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Posted on by Regan Dickinson Posted in Case Studies & Profiles
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Home Improvement with a Canvas Gallery Wrap Collage

Canvas Wrap CollageOne of the most important things you can do from a sales and marketing standpoint, particularly in our obviously visual market, is to show potential clients how they can display their images.

You can say “canvas,” for instance, and people generally like the thought of images printed on canvas, but they don’t necessarily know how to translate it to their particular space, whether it’s a home, office or retail space.

That’s why Andy Wredberg at AW Artworks is constantly showcasing new and unique ways of displaying prints at his studio, and most recently at his home. Besides, Wredberg’s wife recently asked him why he was doing all this cool stuff for clients, but nothing for their home.

So, Wredberg did a family portrait photo shoot at Wisconsin’s state capitol in Madison. Wredberg’s also a talented photographer who was able to sneak into some of the photos with a remote shutter release.

Wredberg then took the images and created an approximately 6′ x 6′ canvas gallery wrap collage from the photo shoot printed on LexJet Sunset Select Matte Canvas. It consists of nine pieces: three 8x13s, two 10x20s, a 14×20, a 14×29, and two 20x30s.

“I’ve seen some collages online, but never tried doing one that extensively. People love canvas, but they have a hard time picturing how it would work for them and incorporate it. Seeing a collage on a wall gives them a better vision of something they could do with it,” says Wredberg, who posted the project on his Facebook page.

Posted on by Regan Dickinson Posted in Case Studies & Profiles
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Making the Forest and the Trees Shine at a Fine Art Photography Exhibition

POETRe Exhibit by Visio Photography
The POETRe Exhibit by Visio Photography at The School in Valdese, N.C., feature’s Visio’s fine art landscape photography printed on Sunset Photo Metallic Paper, Sunset Select Matte Canvas (the Coming Storm image on the left side of the centerpiece) and acrylic prints by Artisan Colour (right side of the centerpiece).

VISIO Photography is best known for the exceptional wedding and portrait photography crafted by the husband-and-wife team of James and Jenny Tarpley. Located in Marion, N.C., just outside of Asheville, the couple is also making its mark with high-end fine art landscape photography.

Exhibition by Visio PhotographyA recent exhibition at The Rock School in Valdese, N.C., brought VISIO Photography’s nature photography to light with a focus on trees. Called POETRe, the exhibition ran from June 3 to July 26. Thanks to a combination of immaculate capture, printing detail, print material selection and photo finishing, the exhibition literally glowed.

“There were people at the exhibition who were looking around the edges of the prints to see if they were backlit,” James says. “They were impressed with the way the images leapt out of the frames, and it was also nice to hear from peers who saw the exhibition that the colors looked really good.”

Visio Photography Fine Art Landscape ExhibitThe majority of the prints for the exhibition were printed on LexJet Sunset Photo Metallic Paper. One was printed on LexJet Sunset Select Matte Canvas, and the remainder was printed using a traditional chemical process applied to acrylic by Artisan Colour, Scottsdale, Ariz.

“The Metallic prints were framed behind museum-grade anti-reflective glass. We used black matting on the majority of them to really hone in on the image; I wanted the display to take a back seat to the image,” James explains. “We do a lot of our wedding printing on fine art papers, but we’ve been doing a lot of landscapes lately and we’ve found the Metallic paper displays really well on the wall, especially when it’s lit properly. The great color gamut and vivid reproduction makes this paper wonderful for our landscapes.”

The image printed at 20″ x 60″ on Sunset Select Matte Canvas was finished with LexJet Sunset Gloss Coating. James says the Sunset Gloss Coating increased the contrast, providing extra pop to make it more consistent with the other brilliant images in the collection, which you can see more of at jt-fineart.com.

Posted on by Regan Dickinson Posted in Case Studies & Profiles
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Printing for the Stars On-Site at the Surf Ballroom

Photographing ZZ Top in concert
ZZ Top photographed at the Surf Ballroom and Museum, Clear Lake, Iowa, by Craig Kienast, and printed on LexJet Sunset Photo eSatin Paper.

Craig Kienast, owner of IMAGES by Craig Kienast, Clear Lake, Iowa, has an enviable job. He gets called on by the Surf Ballroom and Museum to photograph A-list acts that stop at the venue in Clear Lake.

Photo prints for display cases
ZZ Top's display case in the museum portion of the Surf Ballroom and Museum.

It may be enviable, but it’s not easy. Security for the venue escorts Kienast on stage and inserts him into the front row. Craig gets as many shots as he can early in the show; basically, the first two or three songs.

Then, when he’s done, Kienast has to fight the crowd to get out of the front row and back to his setup where he works his magic. “People look at me like I’m crazy to leave the show so early,” explains Kienast

His magic is to bring the images he’s captured of the artists into Photoshop and then print and trim three images on-site for the artists to sign after the show. Two of the photos are auctioned off to support the museum portion of the Surf Ballroom and Museum and the other is hung on the museum’s wall.

“Sometimes with a group like ZZ Top it’s hard to get all of them together. In ZZ Top’s case I captured the bassist and guitarist together, then got some crazy cool shots of the drummer and merged the two images together in Photoshop,” explains Kienast.

Concert photography and printingKienast’s setup is a computer, an Epson Stylus Photo R2880 inkjet printer and a small trimmer. Kienast outputs 8x10s, 11x14s or a combination of the two. He has a template set up in Photoshop that includes the name of the venue, the date, the artist and his copyright information.

The images are processed, set in the template, printed on LexJet Sunset Photo eSatin Paper, trimmed and ready for signing. Kienast also shoots video interviews backstage and produces photographic art of the venue on LexJet Sunset Select Matte Canvas.

Concert photography and on-site printing“Usually the performer’s manager or publicist is there and they’re completely blown away that there will be images of the artist at the venue and hung on the wall. When we photographed Gary Busey the manager said no one does this; not even in Hollywood,” says Kienast.

Kienast’s photographic art, both from the show and the venue in general, can be found in the homes and offices of many of the acts that come through town and play at the Surf Ballroom. “It’s a real honor to have my artwork displayed by these A-list stars,” says Kienast. 

Posted on by Regan Dickinson Posted in Case Studies & Profiles
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Promotional Production with Sunset Production Matte Canvas

Printing photos on canvas

Always looking for an edge, Dan Johnson, owner of Dan Johnson Photography in Grand Rapids, Mich., has found one with LexJet’s new Sunset Production Matte Canvas.

A longtime proponent of the Sunset canvas line, particularly Sunset Select Matte Canvas, Johnson was looking for a canvas that would split the difference between consistent quality and economy for his “mass market” work.

When it comes to custom canvas projects, Johnson generally sticks with the more high-end Sunset Select Matte Canvas, but he also prints what he calls a “promotional” product: consumers find Johnson through an online promotional site and send Johnson a photo they want on canvas. It’s quick and easy for Johnson to produce and provides a consistent cash flow, he says.

The Sunset Production Matte Canvas helps boost margins a bit and those on the receiving end are quite happy with what they’re getting.

“We got our first roll of the canvas recently and printed 10 to 12 pieces from it right off the bat. Within a couple of days, clients who received their canvases left really positive comments on Facebook or directly through email,” says Johnson. “My first impression of the canvas was that it lets light through, but once you coat it, paper the back and hang it on the wall it doesn’t matter. No one hangs it with light purposely showing from the back. Ultimately, I was impressed: the color comes off just right and it works perfectly with Sunset Satin Coating. And, because it’s not as thick, it’s easier to stretch and make the corners look really nice.”

When Johnson fulfills the order he includes a coupon that sends these customers to his website for more.

“We hope we get them back and that they’ll want more canvas or other types of prints. We can provide a fairly consistent cash flow with these promotional offers. The cost savings with the Sunset Production Matte Canvas is fantastic and is very helpful for us with these promotional products,” says Johnson.

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

Posted on by Regan Dickinson Posted in Case Studies & Profiles
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Instant Marketing with Inkjet at Ridinger Photo

Printing window displays for a photography studio

They say a picture is worth a thousand words, but what about one that’s six feet tall, almost four feet wide and glows? Mike Ridinger, owner of Ridinger’s The Art of Photography in downtown Lewiston, Idaho, says the big photos he printed to hang in his storefront were worth not only a thousand words, but likely created more than a thousand impressions.

Ridinger explains that the town of Lewiston hosted its annual Hot August Nights car show, blocking off downtown for hundreds of show cars, live music and other activities. Thousands of people came from all over for the event, and Ridinger was ready for them at his downtown studio with five big prints: three senior portraits and two family portraits.

Printing promotional displays for a photo studio“I like sitting in the studio and watching people come by to stop to look at them. They’re so big that people can’t help but look at them,” says Ridinger. “We also posted photos of the window displays on Facebook and we had 41 comments just yesterday.”

Ridinger says he took his cue from The Gap and its storefront marketing approach. To give the prints more life at night, Ridinger backed them with halogen lights, creating a glow that lures people to the windows.

“We use the heavier Sunset Photo eSatin Paper for the display prints in our studio, but for this we chose a more economical and thinner paper, LexJet 8 Mil Production Satin Photo Paper, for the window displays,” says Ridinger.

Ridinger framed the prints with four-inch baseboard molding, stained the molding, cut it to size and stapled them together. The bottoms of the frames rest on the floor and are balanced with fishing line strung from the ceiling to the tops of the frames.

“Inkjet printing is our way of immediate marketing. I love it because if we want to put something up right away, we can do these big-time prints: we pick out the images and I just lay them out and print,” says Ridinger.

Promotional displays with wide format inkjetRidinger adds that they’re in the process of re-doing all of their studio displays using Sunset Photo eSatin Paper and Sunset Select Matte Canvas. At any given time, he says, the studio features about 30 large wall portraits in three different themed areas: children, families and seniors.

Ridinger also has a display program where he pre-sells prints for half off in exchange for being able to use them as display prints in his studio for a certain time period. “We call the client to see if they’re interested. If they are, they get a nice print for half off, which pays for my in-studio advertising,” says Ridinger.