Printing the Image - 2018.06.19 - Liar's Edition
Call me a liar. I could try to argue that I, in fact, did not lie because I always told the truth, just not the whole truth. But then Ann would probably just roll her eyes like she does when she’s about to tell me to stop acting like a lawyer. Even worse, she might start thinking that I’m part of the press corps, unwilling to call a lie a lie, or a liar a liar. Yikes! So call me a liar.
I’ve been less than wholly truthful, excuse me, I mean lying, in a couple of my Printing the Image posts recently. I did, in fact, print the images that were included in the blog posts. It’s just that, on a couple of occasions, I printed an additional image that I remained silent about. So now I’m going to tell you about them.
The reason I remained silent, I mean lied, about the images is that they were a birthday present. And a birthday present isn’t much of a surprise if you announce to the world you’re doing something for somebody’s birthday. Now that he has his presents in hand (as well as one from Ann), I can tell you about printing the images.
When we first started thinking about printing, I started culling through my images to find ones that might be interesting in print. I immediately knew I wanted to include these two images. And as I was moving them over into my “To Print” collection, it dawned on me when they were made. June 19, 2016 - Len’s birthday. I knew I had to print them, do it well, and give them as birthday presents!
These images were taken in Bandon in the lovely pre-dawn light that seems to occur there time and time again. They were actually taken mere minutes apart (6 minutes to be precise) during that period of time where the sun is about to top the horizon and color of the skies (and water) are rapidly changing.
This first image was taken in that pre-dawn light where pink is infusing everything - coloring the sky rose and turning the water purplish. As the sun nears the horizon, the pink begins to fade somewhat, but the ground begins to glow (in this case, the rocks and water) and you start to see details in the rocks that you couldn’t see before.
I rarely crop my images significantly, but I did in this instance because it just seems right. John Sexton explains that he attempts to process film with precision and to print with compassion. Here, you can say that it was a sensitivity to what the image wanted to be that led me to crop the image so extremely.
Printing the image was no easy matter. In fact, it was one of the more difficult images I’ve had to print yet. The reason - the pinks.
I’ve come to learn that the one color weakness in the Canon printers appears to be the pinks/magentas. (Apparently each brand of printer has a color it has trouble reproducing well.) Every image that I’ve tried to print that has a lot of light-colored pinks/magentas/rose color seems to turn out way different than what it appears on-screen. The same cannot be said about other types of colors - those images seem to reproduce well.
In concept printing should almost be a no-brainer - I have calibrated my monitors, and use ICC profiles for my printer and each paper that I use, so what I see on my monitor should be very, very close to what I get out of the printer. True much of the time, but not always. My initial print had no rose coloring at all. So I had to enter that world of guessing how I had to alter the image on screen, to get what I wanted on paper. No easy task.
After a few more tries, this is what I had to have on my monitor, to get an image on paper that looks somewhat like the one above.
Yikes! But it worked! The print has a lovely light rose colored sky that was present that morning.
The second image presented me with a whole different set of issues. This image was made right as the sun started hitting the top of the rocks.
Gone largely are the strong pinks in the sky and water, though I still had to boost those up a bit in the print. What I had to struggle to get is a sense of light glowing on the tips of the rocks and to bring out the reflected coloring on the surface of the water in the foreground, without washing out the image, or making it so contrasty as to offend the eye. Again, the final print has a subtlety that captures how I felt that morning.
One of the things I am re-learning though is how important the light conditions are for viewing prints, color prints in particular. The above images look very different based upon the lighting conditions you’re viewing them under, and how intense the light is. I had forgotten that aspect of printing - the light conditions on how you view the print matters. At one level I guess it’s not much different than the fact I have no control over how bright folks set their monitors or iPads. It’s something I’ll just have to accept about the process.
Oh, by the way, Happy Birthday Len!