Print to Win a Sunset Print Award at Photo Competitions across the U.S.

Sunset Print Award
Trophies for the 2014 National Sunset Print Award winners. For a shot at the Grand Prize you’ll need to enter one of the 2015 competitions presenting a Sunset Print Award.

With the Southwest PPA 2015 District Competition underway right now in San Marcos, Texas, this seemed a good time to remind all photographers and print makers about the 2015 Sunset Print Award.

The next competition where you could win a Sunset Print Award is the PhotoPro Expo 2015 Print Competition in Covington, Ky., Jan. 21 (print submissions for the competition are due on Jan. 19).

Every winner at one of the local, state and regional competitions where the Sunset Print Award is being presented picks up a beautiful crystal trophy, a lapel pin and a $250 gift certificate for Sunset inkjet media. Plus, all winners are automatically eligible to compete in the year-end National Sunset Print Award (the National prizes will be announced soon).

Other print competitions currently scheduled include:

  • Connecticut Professional Photographers Association, Feb. 6
  • Photo North East 2015 Image Competition, Feb. 8
  • Mad City Photo Jam, Wisconsin Professional Photographers, Feb. 19
  • Virginia Professional Photographers Association Print Competition, Feb. 20
  • PPA of Massachusetts 2015 Image Competition, Feb. 27
  • PPA Northeast District Competition, March 13
  • Vermont Professional Photographers Annual Print Competition, March 13
  • PP of Idaho Print Competition, March 14
  • PPA Northcentral District, March 20
  • PPA Western District Competition, March 26
  • PP of California Image Competition, March 26
  • PPA of PA Annual Photographic Competition & Print Exhibition, April 12
  • PPA Southeast District Competition, April 30
  • Southern Pro Xposure PP of Louisiana Print Competition, July 26

For all the details – including print submission deadlines, competition rules, and event info – go to www.sunsetprint.com/competitions/ now to make sure you’re ready to roll, enter, and potentially win. Entries do not need to be printed on Sunset media to qualify, but must be inkjet-printed.

Good luck, get involved and get recognized! Check with each competition to verify submission deadlines, judging dates, submission/entry rules and more.

And be sure to visit www.sunsetprint.com for more information about the Sunset Print Award, a full list of upcoming competitions, the Sunset product line, and more. If you have any questions, ask for a LexJet digital photography specialist at 800-453-9538.

Prints that Win: Temptress

Temptress by Pete Wright

Pete Wright’s photography is all about capturing and producing the tiniest details, from the initial setting all the way through to print. It was Wright’s attention to detail, in addition to his technical expertise, that made Temptress a Sunset Print Award winner at the recent PPA Southeast District competition.

Wright pulled out all the stops for this photo shoot, which he did for a clothier and a jeweler. Both clients gave him free reign to produce images that would make them shine. Wright chose to render the images in his signature style, Film Noir.

“I went to both of my clients and told them what era I was shooting, so they pulled out vintage clothing and jewelry. We had a hair and makeup artist come in and created the look we wanted for the models. Then I went on a hunt for a location and found a music studio that had created a speakeasy bar authentic to the era with the correct lighting and fixtures,” explains Wright. “My lighting style is different because I still shoot in the way they would have shot in the ’20s and ’30s. I don’t use any kind of modern soft boxes. Instead, I use modifiers like Fresnels, Snoots and Barn-Doors that are more appropriate to the era so that the lighting is very dramatic and the shadows very purposeful. And, when you have someone sitting for a photo, they know they can’t move and you pose them exactly the way you want them to so the light falls just right.”

Wright adds that he also rented vintage furniture and appointments, like a crystal decanter from the era, and had the hair and makeup artist and experts from the clothing and jewelry store on hand to make sure everything about the scene was perfectly in place so that he could concentrate on the lighting and capturing the image.

Wright shot the male and female models together and then separately. For Temptress, Wright directed the female model to sit in the chair, pick up the cigar and to “act like she owned the place.” He says it’s important to set the scene for the models so they exude the attitude needed to tell the story the image is meant to portray.

“A lot of the strength of the image was in how it was lit, the confidence in how she was posed and how she came across, and the research that went into finding the right location. As much as I like to take credit for my images, it was a team effort to make sure that all those little things you might overlook are taken care of so you don’t have to worry about it on the back end,” explains Wright. “It was so different than what people are used to seeing. Most of what the judges see at competition is rendered in color. When you don’t miss anything and every decision you make about the shot was thought out the judges notice that.”

Wright adds that the final touch is choosing the right paper to print on, and printing it with master photographer and printer Jeff Bowman. Wright used Sunset Photo eSatin Paper for the final print, and says the paper is especially crucial for his black-and-white prints as it renders true, deep, rich blacks that he can’t get elsewhere.

“Because we do so much black-and-white photography it’s so important for us to use a paper that shows the true black. I see a lot of prints where the blacks are not true black; they’re a little muddy and don’t have the depth and contrast,” says Wright. “Jeff Bowman introduced me to eSatin. I always noticed his images looked so great on that paper. We’ve been printing our competition images together on that paper for six or seven years, and we’ve always had great success. When an image is put under the lights and you use something with a high gloss, it becomes too reflective and almost milky under the lights. If you’re using an art matte paper, especially with black-and-white images, it can come off the printer looking great, but after a few hours, because the ink is still soaking into the fiber of the paper it looks more grey and muted. They’re great for a watercolor or pastel image, but not for the majority of my competition prints.”

Wright adds that another important differentiator for his competition work is that he and Bowman prints it themselves. The ability to control the output, and to re-do the print if necessary, is crucial to his success at competition, he says.

To find out more about the Sunset Print Awardcompetitions where the award is being presented, a portfolio of past winners, and the Sunset inkjet media product line, go to www.sunsetprint.com.

Prints that Win: Curves of Iris

Award Winning Print by The Portrait StudioMichael and Tina Timmons, owners of The Portrait Gallery, Vassar, Mich., have been featured here before for Prints that Win, but for their printing expertise. Sterling photographers in their own right, they also know how to print for competition, and print winners.

This time around, Tina is being honored for her capture of an Iris from her garden called Curves of Iris. Michael had quadruple bypass surgery (!) last year following a heart attack. We’re pleased to report that he’s recovering nicely, and the Timmons are back to their frenetic pace.

“Needless to say, we were home a lot more than we normally are, so I had more chances to enjoy my flowers. This year I didn’t get to see them at all,” says Tina. “I shot every day through the Iris season, and picked my favorite to enter in competition.”

The result was this beautiful rendition, which won a LexJet Sunset Award at the Professional Photographers of Michigan print competition. Tina says that her typical method for capturing flowers is to use a tripod and a macro lens, followed by some enhancement with Nik filters and some additional cleanup in Photoshop.

“Sometimes we’ll add a reflector fill outdoors, or we’ll do subtractive lighting if the flower is in open sun. We’ll use those tactics to control what lighting is available in nature,” Tina explains. “The Iris has a poetic motion about it with the leaves and the way everything blends together. When I work with any flower I’m very cautious about what’s in the background so there’s nothing distracting, including other flowers.”

The standard print medium for competition and the couple’s interior décor work is LexJet Sunset Photo eSatin, printed on an Epson Stylus Pro 9880 wide-format inkjet printer, which is then laminated. Though Curves of Iris was printed in the usual way, it was printed for this competition on a Hahnemuhle watercolor paper to provide a more fine-art look to the image.

Prints that Win: Snowy Morning

Snowy Morning by Cheri MacCallumCheri MacCallum, owner of Art by Cheri, Idaho Falls, is a photo painter extraordinaire. Photographers around the country send her files to paint digitally in Corel Painter to add that extra value that comes from painted portrait photo.

Moreover, MacCallum’s work has won various awards, including the LexJet Sunset Award two years running at the PPA Western District Competition. We profiled last year’s winner, Dennis the Menace, and had to wait for national competition judging to unveil this year’s winner, entitled Snowy Morning, which scored 100 at the PPA Western District Competition.

Snow Morning Award Winning Photo by Cheri MacCallum
This is the original capture of Snow Morning before Cheri MacCallum applied her digital painting magic.

MacCallum found the scene depicted in Snowy Morning on a little dirt road outside of Idaho Falls. The first snow had just blanketed the landscape and MacCallum saw great potential in the composition.

However, it wasn’t until she added the digital painting that she thought it would be competition-worthy. And competition-worthy it was, grabbing the attention of the judges for its composition, lighting and use of accent colors so that the viewer can almost feel the chill of that day, contrasted to the warm tones of the wood in the dilapidated fence and early winter foliage. “Adding the accent colors really helped a lot in the feeling and mood of the image,” she says.

“We went back a couple of weeks ago to see what it looked like in the summer, but we couldn’t find it,” says MacCallum. “We’ll have to try to figure out where it is so I can capture it in another season and contrast it with the winter scene.”

MacCallum printed the image for competition on LexJet Sunset Photo eSatin on her Canon iPF8300S, and says she chose the eSatin in part for its thickness and durability. “The year before I used a gloss paper. I liked how it looked, but it was very easy to ding and crimp, so I went with a thicker, more durable paper,” she adds.

Prints that Win: Little Miss Muffet

Using Corel Painter for portrait photographySome of the greatest photography is accidental, or at least not pre-planned and posed. Such was the case with Little Miss Muffet, which won a LexJet Sunset Award, Best in Show and Best Portrait of a Child at the recent American Photographic Artists Guild (APAG) competition.

For Little Miss Muffet, it was less accidental and more what the winning photographer, Tracye Gibson, calls a “grab shot.”

“My camera was on a stand and my Pocket Wizard was in my hand. I was adjusting lighting while she was playing around and making silly faces. I knew the lighting wasn’t perfect and neither was the focus, but since I usually paint my images in Corel Painter anyway, I just kept snapping away while I was adjusting everything,” recalls Gibson. “When a good friend, who knows my style of work, saw the raw images, she said, ‘You have got to paint that as Little Miss Muffet!’ Sure enough, she was right.”

For the competition, the image was printed with her Epson Stylus Pro 7800 on LexJet Sunset Photo Gloss Paper 300g, laminated with a gloss laminate and applied to a foam board. Gibson says Sunset Photo Gloss shows up better in competition lighting and the blacks, color and contrast pop more.

Award winning competition photography“The style I use is more of an oil-painting look so it doesn’t work as well on matte or art papers. I plan to experiment with canvas at competition, because they’re going to allow that now and I’ll use a gloss coating in that case,” says Gibson. “I print a lot of my painted photography on canvas and hand-embellish it with acrylic, which is a lot of fun.”

Gibson says that the ability to print her own work helps alleviate any unwanted surprises.

When she first printed Little Miss Muffet she noticed that the shadow behind the spider had a lot banding because she used a Gaussian blur and lowered the opacity, which will sometimes cause unwanted banding.

“I couldn’t see it on the monitor, but once I printed it I saw it and I was so glad I print my own work. If I had sent it out, they probably wouldn’t have noticed it. The judges would be sure to notice it, however,” she says. “In competition I like to use an actual a print; a lot of people are now submitting their entries digitally and I think that’s a loss for the industry. Number one, you don’t want to sell digital files to a client, plus I feel like I have more control with a printed image, because you don’t know what kind of viewing conditions a digital file will be under.”

Little Miss Muffet obviously caught the judges’ eyes and any flaws that could have deducted points were caught by Gibson in the print proofing stage. And, like many award-winning photos, Little Miss Muffet tells a story.

“When I first painted the spider, for instance, it was too scary. I wanted it to look more like a storybook so I ended up painting a smiley face on it; the spider was still scary, but it gave it more an illustrative storybook feel to it,” explains Gibson. “Plus, my favorite images of kids are those where they’re not smiling big, cheeky smile. In Little Miss Muffet, she has a shocked look on her face, so it’s not the typical portrait.”

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.”