2025 - The Year of the Print

My New Year's resolution is to print more.

I woke up this morning to fluffy white flakes of snow falling past my window onto the grass that had been exposed by days of rain since Christmas. The ground was not quite covered, but I was glad I had spent time yesterday bringing wood up from the woodshed to replenish the supply in the side porch. I’ve taken a few days off from using the woodstove with the warm temps of late, but it’s only a matter of time before the winter winds of the north come calling again and the fire will be a welcome addition inside the house. Winter, after all, is just getting started.

Even before I could feed the cats, I was up and wandering from window to window with camera and lens checking out the snowfall and seeing what the day was like. From the bathroom, I spotted two deer down by the old apple. There are still plenty of apples lying on the ground there and the deer never miss an opportunity to stop by for a few nibbles before carrying on.

I took a few shots and caught this view of one of them watching something up by the driveway. Spooked by or at least wary of something, they began to move south away from the tree which stands alone at the edge of our east meadow.

Deer in snow under apple tree - Jan 1, 2025

I’ve been formulating my plan for photography for the coming year. One thing I haven’t done a lot of since I got back into image making is printing. I did have an Epson letter size photo printer a few years back, but the ink was so expensive I could barely justify using it. Photo printers don’t like sitting around not being used either, so it was often an exercise in frustration when I did use it. The nozzles would dry out, then I’d have to run a cleaning operation which would pump through a whole lot more of the titanium priced ink. In the end, I decided to just order prints when I wanted them, but that too was hard on the pocketbook.

Fast forward to this past month after watching numerous (read many) YouTube videos. I decided to give the Epson ET-8550 eco-printer a try. It doesn’t use chip based cartridges like my old printer had. That was my main complaint and the reason for the high operating costs. Instead it uses bottles of ink. These bottles are not as big as professional wide mouth printers, but way better than the old bleed your bank account dry ink cartridges. In total, it uses five dye based inks and one pigment black. It has three blacks; a grey and a black dye and a black pigment. The other dye based inks are cyan, magenta and yellow.

With reassurance from the likes of Keith Cooper and Jose Rodriguez, I bit the bullet and bought myself one of these wide format printers as a Christmas present to myself. So far I have been impressed with both the ease of operation and the printing experience in general.

Back to the deer; I continued to track them around the house. It seemed there were 4 others and they arrived from both the north and south to assemble as a group. I quickly set up my 150-600 on my tripod using the new gimbal head I picked up second hand at the last Northumberland Photo Club meeting. This allows me to swivel the long lens around to capture the action without wearing my arms out continually lifting the big glass.

White Tail Deer in falling snow - Jan 1, 2025

The snow was really wet, the temperature about 3 degrees above freezing. The deer moved slowly through the yard, stopping and listening every few steps. They licked snow from each other’s backs and occasionally shook to lessen their load. Nothing like a cold shower in the morning to get you going.

This super wet falling snow and the deer’s relaxed demeanor seemed to be the subject at hand, so going through the images, I kept a lookout for images which told this story. The falling snow, the calm morning scene. And now, for the first time in ages, I was also thinking about - the print.

"The natural end point to making a photograph is printing it."

Gill Moon Photography

I have been inspired lately by Gill Moon Photography who has written recently about why printing is important to her. While, I’m not ready to exhibit quite yet, I know instinctively, that to not print is to the leave the task of image making half done. An image only become real when you hold it in your hands. A printed photograph is worth a thousand screen images.

Capturing interesting scenes is the first part of the photographic journey. The second comes in post processing. Squeezing all the goodness out of the file to show what the camera actually recorded. Nothing fancy here, but important all the same. Keeping the fresh white snow fresh and white. Making sure the deer showed up against their background of white and dark green.

In the final analysis, I felt the image below captured the essence of the morning shower and would print better than any other image I had on the morning’s camera roll.

White Tailed Deer in falling snow - Jan. 1, 2025

I particularly like the texture of this deer’s fur which seems so very wet. I took a screenshot from the print layout program and added a digital frame to mimic the look of the print I made. I can’t show you what the actual print looks like and that’s kind of the point of it. Taking an image from camera to print in a single day is truly a rewarding experience.

My New Year’s resolution is to print more, to try to print at least one image per day from my archives or from my current camera roll to get better at making prints and shooting for that end result.

Holding the image in my hands, I was happy with today’s result.

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I’m A Song by Stephen Wilson Jr.

As usual, I’d like to leave you with a song. This one, “I’m A Song” has nothing to do with the post above, but it is truly beautiful and it was recorded Live at the Print Shop.