Father's Day Printing the Image

It was Father’s Day last weekend and Devon came down to celebrate it with us.  When they asked me what I wanted to do to celebrate, I came up with an innovative idea - let’s print some images!  In part because Devon deserved to not return to Seattle empty handed, and in part because Ann has been working on some images from our trip last fall in anticipation for our trip this fall.  And given that my desk computer was in the shop, it was an all-Ann printing session!

The first image we printed was from the night we spent at Fire Point on the north rim of the Grand Canyon and the image shows why it earned that name.

Ann had been working on that image for quite a while, for quite a while.  No, that’s not a typo.  We tried to print the previous weekend and had some problems formatting the image on the frame.  She let me have a go at “fixing” things while she went into the other room to do some thing or another.  And boy did I “fix” it.  Somehow (and I don’t know how), I deleted all of the adjustments she had made to the image.  She was back to zero!

So she wound up working on it again the following week and this time she made a virtual copy of it (in case I felt a need to “fix” it again) and we printed off the copy.  Of course we had no problems working our way through the zillion settings to get it properly framed this time(I guess we were feeling a bit rushed the week before), and the image is simply lovely.  It has that mysterious shadow depth that you get as the sun is setting, with the brilliant last rays of a fiery sunset painting the landscape.  It’s dark and brilliant at the same time, with unearthly glowing rocks in the foreground.

Devon spent a while going through Ann’s images on her computer (as well as some of our earlier prints, a few of which he took home) and selected one of Ann’s photographs from Eureka Dunes in Death Valley.  It’s an image with lots of texture and depth, which all came out in the print.

Sometimes you want sand dune images with super harsh contrast, almost graphic in nature.  But with images like this, the subtle textures and high tonal value recreate that late-morning feeling that, while it’s still pleasant out, it won’t be long before the desert lets you know why they call this Death Valley.

Overall, it was a mighty enjoyable Father’s Day for me!