Portrait session & print order

Recently I received a print order from a family portrait session that I had done. I had shot portrait sessions before for this client, and they were familiar with my work, however in the past I had used a medium format 6 x 7 Pentax camera with black and white film, supplying  large hand printed lith prints on Kodak Ektalure paper; this is a museum weight paper and with the type of printing that I did, each photograph had depth to it, with a good tonal range. The client wanted a similar finish. I no longer had my Pentax camera, and beside Kodak had long stopped producing Ektalure paper, one of the best photographic papers ever to my mind. The only film cameras I had were Leica M’s, so I decided to shoot with a digital camera. Assuring the family that they will still get good quality prints, and yes, they will be booked mounted using museum board like before. I’m sure there are other professional portrait photographers about that have been asked to produce work “just like you did the last time”.

I was looking forward to printing up the photographs, but when the day of printing came, so did ‘Murphy’s Law’. My printer was playing up. I was using Lyson heavyweight smooth art paper, an acid free photo rag paper, which I like, only thing was that my Epson printer decided it didn’t, and it was hit or miss whether the paper fed through. After half a day of wasting ink, having my blood pressure rise, and asking my dog why is this happening to me I gave up. Enough is enough, I telephoned Epson and upgraded my printer to an Epson R3000.

My thoughts on the Epson R3000. In a word – brilliant. The printer produces excellent giclee prints. I had no problem feeding 320 gram paper through, even though it wasn’t so straight forward on how to front feed the paper, and it does use a bit a ink changing over inks from photo black to matt black, but at least you do not have to take the inks out.

I calibrated my monitor before printing and used the correct ICC profiles, and printed via Lightroom 5,  all in all I had a great time printing, the greatness being judged by the ease and success of the printing session. I had each photograph book mounted, with the end result being one very happy client, which is all that any professional photographer can ask for, oh and to get paid. Just in case you are wondering, the print order well paid the my new printer.

By the way, Epson give a discount on new printers if you part ex your old printer Epson.

The featured photograph is one from the family portrait session.

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