Making the Forest and the Trees Shine at a Fine Art Photography Exhibition

POETRe Exhibit by Visio Photography
The POETRe Exhibit by Visio Photography at The School in Valdese, N.C., feature’s Visio’s fine art landscape photography printed on Sunset Photo Metallic Paper, Sunset Select Matte Canvas (the Coming Storm image on the left side of the centerpiece) and acrylic prints by Artisan Colour (right side of the centerpiece).

VISIO Photography is best known for the exceptional wedding and portrait photography crafted by the husband-and-wife team of James and Jenny Tarpley. Located in Marion, N.C., just outside of Asheville, the couple is also making its mark with high-end fine art landscape photography.

Exhibition by Visio PhotographyA recent exhibition at The Rock School in Valdese, N.C., brought VISIO Photography’s nature photography to light with a focus on trees. Called POETRe, the exhibition ran from June 3 to July 26. Thanks to a combination of immaculate capture, printing detail, print material selection and photo finishing, the exhibition literally glowed.

“There were people at the exhibition who were looking around the edges of the prints to see if they were backlit,” James says. “They were impressed with the way the images leapt out of the frames, and it was also nice to hear from peers who saw the exhibition that the colors looked really good.”

Visio Photography Fine Art Landscape ExhibitThe majority of the prints for the exhibition were printed on LexJet Sunset Photo Metallic Paper. One was printed on LexJet Sunset Select Matte Canvas, and the remainder was printed using a traditional chemical process applied to acrylic by Artisan Colour, Scottsdale, Ariz.

“The Metallic prints were framed behind museum-grade anti-reflective glass. We used black matting on the majority of them to really hone in on the image; I wanted the display to take a back seat to the image,” James explains. “We do a lot of our wedding printing on fine art papers, but we’ve been doing a lot of landscapes lately and we’ve found the Metallic paper displays really well on the wall, especially when it’s lit properly. The great color gamut and vivid reproduction makes this paper wonderful for our landscapes.”

The image printed at 20″ x 60″ on Sunset Select Matte Canvas was finished with LexJet Sunset Gloss Coating. James says the Sunset Gloss Coating increased the contrast, providing extra pop to make it more consistent with the other brilliant images in the collection, which you can see more of at jt-fineart.com.

Printing Available Reality for a Gallery Show

Printing images for a gallery show

Award-winning PPA photographer Gordon Kreplin, owner of Ascencion Photography, is well know on North Carolina’s Outer Banks for his portrait photography, but he also has a sterling collection of photographic art, a series of which is being displayed this month at the Ghost Fleet Gallery in Nags Head, N.C.

When I spoke with Kreplin this afternoon he was busily battening down the hatches for the impending arrival of Hurricane Sandy, or at least the battering outer bands of the storm, as it storms past his location.

That’s reality, but the series on display at Ghost Fleet Gallery is called Available Reality, which is a little different. Kreplin explains that the concept is to strip away any preconceptions one may have about the scene portrayed in the image in front of them.

“With any type of art – whether it’s a painting, a sculpture or a photograph – the capture is not something done by the artist or photographer, but it happens because I’m available to it. It’s about pulling the veil away and allowing a relationship to take place without preconceived notions,” explains Kreplin.

To better portray Available Reality, Kreplin used Nik Software’s Silver Efex filters, particularly the infrared filter, to provide more drama, depth and dimension to the images. Most of the images were printed in black and white with a smattering of color, providing splashes of contrast in the gallery presentation.

“Some of those images didn’t work as well in color. When I switched to black and white and used the filters they popped out and became more dramatic,” says Kreplin. “The idea for me is that if the composition doesn’t work in black-and-white it doesn’t work. I always try to use that approach. In terms of zones, if it doesn’t work in color it’s not going to translate to black and white if you don’t have good exposure levels across all your zones.”

To ensure the best possible presentation, Kreplin chose LexJet Sunset Fibre Elite 285g for the print medium. Sunset Fibre Elite is one of Kreplin’s staple inkjet photo materials because it provides a wide dynamic range for his images.

“Sunset Fibre Elite accepts such a high dynamic range that it creates a better sense of depth. I’m able to cover all the zones – my blacks are really black and my whites have detail –so it allows me to broaden my vision of an image and see it a little better,” says Kreplin. “When I go from my Hasselblad RGB to Adobe RGB I can print directly to my Epson 9900 at 16-bit and the Fibre Elite really gets the dynamic detail. I absolutely love the paper.”

To view the images from Available Reality on display at Ghost Fleet Gallery, click here, and here’s a slideshow of the display in the video embedded below…

How Award-Winning Photographer Gordon Kreplin Makes Inkjet Printing Pay

Printing and mounting photos
Black-and-white gallery mount printed on Sunset Photo eSatin Paper by Ascencion Photography.

The last time we spoke with Gordon Kreplin, award-winning PPA photographer and owner of Ascencion Photography in North Carolina’s Outer Banks, he told us how important being able to print his own work was to his advertising and promotion.

As noted in that blog post, the ability to produce large, eye-catching banners that draw in traffic from the busy thoroughfare nearby is a big plus. The bigger plus, according to Kreplin, is in his daily photography work. A high-quality inkjet print produced in-house is incredibly effective word-of-mouth advertising.

“We’ve had the experience where someone who’s seen one of our prints somewhere and calls because they have seen their neighbor’s prints. The word of mouth from the quality of the print hanging up is very strong advertising. “You can’t get that quality and ability to control the process any other way; it’s less time, energy and money for me to do it myself,” says Kreplin. “The only way the photography business as a whole can survive is if we offer high-end imaging and printing, and that’s what’s separated our business. We tell our clients that they’ll get a classical portrait printed in a very refined manner using the same care with which I print my own competition prints and competition prints for other photographers.”

Printing canvas gallery wraps
Gallery wrap by Ascencion Photography printed on Sunset Select Matte Canvas.

Kreplin reports that one of Ascencion Photography’s best sellers this past year has been Sunset Fibre Elite, which has been a nice complement to his other standard photo print media: Sunset Photo eSatin Paper, Sunset Select Matte Canvas and Sunset Photo Gloss Paper.

“Printing on any of the Sunset Fibre-based papers is a great seller because the Dmax is so much greater: your darks are richer, your lights are more detailed and you get the sense of more of a three-dimensional image when it’s displayed,” says Kreplin. “Sunset Photo eSatin Paper is the paper I use the most. When someone gets a regular 8×10 on that, it’s beautiful. Plus, we use gallery mounts we get from Pacific Mount, apply the eSatin and coat it with Hahnemuhle Protective Spray. The eSatin is great for that application because it’s a nice, thick paper that holds up well. Those gallery mounts fly out the door.”

The power and importance of print will be part of a workshop Kreplin will teach at the Virginia Professional Photographers Association annual conference in February. The pre-conference workshop is planned for Feb. 22 (the event in Roanoke is scheduled to run Feb. 22-26), the proceeds of which will help raise money for scholarships. Be sure to check back here for more information about the event and Kreplin’s workshop.

Printing photo albums
Ascencion Photography offers albums printed on Sunset Fibre Elite. The albums are sent to a botique album company for assembly.

Entitled Walk into the Light, the focus is on making environmental lighting work in your favor, from capture to print, or, as Kreplin puts it, “It’s about how to make lemons into lemonade if you don’t have the perfect lighting on location.”

“We’ll also talk a lot about image capture and how using the information from the capture will help you understand what can be produced: how you look at your dynamic range and how that will relate to a print,” adds Kreplin. “If you keep printing in mind throughout the process, you’ll know how to present a great image electronically as well.”

Gaining Market Share with Quantity and Quality at Carolina Premium Beverage

Large format inkjet printers for point of saleYou would be hard-pressed to find someone who loves their job more than Sandy Woods, who runs the sign shop – make that “art department” – at Carolina Premium Beverage in Concord, N.C., which is near Charlotte.

“I prefer to call it the art department because I have a degree in art  and we really focus on design as opposed to just mass producing signs,” explains Woods. “I love what I do. I have been here at Carolina Premium Beverage for five years, and have been in design my entire career. I know in my heart that I will retire here. This is home to me; I love this company.”

Using typography for point of sale designThat attitude alone is worth its weight in ink, a.k.a. liquid gold, and the art department has been instrumental in making Carolina Premium Beverage’s brands, chief among them MillerCoors, tops in the distributor’s market, which includes Charlotte and about six surrounding counties.

As you can see by the samples pictured here, design takes precedence over everything else. It is that foundation which secures valuable, premium space for Carolina’s Premium Beverage’s point-of-sale graphics.

The second piece that builds on that foundation, and which ensures the quality and timeliness of the finished prints, is the right equipment and the personal support to go along with it. “I would never want to do my job without LexJet and Kelly [Price, Woods’ customer specialist],” says Woods. “Kelly is a life saver. Most of the time, I order materials a week out, but they’re usually here the next day. When there are occasions when I need to order something right away, she’s right on top of it; she’s awesome to work with. I have two Canon iPF8000S printers that I got from LexJet as well and I love them. They’re super fast and you can’t beat the quality. Those are my babies; I can’t live without them.”

Cooler wraps at the point of saleThe “Siamese Twins,” as Woods calls them, help ensure fast turnaround times for Carolina Premium Beverage’s accounts, which is another way in which the distributor beats its competitors to the punch at the point of sale. Woods, who runs the art department by herself, also has an OKI laser printer for cooler tags, table tents and other small format point of sale.

“Our goal was to surpass the main competitor in our market, and we’ve largely succeeded. Part of that success is the fact that we can get our point of sale out the door much quicker,” says Woods. Ultimately, it is possible, and necessary, to provide quantity and quality point of sale graphics in order to build market share.

She estimates that the art department produces about 3,600 banners and posters a year, not counting special events and venues, like the Carolina Panthers’ football stadium and the Bobcats’ basketball arena.

Point of sale design and printingWoods says her “go-to” print material is LexJet TOUGHcoat Water-Resistant Polypropylene, which she uses for both indoor and outdoor point-of-sale projects. She also uses LexJet 11 Mil Valeron Banner for outdoor projects that need extra durability, and Photo Tex adhesive fabric for cooler wraps and special events, such as a recent Sugarland concert at the Verizon Wireless Amphitheater in Charlotte.

Special event and promotional bannersCarolina Premium Beverage was created in 2010 through the merger of three companies: Rudisill Enterprises of Gastonia, N.C., Cunningham Wholesale Company of Charlotte, and the Charlotte-based division of Caffey Distributing.

Each company has a long history in the beer distribution business. The owners of each company believed that by merging their businesses into one they could bring the best portfolio of beers to consumers in the Charlotte market area, says Woods. “It is our goal to be the leading beer supplier to retail customers serving consumers in the Charlotte area,” she adds.

Making a Splash with the Promotional Power of Large Format Prints

Printing storefront promotional banners

It’s almost that time of year along North Carolina’s Outer Banks. Summer vacationers will soon flock to the area for R&R. Along the way it’s likely they’ll be stopped in summertime traffic right in front of Ascension Photography.

Ascension Photography’s proprietor and award-winning PPA photographer, Gordon Kreplin, recently placed traffic-stopping banners to give beachgoers food for thought as they make their way (slowly) to their destinations.

Promotional large format bannersAs a big believer in the power of print, and printing his own work, Kreplin had limited options for showcasing his work outside his studio and toward the road. After consulting with his LexJet customer specialist, Michael Clementi, Kreplin decided on two banners – one with a single horizontal image and another with two basically square images – placed together on the railing outside the second-floor studio.

Each banner is about 50 inches long by 40 inches high and printed on LexJet 11 Mil Valeron Banner with Kreplin’s Epson Stylus Pro 9900. To secure the banners, Kreplin used LexJet Banner Ups (White) and plastic ties from the local hardware store for extra stability. Kreplin says the banners weathered the first Nor’easter they encountered, so a summertime run looks good.

“It took me awhile to figure out the best ICC profile for the banner material, but I found a LexJet canvas profile that worked well through ImagePrint. For a poster-type image it looked great. The skin tones turned out beautifully and I was able to control the final output almost as much as a more high-end print,” says Kreplin.

Kreplin shoots with a Hasselblad H4D-31 and adjusted the images a bit using onOne Software’s Genuine Fractals and nik Software tools to bring out the highlights and draw more attention to banners that will typically be seen from at least 25 yards away.

“We’re very pleased with it, and we’re going to do more. The beauty salon would like something similar on their side of the building. In fact, I may wrap the whole building,” laughs Kreplin.

The Difference a Print Makes with Randy McNeilly at Upcoming Photo Conferences

Fine art photography studio decor

In a presentation entitled A Renaissance in Portrait Photography, Randy McNeilly will provide photographers with his keys to differentiation in the photography market at the Southwest PPA Regional Convention and the Virginia Professional Photographers Association annual convention.

Photography studio layoutThe Southwest PPA Regional Convention will be held in Irving, Texas (near Dallas) Sept. 28 through Oct. 1, and the Virginia convention will likely be held in late January (the exact dates and venue have not been announced).

McNeilly is working on the content for his presentation and the dates and times have not been scheduled yet. Check back here at the LexJet Blog for updates on those events and McNeilly’s seminar dates and times.

Photo studio and printingAn important facet of his presentation, says McNeilly, will be how printing differentiates and adds value to photography. As a 30-year veteran with 27 years of those 30 printing his own work McNeilly has honed his craft and solidified his approach to the market.

“The program is really about how to differentiate yourself in this market, and it’s built around being a print maker. For instance, we go out and take a light meter and color meter reading where a customer will be hanging the print and make a big production out of hand making a print,” says McNeilly. “We use the options we have available to us now with all the different inkjet print materials, and it’s about making print making part of the craft and the product. It really separates me from everyone else because no one else has those conversations.”

McNeilly has an Epson Stylus Pro 9900 and an Epson Stylus Pro 4880. The print quality and overall production capability of each are maximized with the ImagePrint RIP. McNeilly says he prefers LexJet’s Sunset Photo eSatin Paper for day-to-day print work and Sunset Select Matte Canvas for larger display prints. He sells the prints unfinished, allowing the opportunity for value-added options like coatings (Sunset Gloss Coating) and framing.

Printing fine art portrait photography“Digital photography is the best thing that’s happened to photography but the worst thing to happen to professional photographers,” says McNeilly. “That’s why print making is such an important component to our business. It’s about providing a custom product to my clients.”

McNeilly has earned the equivalent of six Master of Photography degrees, a PPA Imaging Excellence Award, became an affiliate juror and is currently a jury chairman in training. In 2009 Randy became the 100th photographer in the world to receive the Fellowship from the American Society of Photographers.

For more information about McNeilly Photography, go to www.mcneillyphotography.com/, and stay tuned here for the latest information about McNeilly’s presentations at the Southwest PPA and Virginia conferences.