I'm in the midst of a photography class on printing and learning so much. Who knew there would be so many kinds of paper, plus paper that you paint before printing, plus interactions between printer, color, paper, and ink! With the midterm coming up, we had to demonstrate how a particular type of paper softens a scene using 5 images. I chose animals as my theme, and this is one of the five I'm submitting. I took it on a safari in Tanzania in the "before times" when travel like that was exciting but not worrisome/scary/potentially dangerous. It's been fun revisiting photos and reworking them with the printing process and particular paper in mind. It's also been time consuming so apologies for not commenting much this month . . . three more weeks of class!
Stunning photo, the main thing I know about printing a picture is it needs to be lighter when you print because there is no light coming through the picture. This picture has some beautiful light.
Wonderful image! That sounds like an interesting class. I need something like that. Printing has always been quite a mystery to me and a trial and error experience. I used to print more than I do now but given my success to disappointment ratio and the cost of ink I now do much less.
@gardencat I agree -- paper is expensive and in this class, it takes me anywhere from 3 - 7 tries before I can get it to my liking! It's SO different than what it looks like on the screen!
@joansmor Exactly -- that's what makes it so tricky, I think! It's sort of like getting a mind set of what is the best brightness going by numbers, not by how it looks on the screen. I'm getting better (one shot took me 7 tries and it's still not really where it needs to be!) but it often takes 3 tries or more.
@pamknowler It's been eye-opening and making me think differently and more carefully about my images. And very useful exercise going back through my photos with this lens. It helps to have a 'bank' of years of photos to draw on! I wouldn't want to be out taking photos specifically to print as I find the distance of time to be very helpful in looking at my photos more critically.
I've not printed much at all and found when I did, I've been disappointed. For someone with your skills, this class would be a definite increase in your knowledge base and helpful if you have plans to do this on a more professional level.
@randystreat My experience was similar in that the first few weeks I had very disappointing results. He has us printing on PhotoRag paper which is the most widely use, but it is fairly flat. That's what is teaching us about how to adjust lighting levels and also how to think about the role of 'crispness' in our base images. I find that what I'm seeing most is when it's printed, the little flaws that I'd otherwise skip over become so much more noticeable. So in the end, though I'll not do photography professionally, it's helping me think about what I can do to be more careful in taking the picture in the first place. And the class is very small with great people in it so that's also been fun. Huge warehouse type of room, small class, and everyone masked.
@randystreat The school uses Epson 4900 and Epson 9000 but have ordered newer ones. It's more printer than I'd want to have to have in our place, but I'm happy to pay lab fees to use theirs! And when taking a course, the printer is available to us whenever we need to use it.
The glow of the light is amazing! Your class sounds fascinating, though way above me. I have been disappointed with prints that didn't look as expected because of the paper I chose, but wasn't sure exactly what the problem was.
I thought I had already commented on this but it was all on the print versions. What an amazing scene you captured so wonderfully, so full of the amazing wildlife in the morning light.
December 8th, 2021
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Sounds like a great course!