Winter Print Offer Will Start Sunday, February 13th

Our Charles Cramer Print Sale—TOP's Winter sale for 2010-11—is planned to commence at noon on Sunday, February the 13th.

If you're not familiar with our four seasonal print offers, what we do is take orders for a very limited time—just five days. The photographers can then produce prints in volume knowing they're already sold. This allows them to sell prints for far less than gallery prices, yet make more money on the sale as a whole. Win-win, as the saying goes.

In the case of our winter sale, the two pictures on offer will be well under half the usual price. Another big difference compared to gallery sales is that the photographer keeps 80% of the proceeds—about twice the percentage artists get from galleries. And the remaining 20% is the largest share of what keeps TOP churning merrily along in fine economic fettle.

Nary an aesthetic hiccup
We also try when we can to see that there's an aspect of technical interest to some of our sales.

In Charlie's case, it's "large format." Charlie went from shooting 4x5" film (above left) to shooting with the largest digital format (called "medium format backs" because they fit on medium-format film camera bodies, but really the digital large format) (right), and it essentially didn't interrupt his output at all. Working digitally is more convenient for him and allows him to do some things he couldn't with film, achieving a technical image quality almost as good as that of film—but the change introduced nary an aesthetic hiccup in the continuity of his work. Charlie has written about his transition elsewhere, but he'll talk about it here on TOP too, before the sale starts.

At any rate, one of the pictures we'll offer in our sale was taken with a 4x5 on film, and the other with a Phase One back. Proving nothing, but I'm rather fond of the parallelism to Charlie's body of work as a whole.

These sales are a lot of fun for me personally—they're probably the most fun thing I do. It's been great to work with Charlie, who is a true gentleman, and I hope you like at least one of the pictures we chose. Please come back the week of the 13th.

Mike

Photo credits: Keith Walklet (top), Bill Atkinson.

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Original contents copyright 2011 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved.

Comments

[erlik]

Mike, I think this article topped (ie, slashdotted :)) his server. First it didn't deliver all the thumbnails and now the server is down due to "maintenance or capacity problems"...

[paul logins]

"achieving a technical image quality almost as good as that of film"

I'm curious. What precisely does technical
image quality mean?

[Tyler Westcott]

I can't wait! I think it's great that you've decided to sample both his film work, and digital. From what I have seen, both are outstanding.

Who selects the photographs to be offered (and how)? I've been tempted to purchase a print for some time, but could not narrow down my selection on my own.

[David Paterson]

Charles Cramer has been one of my most favourite US landscape/nature photographers since I first started looking at websites. The opening image on his site (Cascade Creek) is wondrous.

[Craig Soars]

Having only heard of his name in passing, I took a look at his galleries and quite liked what I saw... quiet, contemplative landscapes with a good mix of subtle tone and details. Those are the ones that speak to me, rather than the pumped up golden hour vistas that populate many photo sharing sites.

Interestingly, I found a shot of his that incorporated a very familiar phenomenon.

http://www.charlescramer.com/imagesbg/y218.jpg

Compared to the hood failing to block out the light here:

http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4011/5121584316_d9e7836481_z.jpg

I admit his rendition is much more pleasing, but was a little amused none the less.

I look forward to seeing the prints.

[Larry Lourcey]

Looking forward to seeing more of your images. Hope the sales go well!

[g carvajal]

Pines, Emerging Arch, Kolob Canyon, Zion
this is wonderful.

[Mike Johnston]

"I think this article topped (ie, slashdotted :)) his server."

Are other people having problems? It's still working for me.

Mike

[ctein]

Dear Paul,

In contrast to aesthetics.

For example, in terms of technical image quality, Kodachrome was the finest grained, most accurate and sharpest color film for 4-5 decades (it was eclipsed in the various aspects in the late 1970s- late 1980s. But there are people to this day who think that aesthetically, it's never been surpassed. And others, like me, who never cottoned to it.

By referring to "technical image quality" Mike avoids getting into it with the folks who will claim that film "looks" better than digital... or vice-versa.

pax / Ctein

[Mike Jones]

"the folks who will claim that film "looks" better than digital", says Ctein. But are we talking inkjet prints or chromogenic prints?

PS. Largely agree with Ctein on the Kodachome.

[Dave Karp]

I enjoy Mr. Cramer's work very much. By far and away my favorite landscape photographer working in color.

[John Sarsgard]

Lovely work. Can't wait to see what's on offer. I live 50 miles from New York City, supposedly the photography capital of the world. Don't know of a landscape photographer with an active NYC gallery relationship except for Christopher Burkett. Just look at Charles's list of galleries on his site. I can walk around Carmel and see much more first class landscape work in one afternoon than I can see in NYC in a year, by orders of magnitude. Carl Weese's work in B&W and particularly platinum is wonderful, but the establishment here doesn't seem to recognize it. And in color, nobody since Eliot Porter died. I hope that's an exaggeration and somebody corrects me!