Photo Printing | Photocrati https://www.photocrati.com WordPress Themes for Photographers Mon, 14 Dec 2009 15:51:23 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.3.1 https://www.photocrati.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/cropped-PhotocratiICON_onWhite2018-32x32.png Photo Printing | Photocrati https://www.photocrati.com 32 32 Printed Portfolios https://www.photocrati.com/printed-portfolios/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=printed-portfolios https://www.photocrati.com/printed-portfolios/#comments Sat, 14 Nov 2009 23:52:23 +0000 http://www.photocrati.com/?p=10201 Even in this world of online meetings, websites and blogs we need a printed portfolio book to show prospects. I’m in the process of re-doing my books so I’ve been researching this pretty heavily.

My old (current) book. Moab Chinle 8x8
My old (current) book. Moab Chinle 8x8

The format and styling of your book will depend greatly on who you’re marketing to as well as your own personal style. A wedding book is not going to be anything like a commercial book which won’t necessarily look like a pj book. In general here are a few nuggets of wisdom I’ve been able to scrounge in my research.

1. Size Between 8×10 and 11×14. Any smaller and they can’t get a good idea of your work. Any larger and it’s just too big to work with. Remember your target audience and where they are going to be viewing it. Imagine trying to lift, lug and flip through a book that’s 13×17 (which opens to 26×17) inside a cubicle.

2. Number of images This will depend greatly on your genre and type of work you do. Generally, between 40-75 images is a good range. Again, depending on the type of work you do, this will vary. Also, 35 blow-their-socks-off images are far better than 35 “blow-their-socks-off” images and 25 “meh” images.

3. Layout Digital printing and inkjet printers have made interesting layouts possible for portfolios. We’re no longer limited to one image per page. If you want to do that, fine, but don’t feel restricted. Think multiple images per page, two page spreads, and negative space. Note: Use a professional graphic designer!!

4. Printing Simply put, the best you can find. You may be able to print top-notch images on your inkjet printer, if so, great. But don’t skimp here. Many of the online photo book producers use 133- or 150-line halftone printing. That’s fine for a magazine, but this is your baby. Do it right. If the printing is off, the only thing your viewer will remember is “Something was wrong with that book.”

5. Sleeves are evil Really evil, like Dick Cheney (or Nancy Pelosi) evil. They glare, they get creased and scratched and they smell funny. They get in the way of your images.

6. Interchangeability is good If possible, use a system that allows for interchangeable pages (aside from sleeves). Show your book enough times and one of the pages will get messed up. Someone will spill coffee on it; or it will get penned, or creased. It would sure be nice to be able to pull one or two bad pages rather than replacing the entire book.

7. How many? Probably two or three. Again, depending on your market and the type of work you do, you will need at least one to keep handy at all times, and probably one or more to send out. If you have an agent, sales rep or marketing help, you’ll need more copies.

8. Customize Put your name on and in the book. It seems like a no-brainer,   but you’d be surprised at how many times art buyers see a great book and then have to hunt for whose work it is. On my old drop portfolio I even put my FedEx number on the back. (Of course, it still took forever to come back!)

There are several great companies that produce materials and books for photographers’ portfolios. Some links below…

Lost Luggage

Case Envy

Moab Paper

Brewer Cantelmo

House of Portfolios

Asuka Book

Blurb

Pina Zangaro

This list is by no means comprehensive, if you know of more please leave comments. Thanks!

]]> https://www.photocrati.com/printed-portfolios/feed/ 14 Choosing a Print Technology https://www.photocrati.com/choosing-a-print-technology/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=choosing-a-print-technology https://www.photocrati.com/choosing-a-print-technology/#comments Wed, 14 Oct 2009 23:30:26 +0000 http://www.photocrati.com/?p=9603

Kali Climber
Kali Climber, Buttermilks, Eastern Sierra, California

I’ve been thinking recently about digital printing technologies, and pondering possible changes in how I print my own images.

Most photographic printing today is done digitally. Digital printing excited me as a young photographer, promising a lot more control over the color of my prints, along with repeatability–promises that have been largely, if not entirely, honored over the years. Most digital printing today takes one of two forms. In inkjet (you may see the word “giclée”) printing, dyes or pigments are sprayed through nozzles onto paper or other surfaces. In what I often call “digital enlargement”, traditional light-sensitive “chromogenic” photographic papers (by traditional, I mean the papers and chemistry used in darkroom printing) are processed traditionally after having been exposed via digitally-controlled lasers or LEDs, rather than via projecting light through a slide or negative onto the paper.

I came to use the latter technology in the 1990s. At that point, the reasons for doing so were clear, inkjet technology was still in it’s infancy, and suffered from severe problems with longevity, making serious inkjet prints was out of the question. Early attempts to solve this ran into embarrassing ozone sensitivity and later metamerism.  Those troubles left me gun-shy; the chemistry, and therefore the longevity, of photographs using traditional chemistry was not perfect but was well-understood. Nothing wrong with sticking with something that works.

But over the years, much progress has been made. Epson and other vendors are now producing inkjet paper and ink combinations which are much better understood in terms of longevity. Moreover, most of the better inkjet processes avoid a longevity problem traditional photographic papers face–fading in the face of ultraviolet light from the sun or from florescent light bulbs. (When I frame prints I use ultraviolet-blocking glass, but not all framers will do this by default.) The increasing pressure to move to compact florescent bulbs represents a threat to the longevity of the photographs I sell, and is part of what has led me to look at inkjets. Additionally, chromogenic prints are somewhat acidic, and are best matted using mat board that isn’t chemically buffered, but such mat boards are less common.

Inkjets offer other advantages too, a greater variety of surfaces on which to print (I’ve seen beautiful inkjet prints made directly onto aluminum and canvas, not to mention fine art papers). It’s also possible to own and maintain one’s own inkjet printer, that just isn’t an option in the digital enlargement process.

There are differences in the gamuts of the two types of technologies (and big differences in the gamuts of specific inkjet technologies, too.) My signature image “Kali Climber” has printed on the Lightjet with a cyan shift in the saturated midtone sapphire blue of the upper sky. The chemistry simply does not support a midtone blue as the blue which that slide contains, because the (printed) image is produced with a mix of cyan, magenta, yellow and black dyes. Inkjet printing technologies that start with different color “primaries” have different strengths and weaknesses in the gamut (range) of colors they can reproduce.

Of course, it needn’t be “one or the other”–and in fact, I’m pretty sure that no matter how I end up working in general there will be times when a different technology,  or at least a different paper, will be precisely the right tool for a job. I recently tried a print of one of my waterfall images on Fuji Pearl, which has a metallic appearance, and the print took on a whole new life as a result, it’s already given me ideas for a new project. But for the bulk of my images? I have yet to decide.

I’d love to hear your own thoughts on this.  What printing technologies are you using right now?  Why did you choose that method? Are you happy with the decision?  Drop me a comment, I’m curious…

]]>
https://www.photocrati.com/choosing-a-print-technology/feed/ 4
Photo labs https://www.photocrati.com/photo-labs/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=photo-labs https://www.photocrati.com/photo-labs/#respond Thu, 09 Apr 2009 22:46:54 +0000 http://www.photocrati.com/?p=1032

My how times have changed. I remember spending long nights in my darkroom processing black and white film and prints. I also remember making last minute runs to the color labs to drop off my E-6 and C-41, then patiently waiting to run back to pick-up my order, most times ripping open the boxes of slides or prints and looking through them right there as the cashier was running my credit card. Yeah – times have really changed. It’s amazing that not that long ago, we actually had patience. We had to wait to see our images; that’s outrageous, waiting to see photos? No LCD screen for a preview a fraction of a second after you press the shutter? We actually had to wait, sometimes as long as five days if it were Kodachrome. Now that I think about it, I’m pretty impressed with the level of patience I had back then, back when my ancestors and I used to shoot “film”. It’s amazing how much our level of patience has changed, now I get frustrated if I just fired off a burst and the camera is actually recording the image, how dare it deprive me of instant gratification! That’s the world we live in – instant gratification. I think it’s the instant gratification that led me to think about how print delivery has changed. There are many online photo labs out there in this virtual shopping center. The popular big names such as Kodak, Shutterfly and even retail giants such as Walgreens and CVS are all getting involved with ordering your photos online. For me, I don’t want to order my professional portrait photos from the same place where I buy my cough drops. I did some research and found and tested a few online labs. For me, I decided on MPIX.com, so far they have been a great resource when it comes to online ordering. Their gallery wrapped prints are beautiful as are their books. I’ve only had one hiccup, which happened to be with my own personal order. They forgot to ship envelopes with my Christmas Cards this past holiday season, but that was quickly remedied with an email to customer service. I had the envelopes two days later so there was no harm done. Their web interface tends to stall sometimes with my iMac but again it may just be my lack of patience. Overall I am very happy with them. Their quality control is outstanding as is their papers selection, color correction and communication. They recently added wall clings, similar to Fatheads, I haven’t tried them yet but plan to in the future. I’ve heard from other photographers about their labs but right now, I don’t feel a need to change.

]]>
https://www.photocrati.com/photo-labs/feed/ 0