Got 'em

Received the order. The pictures are fabulous and better than we could have expected. We love them. Thank you so much!

- T.W.

Ah, music to my nicotine-starved ears.

Qty	Title	Price	Print Size	Matte Size	Type
1	Flat Iron, Tilted	$25	5 x 7	8 x 10	Open Edition
1	Sax Player	$25	5 x 7	8 x 10	Open Edition
1	Promenade	$25	5 x 7	8 x 10	Open Edition
1	Chrysler Building, Storm	$50	8 x 10	11 x 14	Limited Edition
1	Couple in Rain	$25	5 x 7	8 x 10	Open Edition

I'm not sure what the purpose is of showing the actual order information other than that I never did that before and this is what the customer gets and other photographers often ask, "so what are people buying..."

This is a typical order. Some orders are for lots of the $25 prints (I've still got two of these types to get done) and some are for a couple of the larger prints, or for a mix of both sizes. Now going forward, at some point, I'm going to have to see if the market will bear say $30 a print for the smaller ones. And I will confess that I actually have a fondness for the smaller prints myself - although I know the world is going bigger with everything. It may go back to the days when I was studying the effect of different sized images and thought it was a great accomplishment to achieve an emotional effect from a small print. And let's face it - living in the typical urban crackerbox - those are the prints that are just now starting to make it up on my own walls.

Crane Museo Silver Rag

The Museo Silver Rag paper from Crane arrived today. I have just finished some prints.

I say, "wow."

The printable surface, and now I'm looking at it without any ink on it, has the look and feel of my old darkroom Gallerie fiber paper. It is really nice. I don't think I'm going to get jobs as a reviewer with words like, "nice." Okay, how about - sweet.

When I first printed with it, the suggestion was to use the Premium Semi-Gloss setting which is fine, but this paper is thicker and stiffer than Premium Semi-Gloss so there was some ink being picked up on the side where the paper curved up a little.

I went into the "Paper Config" screen and changed the paper thickness setting to: 15 (0.1 mm); and instead of "Auto" changed the Platen Gap to "Wide." Oh, and I gave it a little more time to dry between passes. In advanced b&w mode on the Epson 4800 you don't use - in fact you can't use - a profile. Let the driver do the work for you.

Anyway - one or all of those tweaks fixed the problem of ink catching on the right side of the paper edge.

It is difficult to quantify a "look." I'm just saying that this is the first thick, heavy cotton paper with an air-dried fiber darkroom look. Very beautiful. Definitely will end the "ripple" effect you get with lighter papers. Sweet.

What else can I tell you - it has been designed to work with the Photo Black cartridge. I didn't make any other changes in my printer settings. And when this paper comes out - it is what I will use.

* * *
And give the paper time to dry. I'm looking at it the next morning - even better. I realize I'm using subjective words like, "better, nice etc." but can you describe a look that you like without simply comparing it to some known quality? Holding one of my best darkroom fiber prints next to the Museo Silver Rag print - under the light - I sure can tell one from the other. I can tell because the surfaces aren't exactly the same; because I know if I hold the inkjet print at a certain angle under the light I'm going to get a sheen that will spread out over the entire print that won't be as pronounced with the darkroom fiber print. And I can tell because the Museo paper has a cotton feel to the touch, at least the non-printable side.

But framed, under glass, not knowing one from the other - I could take a good guess. But the point is that the Silver Rag has an equally luxurious and rich feel to it.

Day 6

I'm not sure how much longer I should keep calling posts, Day 1, Day 2 etc. I think I might keep it going 'til day 14.

It's getting a little better all the time.

One thing when I didn't expect when I switched to the new computer -- some of my software seems way outdated - and I actually couldn't get Ultradev 4 to install properly under XP PRO. I'm sure there are a million people running UD 4 under XP Pro - but I no have luck. So I downloaded the TRY version of Dreamweaver 8 (I guess the whole Ultra Dev branding is over) - and it installed and runs no problem. Upgrade is $199. I'm sure I'll do it. Let's face it. I'm hooked.

I think there's one more piece of software to install - Quickbooks 2002 (yikes) that makes it sound old (which is exactly what they want you to think) - but if it installs and works, I'll stick with it.

But it is funny how much software / plug-ins / etcetera I am dependent on that I could never put on a list beforehand.

Oh - and Craig - I'll be honest with you and Barrett -- I haven't even been following your conversation about printers. I think you got a new one and Barrett got a new one - but whether they're the same or not - I have no idea. But whatever you ended up with - I guess you went against the 2400.

Also - drive-wise - let's put it this way: the striped raid drive is used for working on "production" pieces. The external drives are used to either backup, or off-load stuff that isn't in "production." So for example - the digital shots are all available on the external drives. If I am working on one it might get copied over to the RAID DRIVES and then if it goes into production, meaning it's for sale, it stays on the RAID drive.

Same idea for scanned negatives. They start off on the external drive, and some of them make it to the RAID DRIVE for processing. The external drives also act as a backup for the PRODUCTION FILES as well as original scans. In other words, things are faster on RAID but anything that involved labor is backed up and that includes just pure scanning.

* * *

Oh, and P.S. - this thing is now truly mult-tasking, so while some huge copy is going on - or some especially intensive PS operation, I was easily able to load Dreamweaver and do some coding work, get my mail, and write this bit.

P.P.S. The fan is working fine. I checked the temperature of the CPU this morning (it shows up in BIOS) and it was 32C. Spoke with the tech at MicroVelocity and he said that was very cool indeed; especially since CPU was left on for 24 hours straight.

* * *

I know - your eyes glaze over with all this tech. crap - but I think that knowing (or being mildly interested) in this stuff is a big part of the photography biz these days and let's face it - if you can't do anything creative (which I'm not doing lately) then you can always fall back on the right-brain agenda (or is it the left-brain) - I always get the hemispheres confused.