“Asked about whether he cropped his images he enthusiastically replied ‘yes! Always!’ which I found a refreshing change to the precious idea of the photographer composing exactly in the viewfinder. He said he used medium format and panoramic cameras because this allowed him to crop significantly while still maintaining quality. I found his description of his workflow quite interesting – he spends at least 2 hours a day examining his negatives using a loupe. From this he decides on the crop and how to best print the image. There was quite an interesting discussion about traditional versus digital printing techniques. Pentti said he used both (although he only used photoshop in the same way he uses darkroom techniques – he quipped that one day he may learn about layers!) digital allowed him to print much larger and at greater quality than traditional techniques, although he was not sure if the digital prints became so good that something was lost in them versus wet prints.”

(Via Michael Millmore – DPP Blog: Pentti Sammallahti: Side Gallery, Newcastle (18th February – 14 April 2012): .)