This image is one I did last year.
It was printed on an oversized postcard by the client,
Zach Theatre. (they sent it out to a digital printing company)
I got a credit for the photograph.
They probably sent out 30,000 to my local market.
That's the kind of printing I like best.
I bought into it hook, line and sinker. At one point many years ago there were multiple printers strewn about my office. One for printing 17 inch wide color prints, another festooned with six different tanks of black, gray and other gray ink, and dedicated to black and white (excuse me!) monochrome prints, and several others that were either dedicated to printing office correspondence and contact sheets or waiting to be discarded due to their velocity toward obsolescence.
I had one particular printer which nearly drove me mad (not a far drive according to our collective mental GPS....) because it was so well reviewed by online writers and yet so nasty, costly and ineffective in person. I won't protect anyone here because there isn't an innocent party. It was an Epson 4000 printer and was, perhaps, the most dreadful and financially ruinous piece of "photographic" gear that I think I have ever purchased. And I've purchased a lot of gear.
The ink was more expensive and addictive per ounce than pure cocaine and about as therapeutic. The printer couldn't go a day without a cleaning cycle which helped spray away hundreds of dollars a week of ink printing fractured test patterns on white paper. Once in a while it would relent and turn out a decent print for me. I'd pick myself up off the floor (collapsing from the excitement of a rare moment of success) and rush to print more before the fickle machine did its schizophrenic about face and plunged me back into despair. That one could conceivably make any money using this printer in a for profit business was and is so laughable to me that I still have trouble understanding how Epson stayed in the printer business. (See quotes from P.T. Barnum).
I hear that in other, more civilized countries, the use and ownership of an Epson 4000 printer is actually the punishment for crimes like shop lifting and "creating a public nuisance". I know that a fan or two out there will write to tell me that I should have dedicated a humidifier to its area of the office but I'll sneer at them and match them two humidifiers and one tank of pure oxygen ( the idea being that maybe regular air conditioned air was not good enough for such a printer and perhaps its best work could only be done under hyperbaric conditions).
This started my downhill slide where dedicated photographic printers are concerned. I have one now but I only use it for printing the few invoices I still send to some clients in the mail (most accept pdf files attached to e-mail). The idea of having to print a portfolio, or even worse, a print for a valued client, sends chills up my spine and makes me feel as though the doors of my business will soon be closing.
So, what do I do when I need to give a client a print?
Hmmmmm. That hasn't really come up in a long time. Before the days of the iPad Pro I used to carry around a printed portfolio. I still have plenty of them here in the office.... Now, when I go out to show work it gets passed around as an iPad screen and it looks fantastic. Clients can even zoom in if they want to check details. My "portfolio" fits in a backpack and I can easily take it with me on a plane.
No single commercial client has requested a print from me in nearly ten years. None. Never. If one did come to me requesting a print (of any size) I would most likely send the file to the folks at our long lived commercial lab here in Austin called, Holland Photo. Under the watchful eyes of Brian, the owner, the staff would no doubt churn out nicely crafted prints that I would be happy to send along to our clients. But I'm not sure what our clients might do with them.
We used to do event work where prints were the final result of days of shooting. I'm remembering an awards show for Broadwing Communications that we did in Palm Springs back in 2001. I was tasked with photographing about 250 people as they walked across the stage and were handed an award. I'd take second shot when the awardee shook hands with the CEO. At the end of the evening I was tasked with running out to a lab, with which we'd contracted in advance, that would soup the rolls of color negative film I'd shot and print a 5x7 inch color print of every frame. I dropped the film off after the show at 11 pm and the client expected and got the prints back at 7 a.m. the next morning so we could sit around in the press room and stuff the prints into presentation folders.
I'm not going back to that. Not ever.
At one point in the roaring 1990's we had a client who will remain nameless who wanted to have images taken of their guests in western wear on bales of hay next to rustic fencing in the ballroom of a five star hotel in downtown. They didn't want the prints the next day they wanted them right now. And they wanted them sepia toned to match the event theme. We decided to do them with 4x5 Professional Polaroid film. There were 800 couples attending and each couple would be photographed. I did the math and figured we'd need four shooting stations in order to get the project done in one evening (please don't make me set up next to the cover band ever again!!!!!). That meant four 4x5 inch view cameras with which to take the shots; each outfitted with a Polaroid back. Three additional photographers to make the photographs. An assistant for each station to time the Polaroid before peeling it apart. Four studio lighting systems to provide needed and ample photons in a cavernous ballroom. And two more assistants to accelerate the drying of the "instant" film and insert it into theme specific presentation envelopes. We had to special order the sepia version of the Polaroid film by the case....
It all went off without much of a hitch. But I think the whole grinding experience soured me on mass Polaroid until such a time as they discontinued their instant film business. That job paid for a BMW automobile...
Until recently I would send over files for my personal work to Costco. If you took the time to download the printer profiles they provided you could get great 12x18 inch prints for about the price of a Coca Cola. Those are now going away because.....nobody wants prints anymore.
Instead of prints from events we put up huge galleries of images shot during trade shows, conventions and other events and the participants are invited to download or share whatever they want. I suppose we could add an "order a print" component to the service but I think we tried that a few times five years ago and out of 2700 people two ordered one 5x7 inch matte print....each.
I'm sorry to say (because I truly loved the black and white prints I used to spend hours and days producing in my cozy darkroom) but I think prints are all but dead. The screen is the center of all corporate communications. Even magazine and other print work is a small fraction of corporate marketing output these days compared to e-screen publishing.
The latest numbers I've seen from the advertising community suggest that 80% of all people get their information (and entertainment, and news, and advertising) from screens. Of those screens over 60% are attached to those things we used to call phones. Each generation of phones results in a bigger and more beautiful screen. You can view photos in a dark room because the phones provide their own illumination. You can take them anywhere. They are more or less indestructible and, if you do lose your phone you can buy a new one and reload all your backed up photos to it in no time at all....
It makes me wonder why anyone anywhere is printing anything at all.
I think it's a generational thing. I love prints. I still print stuff but only because I've been sensitized to the argument about archival printing and long term keeping. I just send a batch of sized files to the folks at Holland and accept whatever they toss back to me. If they ever go out of business then I think we will have hit the end of the print and we'll move on and become nostalgic for something else.
The real magic of photography is not HOW it is shared but that it IS shared. Paper or screen is immaterial except this one thing: 25 years ago I could print and print, and perfect and re-print and get maybe 12 prints that were good enough to put in a show. I'd pay enormous amounts of money (for a young photographer) to get them matted and framed and then beg a gallery, or a friendly restaurant, to let me have a show for a month.
Over the course of the month maybe 100 people would see the work at a gallery. Or maybe 500 people would glance at my work as they were being shown to their table at the restaurant. It was rare that anything sold. Now I can post a photograph on the web, on my own blog site, and have the reasonable expectation that in the next 24 hours 4,000+ people would see the work and many of them would share it with their audiences. My financial investment would be nil but my exposure would be orders of magnitude greater. And across so many more markets. That same photo might form the content for an e-mail blast to my client mailing list meaning that another 1,000+ people would see the image. If I added it to my LinkedIn profile perhaps another 2,000+ people would see it. In short order.
And with repetition I can actually make a photograph seem ubiquitous to large numbers of people.
Sharing. An Audience. An Art Form. Isn't that why we do photography? Shooting well trumps printing well. I'll spend my time shooting and continue to outsource any printing that seems necessary.
And that's how I'm handling my 2019 printing needs.... thanks for asking.
18 comments:
Thanks for a very different perspective on what the ultimate form of presentation of images should or could be. It is a compelling counter argument to that put by TOP and Lula (prior to corporate manoeuvres) in recent years.
As I see it, there are no absolute right or wrong answers for a given individual, more a better or worse fit for what one wants to achieve with one’s photography.
I’m always glad to read various perspectives that are well considered, and put into the context of lived experience and priorities.
Glad to see you back in such scintillating form.
Cheers,
Interesting perspective--especially because Mike Johnston over at TOP has been posting a series of pieces about printing for posterity. Personally, I create photo books for each year and meaningful family trips. I use adoramapix (also for occasional prints) and have been very happy with results.
Ditto to sixblockseats' comment re Adoramapix for photo books. I find that I will pick up older books on occasion and look at them while I never look at the PDF versions of the same. Possibly age is a factor in this choice.
As an amateur hobbyist, I have the luxury of printing what I like. Mostly for myself (I'm running out of wall space!) but also for sharing with friends in our photo group. I think amateur photo exhibits may be the last bastion of printing for wall art.
But what about your portrait business? Don't your subjects want prints?
BTW, so glad to have you back blogging!
Then there was my wife's comment-she is a nikon d5300 shooter, uses a tripod, and shoots in manual most to the time - what do you neeed a printer for? Costco used to be my printshop. I see they are dropping photo services from many locatons as their customers who are mostly consumers aong with some businesses aren't ordering prints.
I would never trivialize the value of prints. A print is a definitive statement of what the photographer wants the viewer to see. I have seen my photos on phones, ipads, and laptops, and have been generally disappointed in how they are rendered. They are almost always too contrasty and saturated compared to my (calibrated) display and the prints I prize. It's a bit of an insult when I see one of my digital photos cropped or "adjusted" by another (my dear wife) to put on a webpage. What happened to the photographer that wouldn't even look at a portfolio presented to him on a phone or tablet? I know, times change.
Hey, I like prints. I have mountains for prints made over decades in a traditional dark room. I have prints on the wall of my studio and my house but, BUT as a working photographer delivering images to businesses, corporations, associations and non-profits I see zero demand for any paper prints. No traditional prints from dark room or inkjet printers. NONE. If clients want to have printed material at a convention or show it's done by specialty poster shops, etc. but the last (last year) enormous tech convention I attended was awash with big, 4K monitors and the advertising and marketing images continually changed on the monitors and were interspersed with video. No big prints, no banner prints. While I personally won't look at people's work when they shove their cellphones at me I understand that this is the primary embrace of content for non-photographers. (And many, many younger photographers). Even worse, none of the great print papers I used to plow through box after box of even exist today and, not to be too much of a snob, but inkjet stuff doesn't look the same. In fact, most of it is pretty crappy. Most home printers aren't as good at printing as custom labs were and that's about where we are right now, today. I hate the change as much as you do but we're pushing a big rock uphill if we think we're going to maintain the appreciation of this craft in the same way it was appreciated when there were no competitive options. Sorry, but it's all changed. And, if you take umbrage to the cropping of your images then I'm pretty sure you never, ever, ever want to be a commercial photographer, ever.
If you needed printing in Palm Springs in 2001 you probably used the lab I owned.
We were the only independent lab in Palm Springs at that time and were also enjoying the last hurrah of film and printing.
2001 and 2002 were the best years of the business. The digital revolution was in full song in the photo lab world producing levels of quality and efficiency unknown in the analog world.
I was already fretting about printing photos from digital cameras as there was no realistic way to get customers to choose the images for printing. This fear was realized when we installed the first kiosks and customers would sit at them for hours scrolling through thousands of images to choose five.
In the end we evolved into a largely commercial lab making large format prints (on an Epson and an HP).
I can not agree more on the diabolical nature of inkjet printers and the lies that sing their praises. While the frustration of a spoiled 8x10 is understandable, think of the rage of the cyan jet clogging in the last inch of a 40x60" print. I would note that our inkjet paper, purchased wholesale in huge lots , was priced significantly higher per square foot than the premium color paper for Fuji. In addition, should that inkjet print make it through the perils of printing, we now had to mount and laminate the finished print with even more expensive materials. Each step could be defeated by the slightest imperfection resulting in waste of upwards of a hundred dollars in time and materials.
I rarely print today as my clients require files, but when I do I gladly upload them to my favorite pro lab and drop ship them to the clients.
When I did print B&W fiber prints (long live Agfa Brovira and Portriga!) it was a pleasure analogous to cooking a fine meal for my family. In the same way, printing commercially is akin to running a restaurant. Both originate form places of pleasure but are transformed by the demands of commerce.
No quarrel with your observations and the points you're making (I'm not a commercial photographer). However, when I see the 4K monitors in the local Apple store and elsewhere, I immediately notice the color distortion -- no true tonality -- whites are distinctly blue, and shadows go inky. No better than TV displays in the showrooms. I'd say the commercial world has never placed as much emphasis on the subtleties of display as on the "pop". No change there, but the following is indeed growing.
It's important, a must to leave a record of where and who we are were. We need prints to show us as a people, good or bad, a record. People related to printed image in a warmer, feel better, more connected way. In years to come the electronic media will change, even disappear, you will not be able to view them, and if someone or some group doesn't want you the public/people to see the images they can, and will disrupt your viewing media, be it laptop, tablet or what ever, or change what you see to fit their needs, you can't stop them from doing it. With a print they could burn it, tear it up, or discolor it, but only if you let them. If you have the negative/slide you could reprint. Prints can be held and seen, negatives/slide can be held up to and light source, and be viewed. It's important that we leave a record behind be it a negative, a slide, or a prints from any source, darkroom or inkjet printer. You can show or pass around a 3x5 or 4x6 easier than a tablet, laptop or your $1000.00 cell phone.
With the Freedom of the Press under Attack we must leave some some sort of print, book, record behind. As for printing I use a older HP that reads my Monitor, and it does a great job, it does not clog, it hasn't clogged in 10 years, and I let it sit for months at a time. I use bulk inks from Canada, and outdated HP inks if I can find them. As for shows I send my work out to be printed the lab is great cost effective, and they do a way better job than I do. I've been very lucky in the sense that all my prints sell, the ones in shows/gallery.
Have fun, and keep printing
Roger
By coincidence I just listened to Lenswork podcast 1145 which also discusses printing, or the lack of it.
For me it comes down to what is in the print. I can easily see that there is no need to print the sort of commercial work you do, since it has a relatively short shelf-life. I think the arguments for printing are mostly aimed at people trying to save precious personal memories for future generations, long after our Zip drives (or whatever technology our memories are backed up on) are unreadable. Of course, you can always keep backing up to newer technologies every five years or so, and I do.
But you do make an interesting point, that we print because that's what we used to do. Perhaps our children and grandchildren will turn their noses up at our prints and demand to see them on their tablet, or whatever technology they are using in 100 years time. On the walls of their personal 3D virtual reality space I suspect!
See 8.23.2014 "Kirk's Rules for Sharing Photographs Correctly" for VSL's previous view on the subject. One thing that still holds is that phones are not a good portfolio review device.
I have a similar problem with printers. But I really like prints. My wife and I bought an Epson R2880 many years ago, one of those wretched designs which require pulling one black ink cartridge and substituting another in order to switch from matte finish paper to satin or glossy finish. Since the original aim was to make prints of her artwork for sale one might think the matte finish black ink would never have to come out. But then I would photograph a car or some other subject that just screamed for a hard finish paper. Out went the matte black ink, in went the glossy black, and the Epson would then spend five minutes cleaning and refreshing all its print heads (done with ink at no small expense). Same thing again upon switching back to matte black. I must say, though, the matte finish prints of her watercolor work were so exacting it was impossible to tell the print from the original. Literally. We’d have third parties look at the original and print, both framed, side by side and nobody could reliably pick the original.
We didn’t find the market for her artwork. My nearly infantile lack of tolerance for frustration meant that I did less and less printing of photos. Now the Epson printer sits under a cloth cover to keep the dust out. I fire it up and run the head-cleaning cycle printing test sheets when I think about it, which is probably two or three times a year. It’s a miracle that it hasn’t suffered terminal plug up from crystallized, dried ink.
I am glad to see you continue to blog. I value every post. https://www.enzel.io/is-printing-dying
I too gave up on home printing. Found a shop that does amazing prints and twice a year I walk in with a USB key full of "to print" full size jpgs. Between A4 and A3 size, they come out superb and they also can print on a firm canvas or plastic base that saves me on the framing: a stick hook on the back and they are ready to hang around the house or office.
Same problem with the colour cans and having to do a cleaning run every time I printed.
Might be very good for those who print every day. I don't.
My home colour printer is now destined to the tip...
There was a time when Disney World's photographers took pictures which Disney printed and sold to you, the "guest", individually or in a package. Now you buy a "photopass" and pictures (all the pictures -- no limit) taken by Disney photographers or the machines inside thrilling rides are made available to you on-line.
"Capture Priceless Memories with Disney PhotoPass
Preview all your Disney PhotoPass photos from Walt Disney World Resort, then purchase photo downloads and prints to share. Choose just your favorites or buy them all with Memory Maker!"
And Disney photographers always offer to take pictures using the guest's own camera or phone.
A beautiful print on the wall is such a pleasure. But I might get one shot every year or two that is worthy of it. How could I ever get good enough at printing when I only do it once or at most twice per year? I can't, so I put up with adequate.
On another subject, the reason that D-SLR sales are dropping off might be that most people don't really need newer models, unless they break their old ones and they cost too much to repair. Or they just feel like it. There are several generations of film cameras in the bottom of people's cabinet drawers. I have a box full of old Dinky toys, no reason to keep them around either but I do.
I do believe that printing has been commoditized to the point that the average person would not even consider using a pro-printer over their walmart prints, not only because they are cheap but also because they churn them out so quickly and because home printers are so expensive to maintain. So, now thinking about the pro-printing services that you use, what is it that has made them survive this shift?
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