Leica S-Series Print Offer: Jack MacDonough

Why a Leica S? Jack MacDonough's 2x3-foot print is intended to let you see for yourself. Taken at Mirror Lake, New Hampshire.

The short story: As regular readers know, we're trying a "print a month" experiment with our print offers. We plan to try it for a while and see how it goes.

Here's our June 2014 offer, a gorgeous 24x36" lakescape by Jack MacDonough made with a Leica S2 and Leica Summarit-S 35mm ƒ/2.5 ASPH lens. We planned this offer to let people see for themselves an example of what the Leica S-series cameras and lenses can do.

It's printed on Canson Platine Fibre Rag by Jack's longtime collaborator, expert photoprintmaker Joe Donovan of Sunfish Lake, Minnesota (near St. Paul).

The print ships in a tube and costs $395, and is available this week only (offer ends on Friday at 7:30 p.m. Central U.S. time). Shipping is $30 to anywhere in the world.

["Buy" button removed—sale ended at noon, 6/14/2014]

• Your PayPal payment constitutes your order, with no need to send a separate email.

• If you need the print to go to an address that's different from your PayPal address, please click "Add Special Instructions to the Seller" on the PayPal form.

• If you'd like to pay by mailed check, please email Jack [link removed] to make arrangements.

More details after the break!

The long story: In Jack MacDonough's last "day job," he was the CEO of Miller Brewing Company (now MillerCoors). That's salient because he rose to that position chiefly through the marketing departments of the world's largest breweries. So as you might expect, Jack knows marketing.

And in his "retirement" career, he quite naturally applied his marketing skills to his work as an enthusiastic part-time photographer—his true calling now. He specializes in large and extremely large prints for public spaces, corporations, and public buildings of many types. His largest-ever print is a full 2x3 yards (about 1.83x2.75 meters). It's a picture of the celebration after Super Bowl XLV at Lambeau Field, created for the Green Bay Packers Hall of Fame.

I guess it should be no surprise, but his marketing chops, added to his photographic skills, have enabled him to achieve a pretty stunning level of success in our business. More success (I'm almost reluctant to report) than most of us achieve in lifelong careers. He's now one of an elite few photographers who make a very good living selling prints, which, as you might know, is a niche within a niche in the photo world. (In the '70s, I read that there were a total of six (six!) people in the United States making their livings exclusively from the sale of fine art prints.)

To give you an idea, his standard price for a large 7.5x5-foot print is $17,500, and he recently delivered a multi-print order to a private client (he usually sells to corporations) with a total bill of many tens of thousands of dollars.

(I should really get him to do a post or two about how to market and sell photographs—I'm sure more than a few people would be interested in that.)

I thought this was amusing: at lunch the other day, he dropped the following into the middle of our conversation: "...I remember the first time I sold a print for more than four figures...." I laughed and remarked that there are very, very few photographers alive who could say what he had just said. (I've never sold one print for as much as four figures.) Our June print at this 2x3' size would normally be priced at $3,500, and that's not a theoretical price—it's what he charges, and gets. The price for this week only is $395.

Jack and Leica
Jack's one of the few photographers I know who got into the medium-format Leica based mainly on need. His work needed the extra resolution and lens sharpness. With his larger prints, he gets a much better keeper rate with his S2 than with his former full-frame DSLRs.

For more than a year now, Jack and I have been plotting the best way to offer TOP readers a good up-close-and-personal glimpse of what a Leica S (his camera is the S2) is capable of. The 40x60" is amazing and quite fun, but too large for most homes. So we settled on a 24x36" (2x3-foot) print as one that would let the Leica strut its stuff. It seems like an ideal size for this image to me.

Here's a nice example of one thing that can be done with all that resolution: Jack recently sold a triptych for a Manhattan apartment made from the very same picture we're selling today. Each set of rocks was enlarged to 24x24", which is equivalent to a 60x90" overall print size:

As Jack says, "when you print large, you need and can justify very high resolution—and camera investments." The triptych version (you can buy your own for $3,800) is now in the collection of the publisher of AFAR magazine.

Jack holding a 40x60" version of the print that's now in the collection of the North American Curator of Prints for the Kew
Royal Botanic Gardens in London

Note that the JPEG above makes the picture look like it's too contrasty. Jack and his printer Joe Donovan work obsessively on getting the details right. I saw the final three variations at that lunch I mentioned earlier. I was very impressed with Joe's printing skill—he's studied with George DeWolfe, Rodney Smith, Charles Cramer and John Sexton—and the lengths to which the two of them go to arrive at the best print. Our print  really has presence, and the quality is just inspiring.

Jack and I will have a few stories related to the print to tell you in the coming week.

If you have any questions, please ask in a comment. Hope you like TOP's June print offer!

Mike

["Buy" button removed—sale ended at noon, 6/14/2014]

• Your PayPal payment constitutes your order, with no need to send a separate email.

• If you need the print to go to an address that's different from your PayPal address, please please click "Add Special Instructions to the Seller" on the PayPal form.

• If you'd like to pay by mailed check, please email Jack [link removed] to make arrangements.

Original contents copyright 2014 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

(To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below.)
Featured Comments from:

Nigel Johnson: "A beautiful image even as a JPEG. I have two related questions: Is 2 ft. x 3 ft. the size of the print or the size of the image area? What is the other size, image or print as appropriate?"

Jack replies: Image is 24x36". Paper is 28x38" allowing a 2" border. The paper is sized to allow use of a 30" tube. Using a tube larger than 30" doubles the mailing cost internationally.

toto: "Are the prints signed?"

Mike replies: No. Jack does sign his full-priced prints, but these will not be. They may, however, be stamped on the back! We're still thinking about that.

Comments

[Bencr]

I've been trying to figure out how to rationalize the investment in a print like this for a while (it looks lovely from the jpegs and I'm sure in person it is spectacular), but I live in the tropics and any print I've had on the wall eventually succumbs to the humidity. :-(

[Hmm, I wonder what the L of C Preservation Department would say about that. I'm framing a print for the porch of a lake house that sometimes gets dense fog and windblown rain, and we're going to encapsulate it between two pieces of Plexi with waterproof tape around the edges. We're just having trouble finding a molding that will cover the tape entirely. --Mike]

[MikeR]

I don't know if you can use this. I found it on Amazon, reviews of the S2:

"I think this camera is pretty great. I bought my children two each and they love using them in the summer. I have tons of pictures of my kids running through the sprinklers and playing with my dog. I am kind of upset they aren't water proof though. But every camera has its faults, right? Still, great quality and I feel like I can see every pore on my childs body (albeit kinda creepy). Great camera for the money! I'm looking to buy my 3rd one once I sell my trailer home."

The reviewer is Hermione Granger. Methinks 'tis a gag review.

[You think? --Mike]

[Michel]

It looks really lovely. I hope someone in my area will order one and invite me to see it. I promise to bring the wine and canapés so it feels like a proper gallery experience. I'm in Rhode Island if someone wants to take me up in the offer.

Good luck with the sale.

[Andrea G. Blum]

I'm so excited by your Photoprint of the Month Club idea as a way to add to my small, but growing collection of printed photographs.

But - a question about photos which are shipped rolled: how do you flatten them so that they can be framed? I have not done well with flattening so far - in the frame the photo tends to want to roll back up and stick to the glass.

[Timprov]

(I should really get him to do a post or two about how to market and sell photographs—I'm sure more than a few people would be interested in that.)

Yes, please. I'm especially interested in how one gets those corporate spots.

For Bener, I've had an acrylic sandwich from whitewall.com, which I picked up to see if they were a good option for my medium-size panoramas, in my high-humidity test spot for a little over a year with no negative results. There are quite a few photographers selling these and similar sealed things.

[John Krill]

I'm really curious what his camera of choice was before the Leica S. Also to what degree was the quality of the 'S' that much better than his previous camera.

I don't usually ask this type of question and I will NEVER be in the market for either his old camera or the Leica but, hey, I gotta know.

[Roger Dunham]

Jack

Great work and impressive results . Best of luck with the print sale .

Roger Dunham

[Chris Kurmann]

I'm worried about this print. If the quality really appeals to me I'll a new excuse for why my current setup doesn't cut it.

All the best with the sale.

[Tony Collins]

For preserving a print in the tropics how about having a double glazing supplier put it into a sealed unit? For the DIY option with plexiglass I'd experiment with a ring of silicone sealent gluing the rim of the two sheets with waterproof tape for luck?

[bencr]

Thanks for the suggestions. I'm afraid I'm probably looking at a DIY approach. I have yet to find a local framer that provides acrylic products. Shipping from the states would be prohibitively expensive. I will look around and see what materials I can get down here and experiment on my own prints. I wouldn't want my first attempt to ruin a Jack MacDonough masterpiece!

I've also been considering not framing prints at all. Allowing air circulation around the print may help. I've got my books on shelving units that don't have backs and I try not to pack them too tightly because books have the same problem.

[scott]

drat, just when I made a comment earlier this week that none of the prints were enough to my taste to make me buy them at any price, this one comes along that I absolutely love, and the price, while outstanding in relative terms, is still high in absolute terms (let's face it, most of us mortals don't just have $400 laying around to spend on a whim). drat, drat, drat...but it's a great problem to have. awesome image!!!

[Slobodan Blagojevic]

"... how to market and sell photographs... how one gets those corporate spots."

First, become a CEO of a major American corporation ;-)

[Kurt Kamka]

Jack, lovely photo. I'll bet that it looks gorgeous in a large size. How large have you printed an image for a client? And how expensive does that get? I also noticed that you are a triptych master. Triptych's are an interesting way to market images for someone who is looking for a coordinated look between images in an architectural space. How large are you able to print your triptychs taken with the S2?

[Bob Rosinsky]

If he throws in a few kegs, I may press the trigger.