| Information and Miscellaneous topics |
| Summary: 1. High-quality fine art prints on 100% Cotton-rag fine art paper or canvas. 2. Site devoted to Route 66 landscapes. 3. Most pics are composites of several pictures (occasionally 20 or more) . 4. Phase One P45 or P45+ 39 megapixel back used for almost all pics. 5. Stretched, gallery-wrapped canvas prints, multi-coated and ready to hang. 6. Fine-art prints on paper, matted with conservation-grade off-white mat. Ready to frame 7. Printed with HP Vivera Pigmented inks on HP Z3100 printer 8. Our usual sizes listed and priced, but we will print any size, for example panoramas up to 3' x 8'. 9. Shipping to just about anywhere, but prices are for continental US. 10. Delivery for canvas prints in 4 to 8 weeks (we print them one at a time and coatings must dry). Also, for larger canvas prints, we make a custom crate. Paper prints in our usual sizes should arrive in 2 to 3 weeks. 11. We do all the work ourselves. 12. Canvas prints limited to 30. Paper prints limited as well but overall in larger editions, up to 200 in some cases. 13. Our pricing is very, very good for now. So take advantage of it while it lasts. 14. Note: We are not a commercial printer. Our canvas prints are very unusual in that we use many more coatings and glazings than do most printers. So you will not find the look of our canvas pieces any where else that we know of. What we do: High quality fine art prints on fine art paper or canvas. This site is devoted to Route 66 landscapes and architecture. We do all the work ourselves from taking the photo to the final printing. It takes us roughly 12 to 36 hours of work to get a picture ready for printing; pictures on the web site usually are preliminary pictures since we do the final work on a picture at the time of printing. Prints are available in any size up to quite large, for example for a single shot 30 x 40 or for a large panorama-36" x 84". We take high resolution pictures. For this project, most of the pictures will be made with a 39 megapixel back on either a Mamiya medium format body or a view camera. Final print files range from 200 megabytes to one gigabyte, over a 1000 times larger than a web file. Generally we limit individual prints on canvas to editions of 30. Prints on Fine Art Paper will be limited editions as well, but the editions will be larger as indicated. We do our own printing. We are more interested in the quality of our work than in selling large numbers of individual prints. We use durable materials. For comments on Archival Click here. Canvas prints are finished in several stages: 1. Printing with large format photo printer employing pigmented inks, currently a 44" HP Z3100. 2. Coating with an acrylic veneer that seals the printing surface and the print. 3. Stretching on traditional stretcher bars 4 Glazing as appropriate with Golden acrylic gels and Golden fluid acrylics. 5. Applying a final clear acrylic coat which may have as many as 3 or 4 layers. 6. Varnishing with a Golden varnish which usually will consist of a minimum of 2 medium coats. 7. Waiting for all of this to dry, usually a week after the last coat. So all in all a canvas print may have as many as 10 (or more) layers. This all gives the print depth that cannot be obtained with a simple printing. Fine art prints are on 100% cotton rag fine art paper. Generally on fine art prints, we do nothing further after printing. Occasionally, we will coat fine art prints on cotton-rag paper; and occasionally we will coat B&W prints as well. Fine art prints will come to you matted with a conservation-grade (acid-free and lignin-free) board, backed with acid-free foam-core board. We prefer to ship prints matted. We are of the opinion that most prints look best in a white or off-white matt. Museums specialize in the display of art objects and generally use conservative matting. Joanna Kosek of the British Museum states, "...an understated setting for prints and drawings seems appropriate in a museum context, since it is not a part of the original creation or context of an object. A plain mount is also less likely to look out of fashion." (Kosek, Joanna, Conservation Mounting for prints and drawings: A manual based on current practices at the British Museum. London: Archetype Publications, 2004. ) (page7). She continues, "This is not to say that the plain cream-coloured board mount has limited esthetic appeal in comparison to a decorated mount. On the contrary, as a setting it enhances a work of art through simplicity, elegant proportions, consistent stamping style, and the degree of care given to the finishing operations. The purity and simplicity of a cream-coloured board mount is unaffected by prevailing trends, and this successful design is as suitable and attractive now as it must have been 150 years ago." (pages7-8). If the matt is made of conservation-grade materials, the matt should be in good condition for many, many years. If the matt is of a coloured material, what are the colorants? How will they change with time? And even more importantly how timeless will be the appearance? The only sure matt is a conservation-grade off-white matt. Regarding time to do a picture: Many of our photos consist of a number of individual shots. Most panoramas will have from 12 to 18 individual shots. A single unstitched photo will have from 1 to 5 individual shots in it. We don't keep track of time exactly, but on a large canvas piece we may spend 4 to 8 hours (or more) printing and coating. And each coat must dry before the next coat. We usually allow one week for the final coat to dry before shipping. Allow 4 to 8 weeks for delivery. We will contact you if it will be longer. Occasionally, we get a piece finished and don't like it and will start all over. In that case it may take longer than 8 weeks. |