I bought a new printer recently. It was a long painful process. I thought I'd share the experience in hopes that it may help you decide if buying a printer is worthwhile. The story starts about 3 maybe 4 years ago. My Epson R3000 was not working well and given that it was 7 years old I entertained the idea of buying a new printer. Facing the cost of replacing I decided that I would do everything I could to extend the life of my old printer. I learned as much as I could about maintenance, head cleaning and printer repair. I got another 3 years out of it, after much work and frustration. Finally I got to the point where it had to be replaced. It was by this time 10 years old. Here are the questions I had to ask myself to justify buying a new printer.
Question #1
Why do I even want a print?
Answer
Making a print has always been a part of my creative process. I don't feel like I've finished a photograph until I have a satisfactory print. I have a stand that I put my prints on so that I can live with them awhile, see them in different light and from different angles. If after some time I still like the image, then I know that I have something worth showing. Often over the course of a few days or weeks I'll find edits that I think would improve the photograph. This was a thing in the film days referred to as work prints and they were an important step towards a final print. So to answer the question, I need a print to complete my photography.
Question #2
Do I need a printer?
Answer
Being able to make a print at home gives instant feedback on my editing. Seldom is the first print satisfactory. Like working in a darkroom getting a print right requires several tries. Printing at home also allows me to print on different papers. I could send my photographs out to be printed. Some printers offer a variety of paper to chose from however it just seems like a clumsy process.
Question #3
Is it cost effective to do your own printing?
Answer
Not likely and that depends on how demanding you want to be. If all you want are a stack of 4x6 prints then printing at home is not an economical option. If quality prints on quality paper are important and you produce them regularly then printing at home starts to be close to the cost of lab prints. Doing your own printing is not cheap and its not something you want to do unless there is some other value in it for you such as control over the final product. If the question of cost effectiveness is an important question to you then maybe doing your own printing is not for you. A 8x10 print from a lab runs about $5 and a 8x10 print on similar paper printed at home might cost $2.50 but you might make several versions. A "fine art" print by a lab runs at $22 and up, which is about what it would cost to print at home.
My thought on the cost of doing my own printing is that it's part of the price of being an artist. I need to do my own printing as part of my creative process.
So now that I'm satisfied that it is a justifiable purchase, what printer did I buy? Wait for part two!
Updated: Apr 4
In 1981 I friend introduced me to a new camera he had just bought. This new Polaroid camera was a SX70. It was like nothing I’d ever seen before. Everything about it was beautiful, The way it folded and unfolded, the chrome and leather, the huge viewfinder, and of course the sound it made taking the picture was magic. It was the image quality though that really did it for me. These prints had a thickness and colour that I found very appealing. Not only was the character of the image unlike anything else but it emerged out of the camera as a finished singular print. As a twenty year old photographer I understood that this was important even if I didn’t know way, I was too wrapped up in how cool this process was.
Not long after acquiring my own SX70 I saw an exhibition of Andre Kertesz SX70 photographs at the Jane Corkin Gallery on Front St in Toronto. I remember being impressed that the polaroid process was used by such a respected artist. Of course that was only the tip of the iceberg. My next revolution was the Ansel Adams book on Polaroid photography. Seemed like every major photogr apher of the 80’s used Polaroid photography. As a young photographer I didn’t think much of it at the time as I was more interested in making photographs than thinking about them. I just knew that the images struck my imagination.
Years later I came to realize what was so appealing to me about the Polaroid. At the core of it was the idea of pure or straight photography and the concept of pre visualization as put forth by Edward Weston, Ansel Adams and other photographer of their time. To me that meant the photographer had to have a complete understanding of the camera and materials they were using so that the end result was envisioned at the time of exposure.(this has been interpreted many different ways over the years by many different people) Polaroid process to was the pinnacle of this concept. It wasn’t about realism, it was about using the characteristics of the materials to express my ideas.
Polaroid has in its nature the contradiction of real and surreal. On one hand the finished print comes straight out of the camera, no darkroom manipulation. On the other hand the images can look surreal and dream like. This paradox was the underlying idea behind my exhibiton at the WLU Langdon gallery in 2001.
My photograph, “121 King St” represents the beginning of my journey with Polaroid. Its both real and abstract, using the literal representation of an instant photo and interpretation of the photographer to create an image that could be from s dream.
For historical context my first apartment in Kitchener in 1981 was at 121 King St. This bathroom belonged to the apartment across the hall and all that separated it from the hallway was a curtain.
Updated: Jan 29, 2022
I've been putting a lot time and effort lately into a community gallery that I belong to. While doing this I've put some thought into why I feel it's worth the effort. Here are some of my reasons to to belong to and participate in this endeavour.
I believe it's important for local artists to have a place to hang their work. Putting your work on a wall in a public space means you have created something that is worthy of public display. While posting something online might get seen by lots of people we don't paint or sculpt or create our art to be seen on a phone.
Belonging to the gallery means I have to finish things. Every couple months I need new framed finished work to display. As a photographer I can capture a vast number of images. However that really doesn't mean anything if I don't finish any of them. Sure I can do some quick editing and post them on Instagram or do some more careful work and post on a stock photo site but that's not the same as taking the extra steps to print and frame something. The incentive to finish work is a big benefit of belonging to the gallery.
The gallery is a great place to meet clients. I used to meet in cafes but that doesn't really work these days. On more than one occasion when meeting someone to pick up prints, the client was impressed by someone's painting or someone's glass work.
Image from our photographs in the new show at the Uptown Gallery in Waterloo, You can see my photography and the work of many other fine artists at the Uptown Gallery in Waterloo Town Square.
Photographs in the new show at the Uptown Gallery in Waterloo uptowngallerywaterloo.com
