Printing Papers

I'm sorry, but I've been down a few rabbit holes over the last few days, which is awkward when the rabbit hole doesn't involve photography. Speakers and houses. I was all set to write a post about my pet peeves about house design (all 27 of them) when I thought, nah, I can't do that to my poor readers. They come here to read about photography.

Fortunately, the cavalry arrived over the hilltops, bugles blazing, in the form of a large, fat mailing tube in my mailbox. You remember my plan to offer a print of the "Mennonite Boys" picture? Well, the proofs arrived from Bob Rosinsky in Colorado. Bob is a photographer, a TOP reader, a custom printer, and a guy who has seen an inordinate number of UFOs.

And something happened that has never happened before: the prints inside were so good that there was nothing I need changed and nothing I would have done differently had I been doing it myself. That's never happened. Normally, what you do when someone else prints your pictures is that you send them a file, they send you a proof, and then you get to work: you tell them the changes you want, they apply them and send another proof, and then rinse and repeat until done. It can be anything from a small thing or two to a long, drawn-out process of many iterations. It can take weeks. And there's nothing wrong with that. It's just the process, just what it takes. It's normal.

The Maytag repairman
One of the best printmakers I ever had was a guy at a camera store, of all things. The store had an older employee who sat "in the back" at a big computer. He had one of the HP Z-series printers, 36" wide if memory serves or maybe 24", and you would sit there and look over his shoulder in real time while he did the Photoshop preparations, discussing options together, and then he ran the first proof off and you looked at that and went from there. It was great. The store didn't even charge a lot. I thought I'd use him going forward, but about the fourth time I went in to have a print made, the old guy was gone, replaced by a kid who had obviously just been trained. Apparently the old guy just found himself sitting around back there with no customers too much of the time, and he got tired of it. Oh well.

I get the feeling Bob really slaved over these. Plus, he's been seeing my pictures here since 2007, and he has absorbed a sense of how I like my pictures to look. He gave me samples of four different papers: Moab Lasal Exhibition Lustre 300, Hahnemühle Photo Rag Baryta, Moab Lasal Photo Matte, and Epson Hot Press Natural.

We had already decided to offer a small print on 11x14" paper based on the recent print size poll, but it's the large image floated on 17x22" Epson Hot Press Natural that's the real stunner. It's just gorgeous. Bob did a fantastic job—it's not easy to get dark contrast to print right, much less when you have large blobs of bright light that have to have the transitions look right. He corrected the verticals perfectly. He printed the big one to look right in room light—in other words, on a wall. If you flood it with strong light, the darks will look a little weak; but in more subdued normal room light, it comes alive and sings. So we'll offer a small one, but I have to offer the large one as well. It couldn't have turned out better. I'm very proud of it. (And relieved that the print worked—it didn't have to, with that file. There's no disappointment quite like a file you love on the screen that doesn't print.)

With the help of a friend (I don't usually name people until I'm sure I'm going to use their services, in the way I didn't name Bob until now—these folks are professionals, and I want to preserve their anonymity in case we decide not to work together), we're planning a new sale page, and it looks like we're going to be able to have a permanent store. So maybe the small low-cost print will be the offering in the print sale, and the large print will be available on an ongoing basis in the new store. We'll see how all that works out.

Curiously, Bob and I agree that we like the Hahnemühle print the least with this image, which is only worth remarking on because we both expected to like it the best! Some papers just look better with specific images, that's all. You can think all you want and assume all you want, but you've got to see it with your eyes before you can make up your mind.

I have a bit more news on this front, but I'll put it in another post.

Mike

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Comments

[Joe]

Bob's photos of UFOs are really wonderful!

[Graeme Scott]

I love Bob Rosinsky's work.

[glenn]

I like the photo and I can't stop thinking it would be more interesting in colour, black foreground with muted colour background. Not criticizing your work but sometimes I photograph a scene in colour and afterwards convert to B/W.

[DB]

I think you should re-center your writing here (or elsewhere) around design. You have a good eye, and write well about it. A bigger canvas, too.