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Storage Options and Print Sizes

So when we get the prints done, one of the things we have to consider is the story to the photograph. She spent a lot of time and a lot of money to get things done. So these are archival storage boxes. Come on, you can open up. I did it. Um, so these won't cause the paper to degree aid. They'll actually not cause any weirdness with the print. When you actually finish the print, it comes off the printer. It takes about 24 hours to off gas allows all the stuff to come off. So once it's had its off gassing process, it goes into one of these boxes. I like these boxes because they lay flat and I can pull the images out pretty easily. Some of them actually don't close all the way or they bind and they keep the can even full it this way. But they'll keep this square up like that, and then you're having to dig with your fingernails, pulled a print out, and then you're gonna damage the print and they come in. As you can see, they come in the host of sizes. So if you're dealing with the differen...

t sizes for different size prints. You can play with those. You can get these pretty much anywhere, but you're just looking for something that's that's archival in that regard. Now print wise, The's air century archival century is the brand for these, but there's about five different companies that make him okay. When it comes to Prince, print size makes a huge difference. So things were just to make sure these air just spacers to make sure photos fly around the room doing whatever they want to do. Spacers Just to keep the compression in there. This is called inner leaving tissue, so the prints are actually pretty fragile or more fragile in the old print. So just this is archival tissue paper, and when you make the prints, you just lay it between the prince and to make sure that the surfaces don't get damaged. Okay, there was an old adage that gets attributed Ansel Adams, but is if you can't print well print big Um, and the problem with that is any sin you have in a photograph. That small is exponentially change when it's big. So I have this little photograph. This is from down in a Canyon Beach area, and this is printed on a brighter paper. It's got a little bit of tenting into it, Um, when the quality is okay. But if I take in print that in a different size, our relationship to the image changes. And so one of the things that happens is that remember a smaller the prep, the closer I have to get to it. So which one of these is correct? Kind of depends on the size of the wall. The experience would have, because you have to walk closer to this. So in some ways this is a more intimate viewing experience because it's you alone getting to look at the photograph. You can also see there's some subtle differences in the totality of the waves. This one's a little bit warmer, a little bit whiter. Thes ways have a little bit more tone in there. That's because this is a natural paper, and this is a well considered a bright white paper. If I take this one, this is on glossy paper. This is down in a California area, and this is on Matt paper so you can see it's a completely different viewing experience Now, which one's right? Which one's wrong? We're gonna have a preference, but it doesn't mean one's better than the other ones. Worse than the other. They just have a different experience. Um, I bought People always ask, Why did I buy the printer I bought? I bought it because it prints this big because I'm like, Well, I can't print. Well, I'm gonna friend big. No, I I love the experience of my black and white photography. This size I shoot an eight by 10 view camera. Still. So my film is still a huge camera. I'm used to building big prints. So in my world, I see images this size. I see portraiture this size. So I got the printer because of the size. Um, for that, this one I bring in because it's got a terrible sin on it right here. So you can see that mark coming in. So this is a thick, thick paper. It's an ultra smooth matt paper, but that is the print head actually striking the edge of the paper. And what happened is it started to come out of the printer. I didn't pay attention to the It's got a little curve is gonna go Wonder Base with length, and it caught the edge of part of the printer. And so the paper got stuck, and that print had hit the paper a couple of times, as it was trying to figure out, like, Why can't advance the paper properly? And it got damaged in that way. Because of that allows me, though, to show you guys I can take a fingernail across the paper so I can damage the prints relatively easy easily. So when they get to a final print state, I want to make sure that they're properly treated with the Emily things. People wear gloves that they're taking care of. Where's the other little? His backers beginning? So the market question, I always get asked. This photograph is not anything other than what time did you take that, Michael. There's a big clock. Let's see if we can guess. Okay, two different interpretations of the sky. So as I was soft proofing here, I was trying to deal with the tones and the paper in the relationship here. This image held the color gamut differently, so I was able to play with saturation a little differently on the two different images and hold the quality. And again, I was playing with that image with a little bit more texture. So this one has a little bit more appearance of sharpness, Miss does on a smooth paper. Different paper type. Actually, this is Ah, this is a hot press bright white paper. And this is an ultra smooth photo rag paper. Um, that image we just looked at and I talked about the sharpness element. So you end up with something like this on this one. There's really subtle details you can see under the water here. And so this paper was selected because when I printed on a paper with some more texture, those became more obvious, and I in this case, I didn't want them to be obvious. So I was trying to hide, Okay, last, uh, last little piece when you go to sign your photographs and you decide to make some decisions. So this is actually a matted photograph, and the matting is called a T hen. So it allows the photograph to be remanded, pulled out over and over again. It's kind of one of the common ways we met photographs now, but people always ask about signing photographs and things like that. Usually you're going to sign the front in the lower left corner, and I you consign on the photograph where we do. I like to say not on the photographs, So it's not a distraction. I want to experience the whole limit. Thea Other pieces. You usually want a number of your prints. Even if they're not in a limited edition, you wanna put its number one? Number two. Number three people know how many been sold You're doing a limited edition you would do one of 15 to 15. AP is an artist proof. So usually what you do is you create a artist proof that you're going to store occasionally. See some photographer seldom. But at the end of the day, what ultimately comes down to is you just need that notation of how many are sold. That's important for collectors from a fine art print standpoint. The other thing that you can do is if you don't want to sign the front, you consign the back directo on the back, and then usually what I also like to include is a bunch of information about a little stamp that I use and I provide the information about what printer was it printed on? What ink set was it printed on? What day was it printed on? And the reason for that is if, for some reason this got damaged and it was a museum or something like that, they could potentially then understand what they need to do to correct it. Because I understand the materials that was created with so providing that information, things are great question so permanent. I spent a lot of time archival paper, archival pigment ink. So what I'm looking for now is archival pens to sign with. So I use a pigment micron, pig, MMA, pigment based ink pin, and I come in a variety of colors in a variety of sizes. Ah, Sharpie is permanent, but not archival. You signed with a Sharpie. You better be ready for it to show up on the other side of the photograph. I have a friend who's like it's all the same signs across the back and little about six months later, we can see the reverse signature starting come from a photograph. So you're gonna want to sign that, and then I usually. Also, if I'm actually scented mad and I provide that information also on the back of the frame of the back of the Mass, they don't have to crack the image to come forward. If it's Matt Paper, though. So I signed with ink on glossy or Leicester paper. But if it's Matt Paper, I signed with pencil and the pencils just on there because it's actually able to hold in their the ink doesn't bleed out. Because remember that Matt Paper the ink starts to spread out. I don't want that to spread out. The signature is, Is there, like a general correctness, um, like to this type of Matt versus, like a slip in Matt, there's no I don't think there's, Ah, correctness. It really is that the artist pleasure at the collector's pleasure. And so in terms of what's right or wrong, that would be up for you to determine. The key is to make sure that if you're going for an archival process, no matter what it is that the materials themselves are archival, so these are actually archival mat boards, which will be whether I was slipping in cutting doing whatever or foam core to press on the back would be actually archival foam core. Did that actually answer your question? It did. And the reason why I was asking is I recently bought like a ton of slipping mats, thinking, you know, Well, that's what everyone seems to be using. But then I realized I ran into the problem of actually trying to get the photos in, and I was You're talking about Prince being fragile, and I'm you know, I'm using my fingers like pushing the print down, so I was wondering if that's why I didn't bring them. But what I would get is they make some. They're just white cotton gloves, and they're really thin, and they will let you actually get on the print and keep any oils from getting onto the print. And keep your fingerprints from showing up on the prints. Just some white gloves. While you're pushing those in there, the other thing you conduce you, which a lot off high end fine art printers do is Hannah Mule. Moab Premier makes a protective spray, and it's designed to spray over the image. It helps with the UV protection, and it helps fingerprints and oil stay off the image. The thing if you're going to do that is pee in a well ventilated room because I about killed my family. I'm downstairs eventually, like always. Like we're pretty high up here. So but the cans gonna tell you to spray like you would spray paint. And what could happen is it. It will come out and not necessarily be even in the code, and it can cause a bronzing effect. So what I recommend you do is lay the print out flat, and you wanna put like plastic underneath and spray across and let it fall under the print and do that about three times and let it cascade down print. You'll get a nice even coating and then let it drive dries pretty quickly. But then let it dry. And you want to do that after it's off gas for the 24 hours. But at that point, there's just a little like sheen. It doesn't affect the quality of the print or anything, but it definitely helps with the fragility of the print, particularly on some of the mat prints in this paper wonders that paper, like backside of this, has got a nice little fuzzy elements. That's the other pieces. Make sure you're printing on the right side of the paper hints You have to help us identify the front and back of the printer are the page. And after you open, like when you first open up the box and then later on, three minutes later, you come back to the box. How do you know a great question? Most paper manufacturers have recognized that that is in fact, a problem. And so when you open a lot of papers and now it will actually have a paper in there that says print this side up. And as long as you don't take that one out and you're pulling out your okay, the other peace I have advice for that is most papers have a texture. So if you even touch this one, you could feel that top of the back. Okay, so this is an ultra smooth paper, so the ultra smooth side would be the print side. But I'm a lot of them. Yeah, you won't necessarily be able to easily tell, but usually the side that feels like it doesn't have any fibers pulling off of it is decided to print on, and the other one is you can. Sometimes it's hard on the bigger paper, the smaller you kind of hold up and they all, whether there are berated paper or whatever they're coding services will have. Even a map paper has a tiny bit a sheen to it. It's kind of just if you can catch the light just right, you can kind of catch the sheen in some papers, like Mo Abs and Trotta has ah, print on either side. That's the way they have solved the problem with some of theirs.