Fine Art Photography How To

Inkjet printmakers now have a range of printing paper options that go well beyond the wildest dreams of darkroom printers in terms of size, surface, and print “look.” While covering all the offerings would fill all the pages of this issue, and then some, what follows is a sampling of paper options that I have recently tested with some suggestions about how they might best be put to use in your creative endeavors. 

Starting in the business of fine art photography is not easy. More than anything, there will be a lot of peaks and valleys ahead. In this column, we look at how to navigate some of these issues, find clients, seek gallery representation, and market your work. Thanks to my contributing photographers: Larry Angier, Michael Garlington, Laurie Klein, RJ Muna, and Brooke Shaden.

Probably half my portfolio comes from Martha's Vineyard. I've been going there for 40 years and find lots of inspiration, but inspiration and good images are everywhere."

Xpozer is a fascinating new way to create exhibition-quality photo prints from Bay Photo Lab. How good do they look? If Leonardo da Vinci had seen these…

I wake up in the middle of the night in a frazzled state. “Did I lock the front door of the gallery and did I turn off the base lights of the trees on my way out?” I was replaying the night’s events in my mind to ease my worries but I am so tired that it is all a blur. I am not sure when I decided to open up my own photo gallery and in some ways I am not really sure why I wanted to do it either.

We’re a little surprised—but maybe we shouldn’t be—that Fine Art Photography was one of our most popular and most competitive assignments yet. Maybe it’s because fine art photography, as a category, can encompass so many different subjects, including landscapes, cityscapes, macros, wide angles, long exposures, abstracts, portraits, nudes, semi-nudes, black and whites, color photos, surreal photos, hyperreal photos, nature photos, and on and on and on.

Long, long ago in a land far away, photo hobbyists often used yellow filters on their lenses when shooting black-and-white film. Monochrome film was a bit more sensitive to blue light back in those days, and that caused skies and clouds to blend and become an indistinguishable mess. For reasons we’ll see later, green filters were often used for portraits.