Airstream at Organ Pipe National Monument

You couldn’t ask for a better day

Richard Charpentier Notes from Rich, Photography, Printers, Prints, Wide Format Printing 4 Comments

Sure, Prescott was under a blanket of clouds today.  And yes, the smell of wood smoke was thick.  Another controlled burn.  The fall seems to be full of controlled burns.  Finally, I did get rained on while walking to “The Art Store.”  But you know what…….?

It was a good day!

Last night I wondered and pondered about the printer driver disaster yesterday.  What to do, what to do?  And this morning it struck me…..  You’re using Time Machine on the Mac you goofball!  You can restore things to the moment before.  Can’t believe you wasted all that time yesterday?  Hooray for time machine….booo for being a forgetful lad!

Yup, that’s right.  My solution was a 5 minute fix.  All good.  Then I did the Mac driver update for HP and everything worked like a champ again.  Plus the trouble I was trying to resolve got resolved.  A good start to the day!

Before 9:30 I had everything ready to go, so I got going.  3 more canvas wraps for David Riley.  I’ve finally caught up on his prints.  Hooooorah!  Of course, I think he’s got more coming my way.  His paintings are great, and he’s becoming a very popular artist in our gallery.  I’m so glad to see him excel!

After David’s prints I geared up for some “internal” work.  By that I mean prints by Ian and I.  I haven’t printed much of my own stuff lately as I’ve been too wrapped up with other people’s prints.  My stuff can wait.  Paying clients first, right?

One print I decided to play with today was shot only last night.  A 13×19 just for fun.  It came out better than I thought.  Better than you see on your screen.  Remember, what’s on your screen isn’t as good as the print.  Your screen isn’t color calibrated, and most likely still won’t reflect what a print will…….  Well, unless you’ve got a Mac Cinema Display…..  🙂

The print came out great.  It was so cool I did 3 more.  Not 3 more of the same print of course.  Just a few I’ve decided not to share here yet.  You can’t see everything here you know.  Going to have to pop by the gallery at some point in time…that’s my suggestion!

While doing the 13×19’s I set up on several prints for Ian and I.  What a lot of printing!  Ah well, that’s what I was there for today.

Ian suggested I give a gallery wrap or two a whirl.  I’ve never done one for any of my prints, and honestly I haven’t worried too much about it.  In the past two weeks I’ve done plenty for other people.  How would my photography translate to canvas?  Good question.  The answer came today.

After sorting through photos, and keeping in mind what I’m offering “large” right now I decided to do one of my Grand Canyon shots.  Bright Angel trail.  It’s a pretty cool shot, and I’ve enjoyed the 8×12 prints.  It was time to do a big one.

How big is a little amazing.  30 inches wide by 48 inches tall.  Hey, that’s how the print size worked out.  I used an HP Canvas that I had on hand (42 inches wide), and I recalibrated the color just to be sure.  After all the prep I set the printer to work.

What came out was stunning!  It was better than I expected, and Ian was pretty blown away too.  Nice when you get something better than expected!  Really nice.

By the way, I’m an extreme critic of my stuff.  Often I want to delete files only to have friends point them out and suggest printing them.  To say I was blown away is a big thing.  I really was.

Unfortunately our stretcher bars hadn’t arrived yet.  Ian ordered them last week, but it seems everyone is on vacation or something.  It seems to happen a lot lately.  Several of my frames were back ordered by 2 weeks last month.  A trend?  Ah well.

That’s when I walked out into the rain and headed for the Art Store.  They had stretcher bars.  Sure they were expensive….but they were in stock.

For the afternoon we set about putting gloss on to all of the gallery wraps we’ve created recently.  We had a lot to do.  6 of David Riley’s, 6 of Ian’s, and 2 of mine.  Heh, I didn’t tell you what my other wrap is.  Once again, you’re going to have to stop by!  😉

In the end we found our latest experiment to be more than successful.  See, we’ve been toying with ideas on treating canvas after printing.  Sprays, canned sprays, or rolling.  Today we’ve decided very simply, rolling is the way to go.  Weeks ago I ordered a test package from BreathingColor.com.  More orders will be coming their way.  Satisfied is an understatement!

Our end results for the day were more than amazing!  Oh, did I mention all the customers that showed up this afternoon and had to work around drying prints all over the shop?

No?

I’ll have to tell you about that later.  I’m tired!

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Comments 4

  1. Horray for time machine! Oh and alright Mr. “Well, unless you’ve got a Mac Cinema Display….. “. That was just cruel. You’re taunting me, aren’t you?!

    Great shots today!

  2. A forgetful lad indeed…and a very preoccupied lad while I was over…and still further, an almost sleepless lad…I’m so happy that you realized the quick fix though (although, it would have been nicer if you’d figured it out before that so that you could have paid more attention to me…my heavens…it is all about me isn’t it? 😉 )

    I was also blown away by the large canvas print you did. It was awesome, and looked just like you could walk right into it! I can’t wait to see it hung in the gallery…I am really excited to see what the turnout will be this Saturday night!!

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