The Festive Season is over and life returns to normal. Whatever normal is! I had a pretty quiet Christmas here in the peaceful little town where I make my home. It's pretty much the way that I like to celebrate the season. I firmly believe that most people tend to stress out a little too much about the holidays. ( See my blog from a few years ago about the subject. http://multifarious-musings.blogspot.ca/2011/12/ghosts-of-christmas-past.html )
This year I acquired a new printer. My old printer, a Canon MX-870, is working just fine and has been a very useful and reliable machine. The prints that it produces from my digital files are awesome. In terms of colour quality and resolution, they are superior to anything that I have had done at photography shops or local print kiosks.In addition to being my primary photo printer, it also scans, functions as a photocopier and even faxes. ( who the hell sends faxes anymore? It's a feature that I've never used.) Needless to say, I'm keeping it. The only problem I have with it is it's limited capability in terms of picture size. It can only print up to 8"X10". Well actually 8½" X 11" but 8"X10" for easier framing and presentation purposes.
Enter my newest acquisition, a Canon Pixma Pro 100. It doesn't scan, make photocopies or send faxes. It would be nice if it brewed me a decent cup of coffee but, alas, it doesn't do that either. What it does is make beautiful photographic prints up to 13"X19". It is a printer designed and built specifically for photographic reproduction. Also it was on sale and I got a pretty good deal on it!
So why, in this day of the internet and digital imaging would a photographer have not only one, but two photo printers? It almost makes no sense.
I don't really know the reason, but people seem to like hard copy photographs. My fledgling, part-time photo business is based around the sale of postcards and framed prints of local scenes. I have yet to make a single sale of a digital image.I have provided copies of digital images on thumb drives for the local events that I have covered and they don't (or haven't as yet) even get posted on social media pages. When I photographed "Jingle Bell Night" for the local B.I.A., I handed out business cards to people whose photos I took. I wrote down the number for the image on the back of each card and offered to send them a digital copy of the image if they just sent me an e-mail. I was doing this service at no cost to them as I had already been paid by the B.I.A. I didn't get even one request for a digital image! But I can sell prints.
Maybe hard copy photo prints have become something of a novelty. Almost everyone I know is walking around with a cell phone that has dozens of digital mages of events, family and friends. I sometimes wonder if anyone keeps a traditional family album anymore. There are good reasons for doing so. It's easier to share. I can't tell you how many times I've felt a little awkward looking over someones shoulder while they try to show me their pictures, twisting and turning the cell phone to make the image visible in whatever light was available. It's always easier and more fun to look at a family photo album around the kitchen table. And a nicely framed photo, hanging on the wall, in a room with decent lighting is easily visible to almost everyone.
Also, the relatively simple act of matting and framing a photo for mounting on a wall gives it a degree of distinction. If Marshall McLuhan was right and "The medium is the message.", then it seems to me that the choice of an image to be enlarged and displayed in a permanent or semi-permanent manner, says a lot about the importance of that image to its owner. Even the casual photographer has hundreds, if not thousands, of images from which to choose. It says that there is a story behind the photo. A memory of place and time that gives the image some significance.
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| "Manitoulin Sunrise" Long time readers of my blogs will recognize this image. The story behind it is here. |
This is the first large (13"X19") print made with my new printer. It is a very significant image for me. Although I had been taking pictures with film cameras since I was nine years old, I had been on something of a hiatus from photography as digital imaging started to dominate the craft. This was one of the first digital images I ever took. It marked a turning point for me in returning to photography, this time, working in the realm of digital imaging. Besides all that, I think it's just a damn pretty picture!
Then there is the concept of value. Millions of images are uploaded to the internet every day. Anyone on social media takes a moment or two to admire an image posted by friends and family. But, that's about it. The internet has given us all a very short attention span. On this blog post, I've included links to two previous posts. I can only wonder if anybody has actually clicked on them to read my little past blurbs which have existed in cyberspace for years. Probably not. I am thankful enough that anyone reads these posts at all, much less that they would read the posts in my archives. But if I can show you some prints, the images become real. They are something tangible that you can hold in your hand. They are no longer just a passive array of electrons on a computer screen, to be admired for an instant before scrolling on to the next item. Perhaps that is the reason that I can sell prints but not digital imagery.
So, with the acquisition of my newest printer, my plan is to spend much of the long winter nights making prints. Smaller ones will be put into family albums. Larger ones will be framed and hung on my wall or sold through the retailers that market my stuff. Don't worry. I'll still find time to go out and take some new photos. But hey, it's cold outside... and I'm getting older... I don't thaw out as quick as I used to.... and it gets dark too early and....
...more later
