The pluses and minuses of your own photography and print business

You know, I’ve had many folks more than a little curious about what I now do for a living. And by “for a living” I mean that loosely. 😉 Getting a small business off the ground and rooted in major success takes time. Today for instance I’ve already been dealing with major victories and major defeats as well. Here’s what’s going on today……

The Z3100 isn’t feeling so well

For the past week I’ve been noticing degradation on Glossy prints coming from the HP.  In the past few days we’ve passed degradation and just gone to unusable and unacceptable.  The weird thing?  Matte papers and canvas are perfectly fine.  It’s only on gloss and the metallic papers that major banding has been occuring in the prints.  So, bottom line?  No gloss or metallic until I get some service on the printer.

Which leads me to the next bummer.  Called Sagemax (my extended warranty company) to report the trouble.  I went through a few reps and finally we concluded that a service center needed to be found.  No service center listed with them for work on the Z3100 in my area.  We left it that I would hear back in 3-5 days (business days I’m assuming).  They’ve got to find a service center, and it should take 3-5 days……  Okay?  That means no gloss until next week at the earliest.

And before you ask….yup, I’ve run every diagnostic possible, calibrated paper, run test prints upon test prints, aligned print heads, calibrated paper advance……the works.  So, I’m bumming there.

Oh, and yup, ran some tests again this morning just to see……

So, there’s the big minus for the morning.  I’m an engineer after all, and I’d like to resolve the issue and move forward, but I find myself stuck waiting.  I’ll let you know as soon as glossy is back on the menu……

Prescott Woman Magazine is out!

Several shots that I did a few weeks ago are out in Prescott Woman Magazine!  One shot?  Full page.  So, there’s one plus for the morning!

Pop Rocket is out, and I’ve been waiting for that one!

Several of the images I did for Filabusta recently are finally out in Pop Rocket.  So I get to share them here, finally!  I have been waiting ever so impatiently!  🙂

Heck, I can't even think of a caption for this one. 2 430EXII's, and a very light edit in Photoshop.

As shot. I really liked the result off the bat. 5D Mark II, 2 430EX II's, and manual on the camera.

As shot. I really like this one, and know the guys won't use it as they don't like it. I think it's the whole King of Puppies thing.

So, there you have it.  Some more shots from the Filabusta shoot.  I’ve got a lot more great images from the day, but they’ll be coming out slowly after the guys use them for their purposes.  Overall, I’m extremely impressed with the results right out of the camera.  With a little cropping and light post processing so many of the images are winners.  All it took was a pair of 430EX’s, the 5D Mark II on manual with the ST-E2, and my 24-70 L series.  Didn’t need to carry too heavy at all.

There ya have it!

So, pluses and minuses this morning.  I sure hope we address the issue with the HP as soon as possible.  If you’re looking for glossy, you’ll have to wait.  Sorry gang!