Prints

[Bill Pierce]

Why print? After all, you can quickly enjoy images from a digital camera on your computer screen and share them via the internet. And hard disc storage goes a long way in extending a life with minimal image degradation over time as compared to early storage medium like CDs.

Let’s point out the obvious, Printing doesn’t stop you from displaying, enjoying and and sending screen images. It does, however, preserve those images in a way that hard discs and SSD’s don’t. If you haven’t had a storage disc fail, and fail to the degree that the images can’t be retrieved, you will. But, since you have multiple back ups, no real loss. But then there’s the final loss when your heirs are looking through your possessions. What are all those metal boxes, external drives? Probably bookkeeping, bank records, old correspondence… dump them. Not likely, but someone could check out the discs, even open up a folder, but without an appropriate image processing program what are all those little postage stamps. Certainly not worth saving.

They didn’t look like family memories, like that old set of family albums that go back a couple of generations or even the somewhat impressive images that are framed and hanging on the living room walls. They looked like old metal boxes.

Prints are pretty easily recognized for what they are. Check out

http://www.wilhelm-research.com

Henry Wilhelm’s website will give printer, ink and paper combinations that will produce an ink jet with several hundred years of life before perceptible fading. That’s not true of all inkjet prints, but Wilhelm will lead you down the path to the correct combo.

Oh, there’s one other reason to print. That shot you emailed to a friend, have you seen what it looked like on his computer? Who knows what brightness and color settings he was using, but it sure looked different from what you saw on your computer.

They may be old fashioned, but I really like prints. And you?

 

[raid]

Thank you for this post, Jason. It is a very important point that you are raising. I have few prints, but I value them a lot:

 

[jsrockit]

I like photobooks as an art form and those need to be printed. I like all of the design choices that go into photobooks and holding a body of work in my hands.

 

[Franko]

I'm not convinced that it will matter. Most photographs will live on and die with their owners cellphones in "virtual" world. Almost none are printed. I don't observe much interest in younger people in preserving their own visual record, much less mine.

 

[Ko.Fe.]

The only big reason for prints I see is exhibition. But eventually with digital monitors been developing it is going to be on monitors at exhibition.
Not all of it. Here is still interest in good quality darkroom print. But nobody needs it to be on prints if it is more than the image for the fine print.

 

[sevres_babylone]

I'm not convinced that it will matter. Most photographs will live on and die with their owners cellphones in "virtual" world. Almost none are printed. I don't observe much interest in younger people in preserving their own visual record, much less mine.

Bill, I agree with you, but I suspect Franko is right. I've given prints to people I've photographed who looked at them like I'd handed them a piece of...and I don't think the reaction was because of the quality, though I am biased. Also, I'm the default custodian of family photos going back nearly 90 years, and no one in the family is clamoring for them. When I'm gone, those prints, and ones I've made are likely to wind up in a dump with the various hard drives I have.

 

[Out to Lunch]

The electronic vs. print dichotomy is increasingly becoming a generational issue. My daughter's generation is full-time online: education, social contacts, media, consumption, banking, etc... is all experienced online.

 

[580/Q]

Bill, maybe it (the screen version) is sort of like a light table or a projection. I love prints. Books. Papyrus and ink. What a brilliant (forgive the pun) technology. No power required save for the light of the sun.

But I shot a lot of slide film before I went digital and other than Cibachrome or M-prints (Can one still get those? Hopefully yes.) the only way to see slides was light table, projection, or finally, in a print publication. Rephotographed. So Franko is right. Screens in exhibitions. They are so good now. The iPad has a Retina screen as does just about every laptop in my house. Every device can be and is calibrated and profiled. But that is the extent of control and beyond that, as you point out, monitor quality, never mind the settings or calibration issues, is a free for all.

For a few years now, on Christmas and birthdays, I give people 4x6 prints of the past year. 20-100 of them, depending. They go in the albums that I bought for them when I started this project.

Every once in a while I give a larger print to someone that I've been photographing for a while. As a thank you for letting me stick my camera in their personal space for months on end.

Prints rock their world. They are tangible evidence that what one was doing with a camera actually produced something. And maybe, just maybe, if the risk was great enough, and the vulnerability shared equally enough, the subjects of the work will let you in a little farther. What a freaking privilege! And, I'd be willing to bet, showing them or AirDropping them a print on a device wouldn't build the same capital.

I guess I like prints...

Shane

 

[Wenge]

making b&w prints from digital files is a chronic challenge for me and why I like doing it. You hold the print in your hand, tack it on the wall for a few days to study it, and see it as a photograph print. I use P800 w/Epson inks for glossy, and 3880 Epson with b&w ink for matte papers (based on Paul Roark's inkflow). I mix my own inks for the 3880 based on his latest recipe for variable tone. The prints are cheap and very good on matte papers. You get to see the detail on even a small print what a computer screen doesn't show the same way.

 

[raydm6]

I like prints too; but I'm afraid most (not all) younger folks are too mobile and virtual, and not tied down to physical things as much as we were in the past.

The cloud is the new virtual wall-space for most folks.

 

[olakiril]

Prints can easily go on the wall or sit on a shelf within a photobook that someone can randomly open. They will be seen, hopefully enjoyed, and after a while they will be replaced.

I wouldn't want to fill my house with tablets or monitors.

 

[Erik van Straten]

I make gelatin silver split grade prints on Ilford Multigrade FB classic (fiber baryta). For me the print is the final picture. I only work on film. I very much like gelatin silver printing. I started doing it 12 years old. The prints aren't too big, 7 x 9 1/2 inch. I keep them in boxes. I scan the prints to show them online via Flickr. This gives me an overview of them. I find it much nicer to look at a well made silver gelatin print than seeing the pictures on a computer screen, no grid! Well made prints are much sharper and the tonality is incomparably more beautiful.

Erik.

gelatin silver print (heliar classic 50mm f1.5) leica mp

 

[ptpdprinter]

I make prints. I am leaving my family with a few boxes of matted prints which I think represent my best work. What they do with them will be entirely up to them. I am under no delusion that members of my family are going to learn Lightroom, and then spend an eternity on the computer going through 100,000 images picking out the good ones. The same goes for my binders of negatives. If you don't want to expend the time and effort to curate your own work, I'm not sure why you think someone else will. If you have family photographs, make photo books. Your family will appreciate those a lot more than a couple of hard drives.

 

[Dogman]

My only reason for making prints is because I enjoy it. I like seeing my pictures on paper. But no one in my family gives much of a #!%^ about photographs or photography. Most of the friends who did have passed on and no one has popped up to take their place. I fully expect all my prints and back up drives to end up in the land fill after I'm gone. We're all a bunch of dinosaurs, you know. Soon we will be extinct and what we have done will be forgotten as cultures and societies move on to futures which we cannot ever conceive. And that's okay with me. May as well enjoy while we're here.

 

[Rob-F]

I got a little disappointed in digital printing when I had a Canon color printer. I made a few good prints with it, maybe 30 or 40, until a day came when when I saw a message saying that the waste ink tank was full, and I should consult with my repair agency. I asked at the dealer where I bought it, and was advised to throw the damn thing away and buy another one. I don't like disposable equipment; I think gear should be maintainable. I threw it in the recycle bin and never bought another printer. I asked around, here and at Photo.net, about the possibility of better luck with an Epson printer. I was told they are rather a headache, as well. It's been some years now. I just make wet prints in the darkroom. But I do have an M9, an M9M, and a D700, and I might like to start doing digital printing again, if I knew of a printer worth owning.

 

[ptpdprinter]

I got a little disappointed in digital printing when I had a Canon color printer. I made a few good prints with it, maybe 30 or 40, until a day came when when I saw a message saying that the waste ink tank was full, and I should consult with my repair agency. I asked at the dealer where I bought it, and was advised to throw the damn thing away and buy another one. I don't like disposable equipment; I think gear should be maintainable. I threw it in the recycle bin and never bought another printer. I asked around, here and at Photo.net, about the possibility of better luck with an Epson printer. I was told they are rather a headache, as well. It's been some years now. I just make wet prints in the darkroom. But I do have an M9, an M9M, and a D700, and I might like to start doing digital printing again, if I knew of a printer worth owning.

If you want prints, but don't want to deal with a printer, there are about a gazillion places on the web that will be happy to make prints for you. There may even be a couple of places locally that you can turn to for prints.

I have an Epson 3880 printer. It has a user replaceable maintenance tank. You just slide the old one out and the new one in. They cost $20. I think Canon printers have user replaceable maintenance tanks as well. All printers require maintenance. And ink. And paper. It does add up. If you print infrequently, having someone else do your printing very well may be the best option.

 

[Oscuro]

... -- If you don't want to expend the time and effort to curate your own work, I'm not sure why you think someone else will. If you have family photographs, make photo books. Your family will appreciate those a lot more than a couple of hard drives.

Dear ptpdprinter,
This is most important! Taking pictures (my first love) is wonderfull but looking at the good ones is my dearest second. This means you must select/edit (you say curate, which is the good word for it) and you must do so with the vicious heart!

Ciao,

Mme. O.

 

[580/Q]

Dear ptpdprinter,
This is most important! Taking pictures (my first love) is wonderfull but looking at the good ones is my dearest second. This means you must select/edit (you say curate, which is the good word for it) and you must do so with the vicious heart!

Ciao,

Mme. O.

+1 from me on this... and what ptpdprinter said.

Best,

Shane

 

[ptpdprinter]

This is most important! Taking pictures (my first love) is wonderfull but looking at the good ones is my dearest second. This means you must select/edit (you say curate, which is the good word for it) and you must do so with the vicious heart!

I also remember that I read or heard someone say that your ability as a photographer would be judged by your least successful photograph, so you want to limit what you let others see to your very best work. As you might imagine, I am not a big fan of those joining Flickr and doing memory card dumps. If you show everything you ever shot, the good images will look like what Minor White (and no doubt others) referred to as "happy accidents". Who wants to be compared to a monkey with a typewriter?

 

[580/Q]

If you want prints, but don't want to deal with a printer, there are about a gazillion places on the web that will be happy to make prints for you. There may even be a couple of places locally that you can turn to for prints.

I have an Epson 3880 printer. It has a user replaceable maintenance tank. You just slide the old one out and the new one in. They cost $20. I think Canon printers have user replaceable maintenance tanks as well. All printers require maintenance. And ink. And paper. It does add up. If you print infrequently, having someone else do your printing very well may be the best option.

I have a 7890 and a 3880 - they use the same ink set. Outstanding printers. My local (three-hour drive) Costco has closed their photo dept.

The price of ink has skyrocketed in Canada and I'm looking at alternatives. I have enough ink left for a few more large prints, but I'm not sure what my options will be after that. The perverse in me thinks (again) of Daido Moriyama and one of his shows where he used an on-site photocopier to make ad-hoc books for patrons. I've used a garden variety B&W laser printer to make mock-ups of images.

Predictably, and largely because of the content, some of them survive in my office.

But most of my work is in colour -- hence the Epsons. (Pencils in time to research alternative ink sets.)

Best,

Shane