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

Electronic Imaging Fine Art by Elaine Hughes

Elaine and Robert Hughes made a dramatic shift in their photography and art about five years ago. Highly decorated and certified professional photographers who used to specialize in high-end wedding photography, the pair now specializes in creating surreal digital artwork.

The pair’s work is an anticipated addition to the various competitions they’ve entered. This past year, Elaine Hughes won a LexJet Sunset Award at the PPA North East District competition for Illustrative Artist. The award-winning print, called Dream World, is a wildly colorful example of Elaine’s original art.

“Lately I’ve developed a series connected with water and dreams. It’s chaotic, disconnected and fun, with symbolism you can’t really put your finger on, like in your dreams. I left it open to your own interpretation. The door, for instance, could be the girl’s next journey, your next journey, or you could go in and out of the dream through that door,” Elaine explains.

Elaine says developing the art is quite time-consuming, but it’s what she loves to do. It’s a bonus that the art sells, she auctions it off for charity and it wins awards. The images combine photographs Elaine takes when she’s out and about at various locations across the country with color and abstract work in Photoshop.

“Bob’s art is edgier, while mine is happier and dreamier,” Elaine says. “I create backgrounds all the time with texture and color. About half the time I have an idea and the other half I experiment. It just doesn’t happen; I work on these for a long time. I go to a lot of Photoshop classes and watch Bob do his work in Photoshop. I wish I had started doing this a long time ago.”

Posted on by Regan Dickinson Posted in Case Studies & Profiles
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Prints that Win: It Was the Best of Times

Photographing and Printing Vintage Railroads

It’s a tried and true saying – do what you love and do it well – and Robert A. Howard, owner of Howard Studios in Lebanon, Pa., embodies it. He photographs it all – from portraiture to commercial advertising photography – and then some.

The “then some” is his lifelong hobby: railroads and capturing both modern and vintage railroads in striking ways. He’s part of a cadre of “rail fans,” aficionados of all things railroad past and present. About three years ago Howard created Rail Art, which takes the best of his collection and makes it available for sale to the general public.

“I was born and raised around a number of family members who worked for the railroad here in Lebanon: the Reading and Pennsylvania railroads. I somehow found time throughout my life to chase trains. Rail fans take a lot of photos of trains to share them with clubs, and now blogs and social media. It’s about finding rare rolling stock still on the rails and capturing it in various places,” explains Howard. “Presently, we have a catalog in print of just shy of 100 images for sale. Each is a carefully chosen railroad image that depicts both contemporary and vintage railroads.”

In the case of this LexJet Sunset Award-winning print entitled It Was the Best of Times, Howard and a group of photographers, videographers and painters gathered after Howard and Carl Franz of Western Maryland Railroad (WMRR) set up this shot of an old steam-driven Western Maryland locomotive hauling freight. Franz rented the railroad for the day, coordinated the volunteers who cleared some brush out of the foreground, and helped set up the shot.

“We choose areas that resemble the way they would look in that particular era. In this case, the locomotive is from the 1940s and 1950s. It was easy to set up in this case because we found a third-generation farmer who owns the land. We went out on an early morning just after a morning rain and it was captured with most of us underneath umbrellas,” says Howard. “The farmer’s barn burned down a number of years ago, so the rail fans got together with the local Amish and built him a new barn. This location is very historic. The Western Maryland Railroad was one of the oldest working railroads in the country that still used steam locomotives to carry freight. In addition to the tourist trade, it still hauls freight for the local community.”

Howard then brought the image into Photoshop, applying Topaz and Nik filters to get the sepia/watercolor look of a vintage 1940s postcard. The image was printed on Hahnemuhle Photo Rag by Jonathan Penney for its entry in the PPA of Pennsylvania and PPA Northeast regional competitions.

The image merited at the PPA Northeast regional and won a LexJet Sunset Award at the PPA of Pennsylvania for highest quality print and presentation.

“I’ve been trying to win the Sunset Award for awhile and was very honored to do so this year. It takes an incredibly high score at a state competition to win the award,” says Howard. “The Sunset Award is proudly sitting in our front window and will be featured in our local newspaper in a couple of days.”

Posted on by Regan Dickinson Posted in Case Studies & Profiles
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Prints that Win: A Bridge to Remember

Black and white photo printed on Sunset Photo eSatin Paper

A bridge can be a metaphor for many things. For photographers, it’s about bridging the gap from capture to print.

Award-winning pro photographer Darrell Moll did just that, both literally and figuratively, with this stunning black-and-white image of a bridge over Cape Cod Sound that commemorates people who have passed on.

Moll bridged the gap between capture and print, ultimately capturing the judges’ attention at the recent Professional Photographers of Ohio conference. The print scored a 96 – the competition’s highest score – garnering a LexJet Sunset Award in the process, as well the People’s Choice Award, and numerous other accolades.

Moll judged the competition in Michigan the previous week, and says: “The LexJet Sunset Award is quickly becoming the most coveted award you can win for an image.”

Printed on LexJet Sunset Photo eSatin Paper by Michael Timmons, The Portrait Gallery, Vassar, Mich., Moll says competition printing is not something to leave to chance. Though Moll prints his own work regularly, he prefers to use Timmons’ expertise for competition prints. “Since I’ve been working with Michael for competition prints, it’s ridiculous how many awards I’ve won. Printing definitely has an impact on scoring at competition,” he says.

“What good does it do to have all this expensive equipment and use the best techniques in the field to make it look as nice as we can and then just send it to the printer and print it on anything? Why not use a RIP and the best media and ink we can? I print everything on LexJet paper; it doesn’t do any good to do all the right things and not follow through with a calibrated monitor and the right print media. It’s the final step for the finished product, so you leave nothing to chance,” says Moll. “Michael [Timmons] thinks eSatin has the best white point of all the papers he’s tried, and I tend to agree. It doesn’t get blocked up, it sets the ink very well and dries nicely. The finished product is what it’s all about, and in this case it was the reproduction of the subtle gradation of tones and light. With really good black-and-white printing there’s a luminescent quality that comes through; the eSatin paper lends itself well to that and a lot of other subjects. It’s the nicest everyday paper you can use.”

Of course this would be all for naught if not for the photographer’s talent to capture the moment properly and at the right time. Moll was on Cape Cod shooting a wedding and would venture out super early each morning (5 a.m.!) to see what he could see and capture.

He ran across this bridge and all the elements were in place: early morning light, fog and still water. He set up with his Canon EOS 5D Mark II with a 24-105 L series lens and graduated neutral density filter to darken the top of the horizon and show more detail in the foreground. He captured the scene at f16 for four seconds at 100 ISO.

Everything was perfectly in place, and Moll knew right away that this scene would render best in black-and-white. “I made sure it was tack sharp after I shot it before I moved onto another subject. The last thing you want to do is go back home 700 miles from the shot and realize you weren’t sharp,” he says.

Posted on by Regan Dickinson Posted in Case Studies & Profiles
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Prints that Win: Dennis the Menace

Award Winning Print

Cheri MacCallum, owner of Art by Cheri, Idaho Falls, Idaho, is one of those talented few who have had the honor of winning a LexJet Sunset Award two years in a row.

Unfortunately, we can’t show you MacCallum’s latest winning image; she’s entering it in a national competition and it’s not a good idea to let it leak out to the public. There are affiliated jurors who might see it, who would then have to disqualify themselves from judging.

We had the same issue last year following the PPA Western District competition. The good news is that we can now reveal last year’s winning Sunset Award winner from the PPA Western District: Dennis the Menace.

MacCallum says Dennis the Menace, a portrait photographed in New Orleans, was likely an award winner in the Portrait category for three factors: expression, lighting and painting. MacCallum is a masterful artist in Corel Painter who also paints for other photographers.

“I work on it in Photoshop and re-touch it, take it into Corel Painter and bring it back into Photoshop to prepare it for printing,” says MacCallum. “When I enter print competitions I don’t think about awards, I think about improving myself and pushing the envelope. If the judges think it’s worthy, all the better. Any good photography makes a good competition print as well: posing, lighting, color, composition, subject material… the whole nine yards has to come together.”

MacCallum adds that for competition, the print itself could spell the difference between winning and losing. For this image, MacCallum printed the image on LexJet 8 Mil ImagePro Gloss with her Canon iPF8300 and applied it to art board.

“I called LexJet and told my rep what I was doing and that I didn’t need anything really thick and heavy, or what I normally provide my clients: fine art paper and canvas. Based on that, we came to the conclusion that ImagePro Gloss would be a good fit. Print presentation is definitely one of the elements they look for, and this print material worked well,” adds MacCallum.

Posted on by Regan Dickinson Posted in Case Studies & Profiles
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Prints that Win: Now and Then

Photo Printed on Sunset Fibre Elite

One of the great things about being a photographer has to be the interesting people you meet along the way. For this LexJet Sunset Award-winning print at the recent North Carolina Professional Photographers Association print competition, Randy McNeilly met Bonnie and Clyde.

Well, not really, but the old photo he used as a background for a profile portrait of a couple celebrating their 75th (!) wedding anniversary is a reasonable facsimile of the infamous pair. The pair McNeilly photographed, while not nearly as infamous, had tales to tell that even their daughter, who was there for the session, didn’t know about.

One of those nuggets was that the couple eloped some 75 years ago and had the photo McNeilly used as the background for the portrait snapped the day of their elopement as they leaned against an automobile of the day.

“We had a good laugh about them looking like Bonnie and Clyde in that photo. They brought that photo in the same day as the portrait session and that’s when I started developing the idea,” says McNeilly. “I photographed them separately with a Hasselblad medium-format digital camera and I did minimal retouching because I didn’t want to take any character out of the portraits. I created a composite of the two portraits, and used Nik filters and textured overlays to add some grunge to the background.”

The creative juxtaposition of the couple, which McNeilly titled Now and Then, certainly got the judges’ attention. McNeilly printed the image on LexJet Sunset Fibre Elite on his Epson Stylus Pro 9900 through ImagePrint RIP software.

“I use Fibre Elite a lot and I’ve been a long-time fan of it. I really like the non-gimmicky look of it; it looks like the old days when I printed black-and-white photos on fibre paper. It renders this image particularly well and seems to have a wider color gamut,” says McNeilly.

For more information about Randy McNeilly and his print making, check out this previous blog post.

Posted on by Regan Dickinson Posted in Case Studies & Profiles
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Prints that Win: Sugar and Spice

Award winning photography and printingFor the second year in a row Audrey Wancket’s classical portrait photography won a LexJet Sunset Award for Best Color Printed Image at the recent PPA Northcentral District competition.

The winning portrait, called Sugar and Spice, is not an outlier; it is representative of the high-quality work Wancket produces daily for her clients.

Situated on 11 acres and built into a barn, Wancket’s studio in Spring Grove, Ill., next to the Wisconsin border, also includes a two-acre wildflower garden perfect for outdoor sessions. The indoor sessions are where Wancket truly shines, bringing the ethos of outdoor lighting into the studio.

“The key to my studio photography is the strength and direction of the light. Natural light comes from one side, and I turn the subjects’ faces slightly into that light,” explains Wancket. “And, it depends on who you’re photographing: you put the light on the side where you’re lighting less of their face and other people the broad side of their face, depending on the shape of their face. You use the light to shape them so they look best.”

For Sugar and Spice, Wancket aimed to capture the different personalities of the twins in the portrait, to stunning effect. She captured the twins with a Phase One medium-format digital camera and retouched the image in Photoshop.

The other important aspect of Wancket’s studio photography is setting the scene with painted backgrounds and subtle personal touches that Wancket adds to the scene, like flowers and antique furniture.

“I have 144 backgrounds with four new ones on the way. I get bored easily and I don’t want my clients to have the same piece of art on their wall. I used to paint my own backgrounds, but I’ve found painters around the country who have helped bring my idea to a canvas,” explains Wancket.

Though Wancket prints much of her own work, primarily black-and-white photos for clients and her own photographic artwork, she had a friend print for the Northcentral competition.

“I get all my paper and canvas that I print from LexJet, which is where I also got my printers and the ImagePrint RIP. I love LexJet; they know their stuff,” she adds.