Getting ready for a show

My company is having an employee art show from June through the end of July. I'm submitting four prints.

The end in mind.

I started with what I wanted the hung images to look like. I was trying to balance the cost of materials and artistic expression. As we are also having to sign a "will not hold responsible" clause, I decided to not spend a lot of money on framing materials, particularly if my company would not cough up some dough in the event that some art is damaged. I wanted to hang 16"x20" images. I really like museum glass, but decided to skip it for this show. At ~$40 for a 16"x20" sheet, it adds up quick. I used to like wood frames but have I switched to Dick Blick Gallery Metal Frames. They are inexpensive, durable and it's easy to recycle them for other shows or switch out images around the house if/when you want a change. Add museum glass and I think they look fantastic. With matte prints, it almost looks like there's no glazing. (One of my friends tried to touch a print to see if there was glass.) I printed B&W images on Lexjet Premium Archival Matte with my Epson 4000 and MISPRO inks utilizing Quad Tone RIP. As QTR doesn't come with Lexjet profiles, I used the Ultrachome and Epson Enhanced Matte profiles, linearized them and made a few test prints to get the tones right. The image sizes are about 11"x17" on final paper size of 16"x20". I made creative frames / borders using paint and ink on paper and scanned them into photoshop. Prints are backed by acid-free foam board and placed in frame without mat. The image frame / border takes the place of the mat in terms of a visual window. The lack of a mat gives a very clean appearance in my opinion, not to mention that it saved a lot of time in framing up the prints.

Framed print ready to hang.

I had actually been planning for this show for a while. I've been attempting to get my printing work flow with an Epson 2200 and UT-3D inkset in place prior to making prints for the show. I wanted to print on glossy paper. I still have not been able to adjust photoshop curves in a way that gives me satisfactory control over print tone. It's amazing what necessity drives us to do. After fooling around with the 2200 for 2 weeks, I had a short amount of time to put together framed prints. Thus, the 2200 was abandoned (for now) and prints were made on the 4000 with QTR.

A lack of organization

I've spent the last two weeks trying to get prints together. It's been an interesting experience. I have no cohesive portfolio of images and I haven't been using tags, keywords or ratings in any of my photo organization programs. It became quickly apparent that my submission was going to be made up of disparate images. I realized that I have to get some sort of management system in place. I've installed a couple different programs to handle this task; Bibble lite, Photoshop Elements album, Picasa and the Canon software that camer with the camera. I like Bibble, but Bibble lite doesn't support the 5DMkII. Bummer. They still have not come out with Bibble 5 for commercial release. (It was supposed to be out in January 2009, slackers.) Picasa is my favorite, but it can only export as jpeg. Photoshop elements (my old version) doesn't suport RAW. The Canon software just stinks. What to do? I'm actually taking a "digital arts media" class at a local JC this summer. As a student, this qualifies me to purchase the full version of Photoshop and Lightroom at a substantial savings. I'm hopefull that Lightroom will really help me catalog and sort my images and I can move to just one system and remove the other programs. I'll probably keep Picasa for quick edits and exports to Blogger.

Some conclusions

1. I need to settle on program to organize my photos and clear the rest off my computer. Along with this, I need to go back through all my old images and add tags, keywords and ratings to make searching more efficient. This jumping between programs to browse, develop and then edit is too much. Adobe pretty much has a strangle hold on this department. I think I'll be going with lightroom and photoshop in the future.
   
2. I need to get rid of the multiple printers and inksets. As much as I like the idea of a pure carbon inkset for longevity, I don't have the skill to manipulate the software in a way to control print tones to my satisfaction. I probably need to move closer to a ready made solution for black and white printing, at least in the mean time while I develop the necessary skills.
   

The Technological Barrier.

Going Backwards
Two months ago, I bought a pack of Kentmere 5x7 glossy VC fiber paper. I printed in the darkroom for about a week. Oh how simple and easy it seemed to be to get a decent print. No lines. No pizza wheel tracks. No clogs. No funny colors. The paper itself is a joy to hold. The surface is perfect. The blacks shimmer. I haven't found the digital equivalent for this process yet.

Process
Only photographers care about process. We lecture each other at length at how we arrived at the final image. Everybody else just wants to see the print, the Flickr page. In a couple seconds, the image content moves them or it doesn't. Trudging all day out in rain? Five hours to make a print? Who cares - the content sucks. I've been thinking more about my process. Making color prints seems easy to me. I suppose I'm not so picky with the color. The black and white inkjet prints have been very unsatisfying. Part of the problem is technological, the other is concentration. I've been hung up on equipment. I couldn't quite find the right printer. R220 is too small. 2000P too slow. Now I'm working on the 2200. Then I had to find the right ink. Went through MIS UT-FSN, Paul Roark's carbon 6 and now using MIS UT-3D. Then all I could do was print a warm tone on cold paper - I didn't know how to adjust the photoshop curves to cool down the prints. At 2:00 am, I think I'm about to make a break through with working with the curves. I've achieved a fairly neutral print and a cool print. What I really needed was a block of time to concentrate on the curves process. I'm finally getting the hang of editing curves to control print tone with UT-3D.

A small sampling of test prints.

Simplify. Simplify. Simplify.
I currently have four inkjet printers. I have three different inksets. I probably have about eight different papers. I would like to have one printer, one inkset, one paper. The path forward is very clear when you only have one choice (That really isn't a choice, is it? Simple. No choices, nothing to think about, just doing.) My studio has become an inkjet printer workshop. I spend more time fooling around with printers, syringes and ink and clearing clogs than I do taking, editing or printing photographs. The prints I make consist of step wedges and a standard test print. So, most of the printers need to go. Most of the papers need to go. The various inksets need to go. I think the idea printer is the 13". The 17" is nice, but I rarely make prints that large and I'm unwilling to change the 17" to a dedicated black and white printer until I'm totally comfortable with editing curves. Switching over the 17" is no small feat.

What to do
Chuck it all. Fooling around with all this equipment is laborius. I need to go out and shoot some photos...