The Next Phase in Canvas Printing for Industry Veteran Louis Brevetti

Canvas printing website

Louis Brevetti, owner of printmyphotooncanvas.com based in Wolcott, Conn., estimates that he’s produced more than 1.5 million canvas prints during his career as an art publisher and as an art print provider for big box retailers.

Printing wedding photos on canvasNow, Brevetti aims to continue that production rate but with a different focus and a new online business. The strategy is simple: provide high-quality canvas prints at an affordable price with free value-added services to boot (color adjustments, red eye elimination and touching up minor blemishes).

Over the years Brevetti has learned through trial and error how to keep quality up and production costs down. What he found was that with the right printer, inkjet media and finishing methods it was possible to do it and keep materials and production in-house and in the U.S.

“We came up with a method to produce and finish canvas that allowed us a fantastic production rate, but the quality of our images was just okay. That’s how I found Dustin Flowers at LexJet. I asked Dustin to print a sample for me and I was very impressed with what he came up with,” says Brevetti. “My son Dan stretches the canvas with our special stretching technique that we guard very closely because it shaves off about 40 percent of production time. I have a Canon iPF8300 12-color printer and we print to Sunset Reserve Bright Matte Canvas. The difference in quality between what we were using before is like night and day. Dustin knew exactly what I was looking for, and everyone who has looked at our work has been very impressed.”

Brevetti adds that though the business is conducted almost exclusively on the Internet, he plans to open a storefront in Wolcott (Connecticut) as well. The website is set up to complete the canvas order in three simple steps. Brevetti says it was important to ensure the image travels from step to step exactly as it was in the previous set. For instance, in Step 2 users can crop their own photos as they like and their work will remain throughout the process.

Printing your own photos on canvas“Every image we receive will be set on quality settings that maximize the art. If you send an image at 300 dpi we’ll print it at the highest quality setting. If you send an image that’s 100 dpi, we’ll print it in an 8-bit color format because it doesn’t do any good to print it on anything higher. If you send giclee quality we’ll print it at a giclee quality print setting at no extra charge. The quality of the image will dictate the print quality setting,” explains Brevetti. “For the stretcher bars we use mortised corners and put nails and brads in each corner so that the canvas will never come unfastened.”

With more than a million canvas prints behind him and what Brevetti hopes are a million more, he adds: “The most important thing I’ve learned over the years is that the customer has to feel that they received more than what they paid for. If they don’t feel that way they always wonder if they got what they could have gotten for their dollar.”

For more information, to see how it works and what you get, go to printmyphotooncanvas.com.

Moving on Faith and Vision at Lizza Studios

Moving to a new studio space
Lizza Studios' new space in Forty Fort, Pa. Lizza was recruited by the building's owner, David Koral, to bring an extra splash of panache to the 130,000 square-foot multi-use building.

Faith can move mountains, but can it move a two-ton custom-built Cruse Scanner? Bob Lizza, owner of Lizza Studios, thought so and the results – a successful move – reinforced his faith.

Printing custom elevatory graphics
The Lizza touch can be found just about everywhere in the new building. Here, it's art reproduced on Photo Tex and applied to the interior of one of the elevators.

But this isn’t really about moving a Cruse Scanner from one location to another, or even faith, per se. It’s really about vision: the vision of David Koral who recruited Lizza Studios to move to his eclectic location in Forty Fort, Pa., just outside of Wilkes-Barre, Pa., and the vision of Lizza Studios.

Years ago, Koral bought an old cigar factory, all 130,000 square feet of it. As the owner of UbU Clothing, the space was a perfect fit for manufacturing. It was also the perfect fit for a diverse range of commercial and residential tenants, from a fine dining establishment (Canteen 900) to doctors, lawyers, a yoga studio, lofts, and the fine art powerhouse Lizza Studios.

Lizza Studios effectively completes the space, bringing fine-art sensibility and the ability to brand and decorate it with a variety of inkjet materials from LexJet.

Printing window graphics
Lizza Studios printed the window graphics for the patio outside the fine dining establishment Canteen 900 on Simple Perforated Window Vinyl (60/40).

“I have found great use for the sticky papers Bob uses, like window treatments, door poles and elevator graphics. His ability to take images and reproduce them on all sorts of things is an incredible experience for me; it helps put my madness on the walls,” explains Koral. “I found an old album of photographs of this building prior to starting the work on it ten years ago, and he blew them up and put them on canvas. They’re clean and clear. People are coming from all over the East Coast corridor.”

The timing was perfect. Lizza loved his studio in rural Pennsylvania, but wanted to simplify his product offering and get closer to the East Coast action. It was Lizza’s combination of faith and vision that sparked the move following a discussion with Koral about bringing Lizza Studios into the fold.

“Dave is such a visionary and such a great guy. He has placed a flourishing oasis in a desert. Our space is spectacular, and we’re moving to this building to be one of the finest fine art sources in the Northeast. He found me and talked me into moving here, and once I got down here and saw what he was doing, it was clear that it needed to be where we moved,” explains Lizza. “Now I’m seeing the bigger picture of what we can bring to the Northeast related to fine art – from sculpture to paintings – and making that a real experience for people to come here with all walks of life.”

Moving to a new buildingLizza adds that their previous location was a hindrance of sorts for attracting high-end clients from the Northeast corridor and big cities like Philadelphia and New York City. Moreover, Lizza says it was time to concentrate on what really differentiates Lizza Studios: incredibly detailed and spot-on fine-art reproduction. Framing and other peripheral services would be left behind, while the scanning and printing equipment would travel to the new location.

“The biggest lesson for me was to keep an open mind. I was able to move to an area closer to the action and really get rid of the services that really weren’t going to fit the mold of what our business really is, rather than sticking with rigidity to an old decision,” says Lizza.

Ultimately, says Lizza, it boiled down to working with the right partners, from Koral down to the vendors Lizza chooses to work with, including LexJet.

“LexJet has been an amazing part of it all; they’ve given us all the leeway we need because they’re so focused on customer service, and LexJet products are the best because of the way the company does business,” says Lizza. “When I can call at 5:55 in the afternoon on a Thursday to get canvas the next day because I need the weekend to get it done, the customer service is in place to get it done with distribution centers everywhere. It all fits together.”

As far as the physical move itself, the most important component was safely transporting the two-ton, custom-built Cruse scanner. As usual, Lizza had faith that he would find the right people to do it, though the initial mover dropped out at the last minute.

Printing decor for buildings“Moving the scanner was monumental. It’s a two-ton piece of equipment and there’s a risk that something will go wrong. There might be 100 scanners in the world like this, but this was custom built by hand; I have three lenses on my scanner, giving me a bit of an edge,” explains Lizza. “We thought we had a moving company in place, but they backed out because they had fear. We ended up finding someone just down the street from our new location who stepped in. They were flawless; we moved that scanner in four hours.”

Of course it took about four days to put it back together, and there was all the other printer equipment that needed to be moved – Lizza Studios’ Epson Stylus Pro 11880, 9900 and the low-solvent GS6000. Lizza plugged in quickly and soon made his mark all over the building with murals printed on Photo Tex Repositionable Fabric, LexJet Simple Flo Wrap Vinyl, and Simple Perforated Window Vinyl (60/40).

Raising Awareness about Human Trafficking and Slavery through Photography and Print

Steven James Collins, a professional photographer based in San Francisco, aims to help eradicate the scourge of human trafficking and modern day slavery by raising awareness through a traveling photography exhibition that begins this Saturday, May 19, at 7 p.m. at the HourGlass Art & Wine Gallery in Rancho Cucamonga, Calif.

Human trafficking and slavery photo exhibition
The traveling Modern Day Slavery Awareness Photo Exhibit by Steven James Collins Photography was previewed at the Oscars Gifting Suite. The Sunset Photo Metallic Paper prints were signed by celebrities who viewed the presentation at the event.

The Modern Day Slavery Awareness Photo Exhibit has been printed on LexJet Sunset Photo Metallic Paper, donated by LexJet to help support the goals of the project, and printed by Sam Hoffman on a Canon iPF8300, owner of LightSource San Francisco. The exhibit features 21 large iconic and luminescent images created by Collins to represent the horrors of human trafficking and slavery.

“Just as important as the content itself is the delivery medium on which it is displayed. We feel blessed to have found the LexJet Sunset Photo Metallic Paper as the medium,” says Collins. “The impact is exponentially greater to our viewing audience with this product. These images reach out of the paper and grab you from the first glance. And believe me, this is not just our professional opinion; the feedback we already have received of how unique and powerful the prints are on this paper has been nothing short of remarkable. We are so exceedingly happy to have LexJet Sunset Photo Metallic Paper as the visual backbone of this vital cause”

The Modern Day Slavery Awareness Photo Exhibit will be showcased at the HourGlass Art & Wine Gallery from May 19 through June 9. From there, the exhibit plans to travel to San Francisco, Berkeley, Los Angeles, New York City and Maysville, Ky., home of the National Underground Railroad Museum. Other dates and locations are being negotiated with galleries and museums across the U.S., as well as plans to take the exhibit to international venues.

It is estimated that 10 to 30 million people are in some form of slavery (debt bondage, sex slavery, child soldiers and labor slavery); 75 percent of those in bondage are female and more than 50 percent are children. Sex trafficking is the most common form of modern slavery and is the fastest growing and second-largest existing crime worldwide.

The premier of the Modern Day Slavery Awareness Photo Exhibit on Saturday, May 19 at HourGlass Art & Wine will include a press preview from 3-5 p.m., a VIP cocktail hour from 6-7 p.m., presentations by activists Dr. Ken Morris and Aaron Cohen from 8-9 p.m., as well as talks by Collins and spokesperson Shannon Johnson.

“Our team’s philosophy is rooted in the basic human need for the connection and love we feel for our families. For us, activism stems from rejoining families torn apart,” states the Team Philosophy and Goals of the exhibition. “Once you’re aware of the horrors other families are enduring, such as daughters or sons being kidnapped, raped, tortured and forced into underage sex slavery debt bondage/labor, how can we not take action?”

For more information about the traveling exhibit, how you can help, and updates on the dates and venues of future exhibitions, go to www.stevenjamescollins.com. For more information about LexJet, go to www.lexjet.com and the print provider, LightSource SanFrancisco, go to www.lightsource-sf.com.

LexJet Sunset Award: Enter to Win a $200 Gift Certificate and More at PhotoPro Expo

Win awards and prizes at the PhotoPro Expo 2012Billed as the Super Bowl of Photography, the PhotoPro Expo takes place on Super Bowl Weekend, Feb. 2-5 at the Marriott River Center in Covington, Ky., just across the river from Cincinnati. As part of the educational weekend, which features an all-star lineup of speakers, there’s also a Print Competition and Exhibition.

The Print Competition features more than $5,000 in awards and prizes, including the coveted LexJet Sunset Award. The winner of the LexJet Sunset Award and the handsome trophy will also receive a $200 gift certificate toward the purchase of any of the fine art and photo papers and canvases in LexJet’s Sunset portfolio of inkjet media for professional photographic and fine art printing.

To qualify for the LexJet Sunset Award, the entries must be printed on any LexJet photo or fine art paper and meet PhotoPro Expo’s print competition submission requirements.

All registrations must be completed at printcompetition.com before shipping or hand delivering your entries. Shipped cases must be received by Jan. 30 and hand-delivered submissions by 3 p.m., Feb. 1. Click here for all the Print Competition details and rules.

Divisions include Portrait, Wedding, Gallery, Digital Artistry, Rising Star, Albums and Specialists. The winner of each Category within those Divisions – the Portrait Division, for instance, includes General, Children, Senior, Fashion and Best Categories – will be chosen by judges during the Expo and recognized at the awards ceremony. In addition, Top Honors will be given to the PhotoPro Network Photographer of the Year (plus a $200 cash prize), Best of Show ($150 cash prize), People’s Choice Award ($100 cash prize), Best Black & White Award ($100 cash prize) and PhotoPro Network TOP 10 Awards ($50 gift certificates).

Speakers include Photoshop guru Scott Kelby, the legendary Jerry Ghionis, Skip Cohen of Skip’s Summer School, top portrait photographer Kirk Volklain, NYC fashion photographer Lindsay Adler, best-selling Speed Lighting author Syl Arena, Pulitzer Prize-winning photographer Vincent Laforet, branding expert Sarah Petty, Smithsonian American History museum featured artist Joel Grimes, and retouch and image enhancement authority Janice Wendt.

For more information and to register for the show go to http://photopronetwork.com/ or call PhotoPro Network HQ at 606-928-5333. And, for more information about the LexJet Sunset Award, contact Tom Gruss at 800-453-9538 or email tom.gruss@lexjet.com. 

Distorted Perceptions that Reveal Reality: A Gallery Preview

Creating multiple=

John Reiff Williams’ work from three signature photographic series – the La Jolla Beach Project, The Edge of Collapse Series from Mexico City and the Hollywood Boulevard Series – will be printed and on display at Thomas Paul Fine Art in Los Angeles in February.

Printing photography for an exhibitionAn exact date and time for the exhibit has not yet been announced, but you can find updates on it at tpaulfineart.com as the time for the exhibit comes closer. Williams has already started printing the exhibition on Hahnemuhle Photo Rag 308g from LexJet on his Epson 3800 inkjet printer, also procured through LexJet. “Almost everything I have – my monitor, color management devices, printer and paper – is from LexJet,” he says.

The images will be printed at 13″ x 19″, though the image size will be a bit smaller since Williams sticks to the one-inch archival rule of leaving at least an inch of margin on two sides, or all four sides, depending on the image.

Printing his work helps bring its full effect to life, as printing provides added depth, color and emotion that can get lost in the pixels of a monitor. “There’s so much subtlety that disappears when you display them on the Web; you’re not getting all the juice,” he says.

The dynamic visuals Williams created in the three series that will be featured at the Thomas Paul exhibition require the “juice” of pigments. They look fantastic and require a second look (at least) even when displayed on-screen, as they are here, but the exhibition will show the true depth of the compositions.

Shooting multiple=The style of the featured work is difficult to describe in a single word or phrase. They allude to movement and interaction that reach beyond time, place and circumstance. Perhaps the best technical term would be multiple exposure, which is certainly true of the earlier series while he was a graduate student, the La Jolla Beach Project, that Williams created in-camera with multiple exposures on film.

The Edge of Collapse and the Hollywood Boulevard Series are his most recent “multiple-exposure” works, with the multiplying done in Photoshop. The concept, however, remains largely the same: the interplay of movement between the photographer and his subjects.

“I’m using several images taken during the course of a day. Then, I see how they work together as layers. I don’t work in a formulaic way in Photoshop to do that; I just go from feel,” Williams explains. “I started off doing window reflections where I was looking for natural elements that would obfuscate, distort and transform images to bring out the otherness of the objects I was photographing. I’ve gotten more toward the idea that everything is a reflection anyway; that’s the nature of photography. I don’t need windows because everything is a window. If I accept that as an idea, I can start to play with that and layer images that happen either sequentially or randomly.”

The body of work Williams will display at the exhibition breaks the barriers between photography, fine art and perception. The concept is bigger than the medium used.

“There are over 50,000 photos uploaded to Flickr every hour, and when you consider the volume being generated, it’s becoming difficult to find that new animal under a rock that hasn’t been photographed before. So I’ve turned more to the imagination in my photography and the relationships that develop over time at a certain place,” says Williams. “Then the camera becomes a recorder of something you’ve already set into orbit.”

For a preview of what will be displayed at the exhibit at Thomas Paul Fine Art, as well as an entertaining and illuminating explanation of his work, click here. We’ll follow up with photos and a re-cap from the exhibit after it opens.

Asymmetrical Symmetry in Fine Art Photography and Printing

Printing a fine art photography exhibitionIt’s been a busy month for Hutchinson, Minn.-based photographer, Jon Otteson, as he finds himself in the midst of his latest project, “The Image Within” art exhibit at the Hutchinson Center for the Arts.

This is Otteson’s first time exhibiting his abstract work, yet it seems to be going quite well for him. “Everybody who’s stopped in has been impressed with it,” he says.

The display consists of a mixture of 56 framed abstract prints on canvas, art and photo papers, all of which he produces himself on his Epson Stylus Photo 2200 and Stylus Pro 7800 printers.

Even if this is new territory for Otteson, he’s no stranger to the world of photography. He’s had a passion for photography for more than five decades.

“I was raised in a conservative Midwestern farming environment. At an early age I took an interest in photography and was fascinated by the process of capturing a moment of time on film.” It wasn’t until his college years, when he first “gained access to a 35mm camera and a darkroom,” that Otteson was able to really hone in his skill and passion.

Printing fine art photography for an exhibition
Race of the Water Beetles, by Jon Otteson, printed on Sunset Select Matte Canvas.

After that, Otteson was actively involved in portrait and wedding photography as well as working at other jobs, including 30 years at 3M in quality control related areas.

“In 2002 I retired from my career at 3M and began the transition from film to digital,” Otteson explains. “The entry into the digital world has given me a portal to focus my skills on creating fine art photography with the primary emphasis being on traditional landscapes and the natural elements while at the same time branching out into experimental abstract photographic images.” This was the time that Otteson really mastered the digital techniques that make his photographs so unique.

Inkjet printing on canvas for an exhibition
Black Hills Gothic, by Jon Otteson, printed on LexJet Premium Archival Matte Paper.

“The Image Within” is a showcase just a few of his experimental abstract images printed on LexJet media, including Sunset Select Matte Canvas, Sunset Velvet Rag, and Premium Archival Matte, seen here in one of Otteson’s favorite pieces, Black Hills Gothic. “The training, customer service and advice that LexJet has provided me over the last nine years have been important resources for my business.”

“Most of my abstract images involve exploring the mathematical randomness of nature,” Otteson says of what inspires and creates his work. “When studying images of rock walls or bark, I sometimes find colors and patterns that I wasn’t aware of at the time of the image capture.  I will then use post production techniques to enhance these colors and patterns.”

Of course Otteson takes some pieces a step beyond with some fine tuning. “Some of the images are merely nature providing me with the main image, which I then crop down to highlight patterns or colors,” he says.

Other times Otteson will take an image and manipulate it, creating a whole new outcome. One of Otteson’s techniques is what he refers to as “asymmetrical symmetry,” which involves mirroring various areas of an image and then placing the mirrored sections back into the photo. Otteson especially likes this technique when applied to tree bark, as with Race of the Water Beetles. “It can create unusual mystical images and landscapes that tend to play with one’s imagination,” Otteson says.

“The Image Within” can be seen now through July 31 at the Hutchinson Center for the Arts in Hutchinson, Minn.