RF-Photography

If you’ve linked to this sub-article from the main Colour Management 101 post, then you’re probably looking for information on getting your display profile even more accurate.  The information in the main article will work quite well and with some profiling solutions with feature limited software, may be the only way to go.

For those who are doing more serious printing or other commercial work and who have profiling hardware with more advanced software, the following discussion may be useful. Advanced Display Profiling, con't >

I’ve completed the transition from a standard website format to the WordPress format for the website.  Use the nav. bar at the top or the page menu on the right sidebar to navigate through the site.

The Lighthouse section from the old site has also been moved over and will be added to over time.

A new page for Commercial photography and services has been added including a selection of images from past assignments.

Canvas has become a very popular printing media with the explosion of digital photography and digital printing.  Canvas can impart a very appealing texture and painterly look to a photo.  In addition to printing on canvas, the gallery wrap has become a well used method of presenting the canvas print.  The gallery wrap can be hung as an unframed piece which helps cut down on costs and the look has a finished yet unfinished look that many find appealing.

A gallery wrap is done by stretching the canvas around a set of stretcher bars and stapling the canvas to the back of the stretchers.  These are the same kinds of wooden stretchers painters have used for centuries.  Some will say that only the thicker, 1 1/2″ stretchers can be called a gallery wrap and anything smaller (e.g., the 3/4″ size) is referred to as a museum wrap.  Personally, I distinguish the two this way – A gallery wrap is fully wrapped around the stretchers and stapled on the back.  The sides that wrap around the stretcher frame is either a colour (as opposed to the canvas white) or an the actual image itself.  In this case, whether the heavier 1 1/2″ or smaller 3/4″ stretchers are used, the stretched piece can be hung without a frame.  A museum wrap is stapled on the side of the stretcher doesn’t wrap fully around and the sides of the canvas may or may not be coloured or an extension of the image.  A museum wrap is intended to be framed.

What if we don’t want to lose any of the image by wrapping it around the stretcher?  Then we either need to find a way to fill the edges of the canvas with a solid colour or to extend the image fully to the edges.  This tutorial will walk you through the steps to extend the image to the edges of the canvas but not lose any when the piece is wrapped.  Huh?  Read on. Canvas Ext, con't >

Digital photography – which includes digital printing via high quality inkjet printers – has made a wider variety of printing surfaces available as like never before.

We have glossy and matte, warm and cool, smooth and textured, as we had in the past in the darkroom and these surfaces are getting better and better all the time, particuarly with the introduction of the fibre-based papers that have come on the market recently. Aside from the standard glossy and matte, we also have specialised surfaces like canvas and even metal. If you’ve not seen a print on metal, they really can be quite striking.

With all these choices available, it makes choosing the right surface to print a photo on even more important. There are lots of opinions out there on how to choose the right paper for the image and what follows is mine.

Right now, canvas is the hot item. It’s new. It’s cool. It’s different. Well, maybe not so different anymore. It seems like canvas is being used by a lot of photographers for a lot of images that would look better on another surface.  It’s almost become cliché, which is unfortunate.

When it comes to printing, I categorise media into two types – hard and soft. Hard are those surfaces that hold finer detail better, provide a crisp appearance, generally have a better colour gamut, more vibrant colours, better DMax and are typically harder to the touch. Gloss, semi-gloss, lustre would fit into this category. As would metal, obviously. Soft are the papers that offer, generally, more muted colours (albeit only slightly in some cases), a lower DMax, provide a more painterly look, a softer look and are softer to the touch. Pretty much just the opposite of hard papers. Things like Velvet Fine Art, watercolour, museum rag, textured rag and canvas are these types of media. A paper like Epson’s Ultrasmooth Fine Art can fit into both but in general the printing media available on the market will fit into one of those two categories. Printing Surface, con't >

…. that is the question (with a nod to Mr. Shakespeare for the phrasing).

I’ve been asked from time to time about my thoughts on editioning prints. There are staunch voices on both sides of the question.

My basic thought is ‘why would I’?

When does editioning make sense and who does it make sense for?

For the vast majority of working photographers, my feeling is editioning serves little purpose other than to puff up egos. Unless someone is a very well known photographer whose prints command prices in the thousands of dollars and who can basically guarantee that an edition will sell out and for whom a limited edition series will increase initial sale prices, I don’t see how it makes sense. For the great many of us who aren’t very well known and whose prints don’t command thousands of dollars, how does editioning benefit them (us)? It’s not likely to increase initial selling prices so there’s no benefit there. It may increase secondary market prices at some point in the future but that still doesn’t benefit the photographer who sold the print initially. Unless an edition can be virtually guaranteed to sell out, editioning may actually do more harm than good. If an edition of, say, 200 prints is announced, but only 100 sell; the market thinks there are 200 in circulation but there are only 100. Maybe, if the edition had been limited to 100, initial selling prices could have been higher. Editioning, con't >