Print Appreciation

Hanging a gem of an image and my first steps into photo printing

So I call this substack My Photo Journal because I want it to reflect what’s going on with my photography as I progress through the year. In my previous post, I talked about making this year more about printing. And that’s exactly what I’m going to do.

But before I can even get to my own prints, I was thrilled today to finally hang the print I purchased from Tom Bland over the holidays entitled This Way. I have been following Tom and his wife Diana Pappas who publish Writing With Light on Substack and are known collectively as PappasBland. To see this image in all its glory, visit Art Drop #3 where the piece first appeared as one of their highly creative monthly Art Drops. I highly recommend their Substack.

I hope over the course of the next year I will have my own masterpieces to hang on the wall, but for now, I’ll take Tom’s print as inspiration for what is possible. Below is what it looks like on the wall by my front door. I was attracted to it initially because of its similarity to my image Yellow Line which I used to start off this Substack back in February of last year.

This Way by Tom Bland hanging near my front door

It’s an 8x12 image printed on an 11x14 sheet. I’ve put it in a frame with a 10x13 opening in a 14x18 frame. I chose a neutral wood frame border to highlight the colours and tones in the print. I think it looks great on my pale yellow walls.

Below is the new Epson ET-8550 printer. I now know that the unwanted side table from the bedroom set we bought last year is actually a printer table, now strategically set next to my desk. I love that the ink levels are determined by looking directly into the inkwells. No chip is required or available to inform me that I must keep ink in the tank or the unit will self destruct. If I let the well run dry it is nobody’s damn fault but my own. Why aren’t all printers made this way?

The Epson ET-8550 being loaded with ink for the first time.

There are a variety of images and test prints displayed in the photo below. So far the printer has exceeded my expectations even though it uses only 6 inks and is considered a lower priced model. That said, it seems to punch above its weight, delivering black & white and colour prints with equal aplomb.

First prints from the new Epson ET-8550

The four 8.5x11” prints above, two colour and two black and white, have all been printed on Epson Presentation Paper Matte double sided. The double sided means it can be printed on both sides, although I can’t really see myself doing that any time soon. I suppose you could create a book this way, printing on both sides of the page and then binding the pages. This particular paper is slightly thicker than the single sided version and has the added bonus of not being able to load it into the printer the wrong way up. I bought a package of each to compare them.

The colours are realistic and the detail is amazing. These printers have obviously come a long way since I last used one about 20 years ago. I still had a box of 4x6 glossy hanging around from then and the small print shown above is from that. The glossy paper gives richer blacks and more contrast, but is highly reflective and I have to say, I prefer the matte. This isn’t Epson’s best matte paper either, and as such is quite economical. But photo paper of any type isn’t cheap. There are other companies as well, but I’m starting with Epson to get the most out of the printer driver.

For low cost paper, you can’t beat a pad of Canson Watercolour paper which is the large sheet on the left above and the large sheet below. The pad comes in 30 sheets of 12x18” for $30 at Michaels. Yesterday I picked up a 30 sheet pad of the same in 9x12” for $17. Because it is non-coated paper, it needs to be sprayed on both sides to fix the image. You can see that the watercolour paper is quite warm and prints with even less contrast than the matte photo paper. Spraying it apparently increases the contrast, but I have not tried this yet. The watercolour paper is thicker than the photo paper by quite a bit and is wonderful to hold in the hand. I’m actually surprised by how much detail it holds.

1904 Peterborough Lift Lock Gate in Epson Matte and Canson Watercolour

The only issue I have encountered so far with printing is loading papers larger than 8.5x11 even though the printer is designed to handle papers up to 13” wide, the standard photo paper size being A3 or 13x19. I’m using Epson Print Layout and for some reason, it won’t let me print beyond 8.5 inch wide. Apparently this is not an uncommon problem with running Epson’s software on a Mac. The same issues don’t seem to exist on PCs. In my case, I simply can’t select larger paper sizes within the software and adding a custom size works fine until I enter a height and then the width reverts to 8.5 inches again. I tried to force it to print on larger sheets, but it won’t do it or at least won’t do it properly. In the image above, the section that printed on the large sheet is the bottom left corner of the image, an 8.5x11 segment of the full sized image I was hoping for. In the large print of Yellow Line above, it cut off the edges on both sides and printed an 8.5x18 on the 12x18 canvas.

I may have to switch to a different driver to overcome the issue. I’m told Qimage is good, but they don’t make a version for Mac. A third party Mac version of Qimage is available however, so I may have to turn to that. If anyone reading this knows of a fix for Epson Print Layout, or can make other suggestions, I would be very grateful to hear from you.

Anyways, those are my first baby steps. I feel confident, perhaps naivety speaking, that I will be able to overcome the large print issue. In the meantime, I will stick to printing on smaller paper. That’s really what I got the printer for. To print out 8.5x11s to see what they look like and to adjust my shooting accordingly. I feel taking photography full circle to this final print stage can only make me a better photographer and allow me to further establish why I take the pictures I do and where I want to concentrate my future efforts.

Thank you for joining me on this journey.

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Grief is Only Love

I was so impressed by the song I plucked out of thin air for the end of my last post, I’m a Song by Stephen Wilson Jr. that I will end this post with another composition from this fast rising star. He’s currently on tour promoting his first album Son of Dad. This one is called Grief is Only Love which I played for my grief group down at The Bridge Hospice last Thursday morning. I think it’s fair to say it went over well. The lyrics are below if you need. Enjoy.

Life is a battlefield

And it’ll drag you right through hell

Bites like a rattlesnake

The kind that you just don’t see on the trail

I miss my father everyday

The kinda pain I pray don’t fade away

And the ones above guide me down the road

Yeah grief is only love that’s got no place to go

From my great grandad in the ground

To all the ghosts in my hometown

Yeah they’re the ones that find me down the road

Yeah grief is only love that’s got no place to go

Grief is only love

The world is a cannonball

You deal with the feelings you can’t hide

God gave us alcohol

When we need to leave ‘em all inside

And I don’t feel like crying

But I just keep crying

For the ones above to guide me down the road

Yeah grief is only love that’s got no place to go

From my great grandad in the ground

To all the ghosts in my hometown

Yeah they’re the ones that find me down the road

Yeah grief is only love that’s got no place to go

Grief is only love

Grief is only love

Grief is only love

I don’t feel like crying

But I just keep crying

For the ones above to guide me down the road

Yeah grief is only love that’s got no place to go

So hang on to the hurtin’

And let it grab ahold and the only thing for certain is it’s out my control

And grief is only love that’s got no place to go

Yeah grief is only love that’s got no place to go

Yeah grief is only love

Grief is only love

Grief is only love

Grief is only love