When you think “Colorado vacation” you normally think of skiing and other snow sports, but Colorado’s busiest tourist season actually occurs between Memorial Day and Labor Day. That’s when it starts really hopping in Georgetown, an old mining community – now a tourist destination – that sits in a valley on the approaches to the Eisenhower Tunnel and the alpine areas for which Colorado is famous.
In downtown Georgetown you’ll find Grizzly Creek Gallery and its proprietor, Gary Haines, featured here at the LexJet Blog previously for his high-end, award-winning outdoor landscape photography and printing.
The problem, if you can really call it that, is that Haines’ work fetches a high price, as well it should. The stunning work of masterfully captured light in beautiful alpine meadows and woods from around Colorado is painstakingly rendered on the finest LexJet Sunset fine art and photo papers and framed to perfection.
For those who can’t afford finished fine art pieces but love the images, Haines started printing and offering posters of his high end work earlier this year. It’s the proverbial win-win. Haines captures buyers who would have otherwise walked out empty handed, while retaining those who want something of exquisite quality and at a much larger size hanging up in their home or office.
He prints the 19 in. x 38 in. panoramas with his Epson Stylus Pro 9900 on LexJet 8 Mil Production Satin Photo Paper. The paper is an excellent choice because it dries quickly for long runs and retains a quality look you simply don’t get from a typical poster paper.
“It’s relatively inexpensive to print when you’re designing and printing them yourself, they dry quickly and people who buy the posters really like it. We just roll them up, put them in a nice tube with an attractive sticker that displays the image, along with the price and bar code,” says Haines. “They’re designed in Photoshop and printed through the driver. I have a LaCie monitor calibrated to the printer, so whatever I see on the screen is what will print out.”
Haines is currently offering six different panoramas on posters, including the image that won the Landscape/Nature/Fine Art category in LexJet’s Shine On! photo contest, Winter Serenity.
“Since the posters are such a new item, I’ve seen a small uptick in sales of five to ten percent,” explains Haines. “As spring and summer approaches I expect to see more sales, especially from the tourists who purchase images of Colorado at a more affordable price.”
