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Posted on by Regan Dickinson Posted in Case Studies & Profiles
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Prints that Win: Old West Shootout in the Southeast

Award winning photography and printing

Ghost Town in the Sky, located above Maggie Valley, N.C., is a themed amusement park that’s preparing to re-open to the public. As part of that, the “ghost town” needed some publicity shots and turned to veteran photographer Jeff Gulle.

Gulle used the opportunity to educate some of the students from the photography class he teaches at North Georgia Technical College in Clarksville, Ga., and to produce a competition-worthy image. Gulle accomplished both, garnering a LexJet Sunset Award for his image entitled Showdown at the Georgia PPA print competition held in conjunction with the PPA Southeast District convention.

“It was a beautiful day and it worked out really well. I photographed various characters they feature at Ghost Town in the Sky, and my favorite was the Preacher,” says Gulle.

Gulle perfectly posed the Preacher with the ghost town as a backdrop. Since he shot the scene with a wider angle the buildings skewed a bit so he straightened them out in the editing process and added a Topaz Photoshop plug-in filter to make the scene “grittier” in keeping with the ghost town theme.

Gulle says he’s been printing more of his own work over the past few years since he acquired an Epson Stylus Pro 3880, and uses it in the classroom as part of the instruction. He plans to use the gift certificate that came with the LexJet Sunset Award to buy his favorite Sunset paper, LexJet Sunset Photo Metallic Paper.

Posted on by Regan Dickinson Posted in Case Studies & Profiles
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Prints that Win: Bridge over Water

Award winning photography and printing

Award-winning photography is often a fortuitous combination of skill and luck as was the first-place winner of the Commercial division and LexJet Sunset Award winner at the 2012 Professional Photographers of North Carolina print completion, Gregory Georges.

Georges co-owns Jonathan Penney Inc., a New York-based fine art print making business, with the company’s founder, Jonathan Penney. The skill is obvious in the presentation of the image, Bridge Over Water. The luck was in finding the scene at the right time.

Georges captured the image at the Conde B. McCullough Memorial Bridge over Coos Bay on US 101 in North Bend, Oregon, with a Canon EOS-1Ds Mark III using an EF70-200 at 148mm set to 1/320 @f/8.0 and ISO 100.

“I was fascinated by this beautiful old bridge. It was near sunset with lots of clouds and not much color, so it was very monochromatic to begin with. I got very compulsive about locking-down my tripod, and using mirror lock-up to minimize vibrations to get the clearest image I could,” explains Georges.

Equally important, says Georges, was the combination of Adobe Camera RAW 7 RAW file conversion and black-and-white conversion done in Nik Software’s Silver Efex Pro 2.0. “Silver Efex has absolutely amazing features that really bring out the best in a black and white image,” says Georges. “My vision was to make the print look like a mechanical pencil sketch without pure black tone and yet still show extremely fine detail.”

He printed on a fine art watercolor paper at competition size – 16″ x 20″ – on an Epson Stylus Pro 3880. Georges says that those who saw the print at competition were amazed by the amount of detail in the image, especially the individual cars crossing the bridge and fine line detail of the wires on the bridge.

“Monitors, color calibration tools, media, ink technologies and printers are so awesome now that if you edit it well on your computer you will get an amazing print. I also use ColorByte Software’s ImagePrint RIP, because it’s giving me extraordinary paper profiles,” adds Georges.

For more information about Jonathan Penney Inc., go to www.jonathanpenney.com.

Posted on by Regan Dickinson Posted in News & Trends
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Same Day, One Day Delivery Now Available in Charlotte

One day shipping from Charlotte warehouseLexJet has opened the second of five new distribution centers scheduled to come on line this month. Customers in Charlotte can now pick up products and get same-day delivery to most of the Zip codes within 50 miles of the distribution center, located at:

1411 Continental Blvd.
Charlotte, NC 28273

The new Charlotte LexJet distribution center supplements the one-day shipping coverage area provided at other regional distribution centers in Birmingham, Jacksonville and Wilmington, Del. Once the remaining three new LexJet distribution centers open in Kansas City, Phoenix and Portland, Ore., over the next couple of weeks, 90 percent of the nation in the lower 48 will be covered by one-day shipping convenience.

You can pick up your products at the Charlotte distribution center until 3 p.m., Monday through Friday, and receive same-day delivery if you order before noon Eastern Time. Check with a LexJet customer specialist at 800-453-9538 about specific product availability and to find out if you fall within the same-day and one-day coverage areas.

LexJet’s other distribution centers are located in Albany, N.Y.; Birmingham; Cincinnati; Dallas; Denver; Jacksonville, Fla.; Los Angeles; Milwaukee; Reno; and Wilmington, Del. LexJet also ships OEM products from 30 warehouses across the U.S., including Minneapolis.

For more information about the Charlotte distribution center, LexJet’s state-of-the-art logistics network and Nationwide Delivery System, call 800-453-9538. Every time you call during regular business hours (Monday through Friday, 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. ET), someone will answer your call within ten seconds and you’ll talk to a real person who can help.

For all the details and a map to LexJet’s Charlotte distribution center, go to www.lexjet.com/locations-charlotte-north-carolina.aspx