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Posted on by Regan Dickinson Posted in Case Studies & Profiles
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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.

Posted on by Regan Dickinson Posted in Case Studies & Profiles
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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.

Posted on by Regan Dickinson Posted in Case Studies & Profiles
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Prints that Win: Nice Catch

Nice Catch by Melissa Jeffcoat

Nice Catch indeed. This LexJet Sunset Award winner, which won Best of Show at the Texas PPA print competition earlier this year, certainly caught the eyes of the judges at the competition, and for good reason.

It’s a picture-perfect rendition of Americana, and more specifically, an Oklahoma slice of it. The red road brings attention to the focal point of the image, which was captured by Melissa Jeffcoat, owner of Melissa Jean Photography in Tecumseh, Okla.

Jeffcoat set up the scene with her two boys, having them walk up and down the road until she captured the scene as she originally envisioned it.

“My older son caught the fish and they kept walking until I got what I was looking for,” says Jeffcoat. “I bribed them with snow cones.”

Jeffcoat says the image reflects almost exactly what the scene and the lighting looked like at capture, excepting some work to take out some distracting sky on the horizon and filling in with some trees. Shot at dusk, Jeffcoat says the timing was right to bring out red of the road and all the other subtle tones that make this an outstanding image.

The image was printed for competition by BWC in Dallas using a chemical photo process on a glossy pearl paper.

Posted on by Regan Dickinson Posted in Case Studies & Profiles
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Prints that Win: William

Cat Photograph

You don’t have to be a cat lover to enjoy this portrait of William the cat by Sherie Dowsett. This striking close-up of William won the LexJet Sunset Award for Outstanding Print & Presentation at the Plymouth Center for the Arts competition in February.

Take any random group of people – say, print competition judges – and you’re sure to have a mix of cat lovers and those who are, at best, ambivalent about them. The recognition of this cat capture as an award-winner has less to do with the subject and much more about how the capture brings out the subject’s character.

When asked if she was surprised by the award, Dowsett replied: “Yes, absolutely. You’re always surprised, right? But I spent a lot of time thinking of the presentation. I used a rustic frame in an attempt to bring out that wild cat feel. I have a local framer I work with closely and we spent a lot of time discussing how to frame it. It captures a lot of attention, and not just cat lovers.”

The key to this capture, like most captures, is the lighting. Taken indoors on a winter day with the sun low on the horizon the interplay of shadow and light creates a depth that brings out William’s dual nature as he looks out the window.

“I was playing with this macro lens and was very close to William. He’s so used to me taking shots of him that he completely ignores me,” Dowsett recalls. “I love this shot because you can see the wild cat in this image and the softer side of him; it just depends on how you look at it. I see it differently than other people might because I know what he’s like as a cat. He’s always faithfully at my side looking for attention, never catches anything and can only clumsily climb trees, but someone else may just see his wild side.”

Dowsett is a part-time photographer who lives in Amherst, N.H. A native of England, she moved from the Midwest a few years ago to take advantage of the great outdoors that surround her home in Amherst. Since most of her photography is nature-focused using only natural light, it was the perfect fit.

For more information about Dowsett’s photography, go to: http://sheriedowsettphotography.com/Home.html

Posted on by Regan Dickinson Posted in Case Studies & Profiles
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Prints that Win: Watching and Waiting

Award Winning Print by Jeff Gulle

One of the “secrets” of a great portrait photo is bringing out the character of the subject. But what if the subject is a character? All the better, as you can see from this recent winner of the LexJet Sunset Award at the Georgia PPA print competition.

Entitled Watching and Waiting, pro photographer Jeff Gulle was commissioned to produce publicity photos for a ghost town-themed amusement park near Maggie Valley, N.C. called Ghost Town in the Sky.

With a group of students in tow from North Georgia Technical College in Clarksville, Ga., where Gulle teaches, this particular image was fittingly captured at high noon.

The problem with high noon is the lighting, so Gulle and his students waiting patiently for clouds to pass over and lit the Preacher from the right to ensure an image with depth.

“I love having the students with me. It elevates my photography since I need to explain everything that goes into the capture: picking locations, lighting, posing, and so forth,” says Gulle. “I tried lighting him from different spots and angles, but lighting from the right was the best shot.”

Gulle did some minor touch-ups with Photoshop, eliminating the sky peeking through in the top right corner by cloning and bringing the greenery up to fill the space and then adding a grainy, gritty touch with a Topaz plug-in filter.

Posted on by Regan Dickinson Posted in Case Studies & Profiles
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Prints that Win: Serenity

LexJet Award Winning Image by Dick BennettBurma, aka Myanmar, is long way from Rochester, N.Y., home of Dick Bennett Photography, but Bennett struck photography gold there recently.

Bennett was awarded a LexJet Sunset Award at the Photo North East competition for the image he captured during a trip with a group of photographers last November and December to Burma’s Shan Plateau. It was the only image out of about a thousand in the competition to score 100.

Though it’s somewhat monochromatic, the shades of golden hues that permeate the image, along with the perfection of its composition, were elements that obviously impressed the judges.

“It gets very warm in the afternoon and cold at night, creating a real nice mist in the morning. We got up for each of the sunrises, and one day about half an hour after sunrise I saw a hut on stilts with a pyramid shaped roof,” recalls Bennett. “It was a real golden hour for the light. It lasted about a minute and a half and when the person in the hut moved into the perfect position I took a couple of shots. About 30 seconds later, it was gone.”

Bennett used a Canon EOS 5D Mark III, and captured the scene at 125 mm, 1/1600 seconds, ISO 400 and f/10. Bennett adds that he did very little photo manipulation, sharpening the hills and mountains in the background and taking out small distracting items here and there.