snow in NYC, 🌨️ and it’s stuck around. I am about 2/3rds through a roll of Ilford HP5+, so I need some snowy cityscape ideas to finish it out.

Here’s what I’ve got for you today:

1. 🖨️ Printing your work (not what you think)

2. 🥶 Properly storing your film

🖨️ Printing your work (not what you think)

Print your work! I’ve said it before, and I will keep saying it because it’s true. Printing your work and looking at it, not on a computer screen, will make you a better photographer. But I don’t want to talk about using a printing service or a really expensive printer. Quite the opposite. I want to talk about a cheap printer that makes small, not-very-good prints—and why it’s great. 🤩 

Getting a nice, big, professional print is great. But it’s expensive. 💸 So unless you’re made of money, you’re going to reserve a professional print to only your absolute best photographs. This makes it very difficult to view your work as a whole.

An exercise that I’ve found very helpful is to take a step back and look at my whole body of work. In doing so, I can start to see patterns. What subjects do I photograph the most? Are there things I keep coming back to? I’m nowhere close to understanding my “style,” but looking at my work as a whole helps me see where I might be heading. 

But why do I need to print my work to do this? I could use collections and filters in Lightroom to see chunks of my work together. But it’s just not the same as physically holding your photograph. I can see everything laid out on the table and I can move and arbitrarily group images effortlessly. I can pair and sequence images with no friction (this is particularly helpful if you’re putting together a book). It’s a tactile experience that a computer just can’t replicate.

When I was looking for a printer for this purpose, I had a few requirements:

1. The printer needed to be cheap.

2. The paper and ink needed to be cheap.

3. It needed to be fast.

The second point is really important. The whole purpose of this exercise is to print work you may not be in love with. If paper or ink is expensive, you’re going to hesitate to print that so-so picture. I wanted low stakes printing. I didn’t want to be precious about it.

So, this is what I got. The Canon SELPHY CP1500 Compact Photo Printer. It’s perfect for this use case. It’s the right size print, not too expensive, and it connects over WiFi, so it’s easy to use.

You don’t need this exact printer, I’m sure there are other ones out there that would work just as well. But the point is to get something that allows you to print a photograph without hesitation. It’s the only way I know of that will let you print enough photographs to view your work as a whole.

🥶 Properly store your film

Unlike memory cards, film has an expiration date. You absolutely can use expired film, but the best way to extend its longevity is to store it properly.

Heat is bad for film because it speeds up the degradation of film. It can cause colors to shift and a loss of contrast. Humidity makes things even worse—fog or mold can grow on the film.

It’s best to store your film in a fridge or even a freezer if you’re not going to use it for years. The cold slows down the chemical reactions that cause the issues with film.

You don’t need to have a dedicated fridge just for film. However, if you do, a small beverage fridge is a good choice.

Here are some things to keep in mind:

• ✅ Store your film in the fridge or freezer, if for extended periods of time.

• ✅ Keep your film in its packaging.

• ✅ Use a Ziploc bag to keep moisture out.

• ✅ Allow the film to reach room temperature before loading it into your camera. I’m guilty of not doing this. 🫢 It’s usually ok, but you run the risk of condensation building on the film, which can ruin things.

• ❌ Keep the film away from heat. If a fridge isn’t an option, store it in a cool, dry place.

• ❌ Avoid the door of the fridge - things get banged around on the door and the temperature fluctuates the most.

That’s it for this week. Thanks for reading, I’ll see you again next week.

Ben Henschel

📷️ Canon A1 / 🎞️ Ilford HP5+