Print your photos
My wife and I have been talking about getting a big photo quality printer for a few months now, during the prime day sales the one we had been looking at became a price a little too good and so we bit the bullet. Welcome to the start of the rabbit hole.
Just to clarify before we go down said rabbit hole I want to clarify that when I say you should print your photos I don't just mean on the biggest, most expensive printer that you can find. This bug all started when I got a Fujifilm Link Mini 2 printer that let me print out Instax mini images from anywhere. Like I said, rabbit hole.
When we started this discussion about getting a printer one of the key things we wanted to look at was finding the balance between how much the printer was going to cost us for the performance it would produce. I have no doubt that there would be value in the printers that sit above the Epson XP-15000 version that we chose but for the price we paid and the performance output I am seeing I think there would need to be a lot more justification for it.
An A3+ capable printer using only 6 inks is a very appealing offering and at around $500 AUD normally the Epson XP-15000 really does stand out as a gateway drug to printing big.
The other side of the rabbit hole is the paper we print on. This is truly where the research, experimentation and investigation really comes into it's own. For example, my wife and I are both using Ilford paper for our prints, we have both chosen a matte finish paper but when you look closely the paper stocks are on completely different ends of the spectrum.
The smooth cotton rag that I have chosen for my photo work does not have any texture in the paper as the name suggests, however the textured cotton sprite that we chose for my wife's art works look absolutely stunning with the illustrated watercolour style she produces. The extra step in the process of what stock that print will be on can really add to the final result.
There have been a lot of people I have seen talking a lot about their journey in printing which has also been the gentle nudge to look further and further into it. I have put the videos I have been watching down below but be warned you may start shopping.
This journey down print road has also started a new series I have wanted to do called ‘Pixels to Paper’ going through an Image I have taken and bringing it from digital into a physical print.
