Who is using Digital Printing
From Online Printing
The digital revolution (including the Internet) has created opportunities for photographers, artists, and image makers to create and distribute their work in ways that were not even dreamed of ten or even five years ago. While many like to sidestep categories, it’s still useful to attempt some kind of lumping together, if only to allow more understanding of the widespread reach of digital imaging and printing. Also, art buyers and eyers tend to think in terms of classifications: pop art, Old Masters, that sort of thing. The same with juried art shows and contests, which by necessity need to categorize entries and awards to keep the whole system of judging art somewhat manageable. So here goes my attempt at classifying the creators of high-quality digital prints (see Gallery Showcase for some good examples from each group). Printmakers, as a group, get their own special chapter (10). Photographers/Image makers The digital wave has definitely broken over the photographic/image making field, and most photographers are riding it (they’ll drown if they don’t). It’s only logical considering that photography was born out of the technological innovations of Nicety, Talbot, Bayard, and Daguerre in the 19th century. Some say that the digital revolution is as important as the invention of colour photography, even photography itself. Of course, there will always be the few purists and hold-outs who thumb their noses at technological advances, but if you are reading this book, you are probably not one of them. Left: Photographer Gary Goldberg creates images in a wide range of sub-specialities including fashion and beauty. Right: Goldberg checks a print in his Florida studio. Some of the photographers who are emerging from their smelly darkrooms and into the digital light are merely using digital printing to output their existing work with little intervention. Others are playing a more active digital role, either shooting with a digital camera or scanning in their film-based images before beginning the work of colour correcting, retouching, and in general, improving what they have. Many are taking full advantage of what digital imaging and especially printing can offer them. A good example is Gary Goldberg, a new Toronto resident (from Florida) who covers a lot of bases in the digital game. He’s a commercial photographer now shooting all-digitally and working with ad agencies, record companies, and other types of businesses to create his portrait, fashion, and advertising images. However, he also photographs weddings, does digital restorations of damaged photographs, and est his own fine-art prints at art shows and through online services. And it’s those last two job Ca categories, in addition to printing his portfolios, that put his several ink jet printers to most use. Goldberg is also not hesitant in using the online display and ting services of Shutterless and Pictogram, both of whom utilize the digital printing technologies covered in this book for their products (read more about this in ). Traditional Artists The painters, watercolours, and sketch and pastel artists who have taken up digital printing techniques to publish and reproduce their work are currently producing a large number of commercially sold, digital prints. Artists can either have a transparency made of their original work, take it to a digital printmaker for direct digital scanning, or digitize it themselves with their own digital camera or scanner (if the original is small enough). The digital file is then typically printed on either paper (watercolours, drawings, or pastels) or canvas (oils or acrylics) to produce an edition. American artist Steve Bogeyman is known for his interinterpretive fresco sec co paintings. (Fresco sec co, where the artist applies paint to dried plaster, is one of the two classic fresco techniques. Muon fresco, which is the art of painting on freshly spread, moist lime plaster with pigments suspended in a water vehicle, is the other.) Influenced by ancient Greek art among others, Bogeyman replicates in his own version of the fresco from scenes depicted in myriad wall murals, friezes, relief, and statues starting with the Greek Bronze Age through the end of the Renaissance. Bogeyman has his frescoes photographed, drum-scanned, and put on a CD. He then does all the image editing on his computer in preparation for his own digital prints on paper via ink jet printing in his New Orleans studio (on an Epson Stylus Pro 4000). In this store front gallery, he displays not only his fresco originals but also his limited-edition prints, some of which are hand-embellished with acrylic washes. The prints have definitely become a hit, and Bogeyman admits that a substantial part of his revenue comes from them. Digital Artists A blurry, hard-to-define kind of group, this is the forward edge of digital art. It includes artists who draw or paint on the computer, who heavily manipulate and alter their photo based art, who create machine art with mathematical formulas or fractals, or who combine traditional and digital techniques to produce new forms of hybrid, mixed-media art. Since their originals exist only in the computer, digital printing is the primary method used to output their work. These are the artists who are truly partners with the computer, using it as a tool no differently than Monet used a brush. This is what used to be called computer art, but that term is much too old-fashioned and imprecise now to cover the amazing range of today’s digital artists. New Mexico artist Ursula Freer has a traditional art background, but seven years ago she went all-digital. It has totally changed my way of creating art, she says. The medium is quite amazing; there seems to be no end to the possibilities for creative expression and great freedom for communicating ideas. In her studio, Freer works with digital photos taken with her digital camera, software and filters, and also what she calls screen painting by using a digital graphics t. She produces her own ink jet prints on fine-art paper, and she est them through galleries and her website. In addition, Freer has started to do digital art photography and printing for other artists in her local area.
