How to care for a photo

[pecunium]

zhaneel69 asked how she might care for a photo, if she wanted to buy one.

It's a good question.

For "Digital" prints with pigment inks, they need to be in indirect light. For reasons I'm not clear on it seems the inks fade if they are kept in the dark.

Regular photos want indirect light for a different reason; to bright a light (esp. one with UV) will make them fade.

So, the rule is; indirect light.

If you want to frame them... they need to be set off from the glass by at least 3/8ths of an inch. The closer proximity (or worse, contact) with the glass will cause them to start degrading.

They can me mounted/framed without glass. If so you'll want to dust them, with something like a feather duster. I'd recommend glass, because dust will adhere. If it's a glossy finish, the removal will damage it. If it's a pearl, or fabric, then the dust will hide on the unven surfaces.

If you have more than one, a sheet of tracing paper between the each picuture (and one for the top) is the way to go. Tracing paper because you can't be sure your generic paper isn't acid. Why go to the effort of getting archival papers, only to sabotage it by storing them with something to protect the finish; but destroys the paper?

So go to the art store and get some high quality tracing paper (it's what I do to protect them when I put them in the envelope to ship).

For your amusement, a pair of treatments of one image. The difference is slight; but changes the photo a fair bit.

Comments

[nasu-dengaku.livejournal.com]

For "Digital" prints with pigment inks, they need to be in indirect light. For reasons I'm not clear on it seems the inks fade if they are kept in the dark.

Wow... a chemical that slowly degrades only if it's not bombarded with photons? That's a new one to me.

What kind of quality would you get with the "scan with a 4800dpi scanner and reprint it when the original fades" method?

[pecunium.livejournal.com]

I don't pretend to understand it. I do know that direct sun will also degrade the pigments.

Why scan? For images from negative the better way is to print to photo papers, rather than scan the negative and print the result?

So, barring the loss of the original file, scanning seems a couple of level of degradation away from a good reprint.

[nasu-dengaku.livejournal.com]

I was thinking of the situation where I buy a photo print from an art gallery, but don't have access to either the negative or computer file used to produce it. (It's one of those fair use questions... I want to make my legal backup copy.) How good are scanners these days?

[pecunium.livejournal.com]

A goos scanner, at maximal quality, will allow you to make a decent print from the scan.

It isn't going to be perfect (color managment, dust on the bed, damage to the print).

And dismounting the photo to get it flat to the bed raises it's own set of problems.

Now... the fair use claim of legal back-up copy.

I don't know how to parse that. I don't think it's quite the same for static visual media. I do know that, were I to find someone had done that with a signed, limited edition, I would be something put out.

I don't know there is anything I can do about it, but sure feels like a slight violation of the understanding.

[nasu-dengaku.livejournal.com]

In general I feel uneasy about the artificial scarcity limited edition business model used by photographers. I understand the economic reasons for it, but it seems like unnecessary restriction of information to enhance "collectibility". You certainly should get paid for your work, but the concept of not printing more copies (at any price) because you've sold out your run of N prints feels like a loss of potential value on everyone's part. I assume doing a "second edition" run of prints is frowned upon?

[pecunium.livejournal.com]

How do you feel about a limited casting of sculptures?

There is no single model of business.

Digital has changed things a lot, so I'll discuss both forms.

For digital, I make an edit. That's somewhere between 5 minutes, and a couple of hours. To get there I had to take the image (which might have taken anything from moments, to weeks. The photos I took in the Galapagos were not trivial to get). Then I had to cull them. Then edit. I then have to print, which means choosing the paper, managing the color and spending the time.

Once I am set, I can do one of two things. Print them all at once; which is sunk costs. For 8x10s my papers of choice are somwhere between $15-$60 for 20 sheets. About one in ten will end up printing unusably. So a run of 18 will be some portion of my $90 per inkload, and a box of paper.

Or, I can take careful notes, and print as ordered.

For gelatin prints: all the same as for digtal in collecting the image.

Then I get to spend not less than an hour, and (if it's a tricky print) as many as ten... just to figure out the regimen for exposing the paper.

Paper costs are about the same as for digital, but I get to add the cost of chemical; and the time to replace the chemistry ever 15-20 prints.

I can't really do a limited run to order with gelatin; so I have to sink the money (and storage space), and time (and it may take as long as 20 minutes per print to make them), into doing them all at the same time.

It's not always a scarcity issue; it's an entire host of choices, problems, advantages and penalties.

Most photographers have two sorts of prints, the limited editions, and the catalog to order. Then there are the framed. Those are; by virtue of the framing choices, usually unique, even when the print run is wide open.

And yes, for certain values of re-opening an edition (which is to say, doig another print run to the same parameter) is frowned on. You promised the buyer she had one of a limited number.

For really serious on that, there is a photographer in SF, who does very simple (from the perspective of printing) gelatin prints. His run is usually less than fifty. At the start, they cost about $500. When he gets toward the end, the price has gone up to as much as $7,000. I swear someday I'll buy two, early in the run, and sell one near the end.

But I bet I only get to do that trick once.

[nasu-dengaku.livejournal.com]

I know making prints takes a lot of time and money... I wasn't disputing that! It's more the limited edition approach that bothers me. I didn't know photographers also typically did made to order prints though.

For sculpture casting is it technically possible to do multiple runs as well, or do the molds degrade?

It's interesting that other forms of reproducible art (musical recordings, books, films, there isn't nearly as much tendency to do limited editions. I'm guessing the trend toward limited edition photos may have started either because negatives used to degrade quickly or because photographers wanted to find a way of keeping their prints' value as collectibles high, especially when competing with painters for the same wealthy customers.

[songblaze.livejournal.com]

Re: sculpture limited runs.

Simple answer: Whether or not (or how much) the molds degrade depends on what type of mold is used.

Slightly more nuanced answer (without going and researching this better, just going off of my memory of my art classes and my great grandmother Perkins, who was an artist):

There are a lot of methods for casting sculpture. The most exclusive are a type of lost wax casting in which the process of casting destroys the mold completely and a method of plaster casting in which to get the cast out of the mold, you shatter the mold.

Next come the 'soft' molds - latex and the like. Depending on what material you are casting, they will do a finite number of casts before you start losing the details and eventually destroy the mold wholesale. In some cases, fewer even than that because latex molds are fragile things and can be torn.

The next most durable are your 'hard' molds - some types of plaster molding, I'm sure there are others that I'm not remembering offhand. This type of mold, once made, is split cleanly in two pieces to release the (usually clay) original piece and then put back together to pour the sculptures. Far more can be made this way.

Finally you hit the metal molds. These would be made of a metal with a significantly higher melt temperature than the casting metal. You can get far more pieces from this than from any of the 'more primitive' techniques. However, this type of casting generally cannot be done by hand because of how delicate the temperature margins can be. That is, a single artist generally cannot do metal mold casting. They must have the equipment and materials to cast in two types of metal - one for the mold, one for the statute - and to be able to monitor temperatures very finely.

Depending on the material the original is made of and the techniques used, one can make multiple molds to extend the forseeable casting.

I think part of the reason for making a limited run of photographic prints is not just because the negatives can be degraded or because it was a competition against painters.

I think perhaps it has to do with photography staking a place for itself as an art, not just something one can do with the right equipment.

[nasu-dengaku.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the very thorough answer on sculpture.

I do disagree with your very last statement though -- to me, a good photograph is art whether the photographer makes one print or a million. I agree that having the right equipment is no guarantee of talent, but I don't see what that has to do with the choice of how many prints to make.

I did take analog photo class in high school, and I could see how people would see darkroom work as part of the art, but with digital photography and printing, it seems like the process of producing prints is more a matter of choosing what ink and paper to use, and not the act of printmaking itself.

Anyway, thanks again for sharing.

[pecunium.livejournal.com]

ermn.... sort of.

Color management, and printer calibration is an art. Maybe not as much of an art as color printing was (or dye-transfer printing, a la Ctein), but an art.

Knowing your color space, working inside it, tailoring the paper to it; keeping the printer from going out of gamut.

More to the point... to make money selling at $5 a print, I have to sell a lot of prints. Even with "profits" of 50-100 per sale, I don't make that many sales in a month.

If I sell 20 8x10 prints in a month, at, call it 10 bucks per, with a "profit" of $8, I am clearing 160 bucks. That doesn't keep body and soul together. And if I can't afford to eat, I have to find some other way to pay the bills, which means I have less time to take pictures; edit pictures, print pictures.

And a box of paper costs 20 sheets worth of money, even if I only sell one this month. So maybe the limited edition is a way to inflate prices (I disagree, I think it happens to make the actual costs of a print look more reasonable to the customer, who doesn't know the hidden costs), but it's not to compete with painters, it's to pay the bills.

[songblaze.livejournal.com]

Oh, and in books there most certainly is a tendancy to do limited editions. You only see it if you look beyond mass-market paperbacks.

[pecunium.livejournal.com]

The "limited edition" is more a reflection of the facts of life.

A print run is a unique thing. The temperature, the humidity, the paper stock, the chemistry, all factor in. Assuming that it take an hour for set up, and 10 minutes attentive labor per print, a run of fifty takes 16 hours.

If I number them... I am incresing the value... if I am a photographer people care about. I'm also not really doing anything more than recognizing a print run is unique.

Sculpture (in the form of cast works) is reproducible. Arlen Robbins (who did the mermaids, for I forget which Vegas hotel) does runs of 25-50 for her smaller pieces. I don't know when a mold wears out, but she can do a second run, with post casting modifications to make a new edition, so 100 isn't out of the question.

The real difference for books, films and records is 1: the means of reproduction. Once the press is set (or the copier prepped with the answer-print; for film), 1,000 is as easy as 10.

Photography; at the level of detail/quality we are talking about doesn't scale.

If I were losing $2.50 when someone knocks off a print, I might care less than I do when it's 20-300 I'm losing.

A photograph is more akin to a painting, in that regard, they aren't mass producible.

Negative have always been stable. It was the work of making prints, and the problem of cost/storage (if I do a print run of 100, and I'm using 11x17 Museum Parchment from Lumijet, I have a sunk cost of about $5,000, just for the prints.

Each of those will cost me about $75 to frame. I can put that off until I make a sale, so it's not a real cost; but I'll have to frame at least one, or I can't show it.

If I'm doing a 25 piece show... framed, I am looking at a cost of about 2 grand. The gallery, typically take 50 percent. So I have to factor that into my costs. I have to figure out what is a reasonable profit, double that; so the gallery doesn't eat it, and leave me breaking even.

The model is different, because the market is different. It's hard enough to sell at $25 per print. When you add costs, the sales get harder.

People don't like to think of photography as art. They tend to say, "I could do that, why should I pay him $250 for being lucky enough to be there?"

[nasu-dengaku.livejournal.com]

I think you misunderstand me.

I never said you should sell your prints at a loss! There's nothing wrong with selling them for hundreds of dollars each in order to make photography a viable business for yourself!

My concern was about the artificial scarcity of deliberately limiting the number of available prints. Given that in most situations the photographer could simply make more prints (and sell them at the appropriate price), this practice deliberately limits the number of people who can enjoy the artwork.

It sounds like many photographers are willing to print to order anyway though.

[commodorified.livejournal.com]

My concern was about the artificial scarcity of deliberately limiting the number of available prints. Given that in most situations the photographer could simply make more prints (and sell them at the appropriate price),

This is the art market. The appropriate price is determined partly based on scarcity.

You can read Shakespeare online for free, no problem. You want a Folio... the last one to hit the market went for 6 million pounds.

this practice deliberately limits the number of people who can enjoy the artwork.

No, it deliberately limits the number of people who can own an actual print of it. You can have a poster of a Karsh (http://www.photography.ca/photographer/karsh_yousuf.html), cheap. You can go look at quite a lot of his stuff on the internet free.

You can't afford his prints, though. Trust me. There are not all that many of them and no more are being made, because he is dead and his brother is dead and nobody outside the family is going to be getting permission to touch that negative (which is now 70 years old) anytime soon.

For that matter, you can look at pecunium's stuff on the internets for free, too. You can use it as a desktop or even print out one of those jpgs and hang it on your wall, and as I recall he's said he doesn't give a damn.

That's your "information". It is a perfectly adequate representation of the piece for those purposes, i.e. looking at, much as mp3s are a perfectly adequate representative of the music on a cd. That's what you are entitled to back-up. You're not entitled to go back to the store and say "My cd broke, I need a new label and jewel case and an insert, please, for free."

When you buy a print, you are buying an artifact. You are paying for someone's time and judgement and work to turn that information into a piece of art fit to hang on a wall. One does not "back up' artifacts. One insures them.

(Though, to be honest, given that my wife is an artist and photographer and I do a pile of stuff helping her produce prints, I am tempted to switch sides and say: ok, look. Go ahead, Scan it, print it, matte it, frame it. And when you've spent what it would cost to just order a second print AND it doesn't look very good because you don't actually know what you're doing, come talk to me.)

[pecunium.livejournal.com]

More to the point, the scarcity isn't artificial. It's real.

I can only afford to make so many original prints. The one's I'm offering for $25, will cost you more to make, because to make one print as well as I do, will cost you about $500.

If you have the "negative"

I can own any number of Charles Shulz illustrations. I can buy books full of them, and get them for pennies; used, or dollars new.

But I can't afford to get an original. As I said above, printing takes time, effort and money. As with anyone else, I have a limited supply of both. I like Touchhole but I don't know that I want to spend a five hours making 20 prints. I know I don't want to spend weeks making a couple of thousand.

I also know that (unless I can sell them all) the price won't drop; because my costs are fixed. There is no economy of scale. Originals are what they are; works of art.

You want cheap, wait for the posters, the books, the cards.

You want an original (or a limited edition print) you buy it.

[pecunium.livejournal.com]

My concern was about the artificial scarcity of deliberately limiting the number of available prints. Given that in most situations the photographer could simply make more prints (and sell them at the appropriate price), this practice deliberately limits the number of people who can enjoy the artwork.

No. It doesn't. Most photographers won't sell more than a couple of copies of any given photo; no matter how many they do, or don't, make. At a fair price, most people won't buy them.

In that respect the limited edition is false. Forget, for the moment, that an honest to goodness print run of fifty is a huge investment in time, effort and capital. There isn't (barring a known market) any good reason to print more than a few at a time (and that only if one is showing at a venue where people will want prints).

So most limited editions are marketing. An edition of fifty, is for most of us, functionally infinite. And the price isn't higher for the limited edition (not for most photographers). It costs what it costs to make them, and they sell for what they sell. Unless one is a Mapplethorpe, or Leibovitz, or some other, "name", slapping some numbers in the corner isn't going to make the photo more valuable.

And, oddly enough, when the value of your work goes up, the people who see the profit, are those who are willing to re-sell earlier work as you get more famous.


When the interest gets so great more than 50 prints are practiable... one prints a book. The price drops, and lots of people can see them. It's not the same, but it's pretty good. If you want an original, you contact the photographer.

I think, honestly, much of this is the misperception about how repeatable a photo is. People don't have the same complaint when a lithographer makes a limited run. They see that set of prints as unique, in a way they don't see it for photos.

And, not to be tendentious, you are talking about making a copy for "backup". In some ways that puts me, as a producer of something which isn't paying on the royalty model of music, books, etc. in a bit of a bind.

With music, and books, the reuse of the medium (in terms of it being shared) is profitable. Niel Gaiman's sales go up when his books are downloaded. For the person who decides he doesn't like Gaiman, he's loses maybe a buck and half. Not a critical piece of income.

A lot of other people do like him, and buys some other book. Net Gain.

Music is the same way. People share it. They hear a friends mix and they want the songs. So they buy it.

Art, like photos, or paintings, lithos, etc. are a different thing. Do I lose anything when someone downloads an image? Probably not. They can't make the level of print I can make; because they don't have all the information (or equipment, or practice).

But wall space is limited, and to fill it isn't 5-20 bucks. So that back-up copy represents a real loss to the photographer, in a way taping a song doesn't.

I split the difference by offering something tangible; for value, and allowing people to have lesser versions for free.