Friday, August 24

Biggies

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Okay... I am too preoccupied with the show which I will have exactly two weeks from tonight. Thanks for humoring me through this thing. Today the four LARGE images arrived from Dave Beck at Studio FX, Inc (104 Wheatland Park Lane, Lancaster). THEY ROCK! Whoa. So before you ask which I decided to blow up, I thought I'd pull them together tonight with some info. But then I figured that since I was going to do this for the blog, why not go a tad farther and create something I can attach to a media e-mailing? So, here's what I came up with. They have all been printed on canvas, coated, and stretched on wooden frames in a "gallery wrap" format. This pulls the edges of the images around the wooden rectangle support and as a consequence they do not need additional framing for showing.

From the top: The red image is of the The Fulton Theater and measures 24" X 20". Below it on the left are the Orange St. Twin Spires and they measure, 34" X 52", to the right the Trinity Spire which measures 32" X 50" and on the bottom is the largest print, a horizontal of the ghostly A.S. Groff Hardware building that measures, 66" X 28".

Dave did an astonishing job capturing the colors from the monitor to canvas. The saturation and vibrancy of the prints are eye popping. While I've seen my prints in all sorts of media over the years, I've never had them truly enlarged. The sharpness of the Canon lenses resulted in details I didn't know existed. For example: the weather vane atop the Trinity Tower has the word "West" clearly imprinted upon it. No way I knew that from the monitor. And there is considerable room to make the images even larger. In fact, I'd originally ordered the print on the bottom to be 8 feet on the horizontal edge! All of my advisors talked me out of it. The wimps!

I have no idea how to price these things. Or any of my images for that matter, and it will be a major focus for discussion among friends over the next two weeks. If you have any suggestions... lemme know, either here or send me an email.

6 comments:

John Roberts said...

Once again you're sticking it to the "experts" who claim such meager enlargement potential for the APS-C size sensors. My first digital camera, a Canon G3 with a mere 4MP, and a sensor about the size of my thumbnail, makes beautiful 11x14's and even 16x20's. In 2003, the "experts" said it would barely make a decent 8x10. Thanks for setting the example of "try it yourself" instead of just listening to the photo media know-it-alls. Good luck with the show!

Chad Oneil Myers said...

Does "Fiction have a place in art?" You better believe it does. ;)

Does Imagination play a role in photography? Without it, photography doesn't excist.

I'm happy for you, Ted, that your work is going to be showcased. That's a very cool blessing.

Ted said...

(John) What interesting points. Hmmmm.... Back iin 2000 my company bought a top-O-the-line Sony digital w/ 3MP. Some few of my older shots were taken with that, but mostly I was still using my Nikon film cameras and scanning the prints/negatives did a MUCH better job. The Sony images had that kind of digital plastic look which you also see on the early HDTV monitors. But my Canon EOS D20 is totally different.

As long as I take the proper exposure preparations and dial in an approprieate ISO, it will reproduce tacks sharply. With plenty of contrast and tonal range. Camera RAW seems to make the most difference especially when you shoot and process for printing in RGB space as opposed to sRGB.

I'm continually learning the special considerations demanded by printing, and the Spyder2 has been essential in synching my monitors with my HP printer. Apparently the universal settings of the Syder made it simple for Dave to suck out the necessary information for the big enlragements on his Epson print gear (we both use Macintosh platforms - I think that helped as well).

I'm told that the full frame potential of the top line Canon cameras makes a huge difference along with their 16MP and the ability to easily process 16 or even 32 bits per channel. That's what Kathleen Connally says she does at http://www.durhamtownship.com/portfolio/ and her images have a clean uniformity that comes close to making me weep.

Yipes... I'm talking gear... I never talk gear.... sorry... But thanks for the insightful comments.

(Chad) Nice wishes Chad, I appreciate them. I think that there's always been fiction in photography. The position where we choose to stand with our camera, for example, is so subjective that it imposes an enormous amount of us on the final image. Every step of the process transforms the moment we saw into the moment we imagined. Today we simply have more powerful tools on the back end of the process. The Organic Photographers won't admit that... or maybe they don't want to master them... dunno.

John M. Setzler, Jr. said...

I'm supportive of 'enhancement' as well. Some photographers don't like it, but that's ok too. Painters and sculptors aren't held to such standards, so why can't a photographer be an artist too? ;)

Chad Oneil Myers said...

True words, Ted.

Debra Trean said...

I think this looks great.... and I can not wait to hear how this show goes. I am thrilled for you. I love your work and yeahhhh anything goes in art I feel.