Adventures in aluminum

As I had blogged earlier, I printed a couple of images on 13×19 sheets of aluminum. Now I have mounted them on Masonite. It worked pretty well. One image I mounted and bent the aluminum edges around the Masonite ‘frame.’ That did not work too well, the thin aluminum sheet did not bend as easily as I had thought – it tended to fight back, and the edges did not turn out as neat as I had hoped. Things worked better with the second image. Here I simply took a utility knife and cut the aluminum, following the edge of the frame. The photos show what things look like. Of course, the image printed on aluminum is difficult to photograph because of the reflection from the metal. I did not try to get fancy and build a light tent, or otherwise correct the photo.

The Last Picture Show….

My ‘Blurb’ book, The Last Picture Show …fine print arrived in the mail. Since I am the world worst proofreader, I only ordered one copy, and I am glad I did since it needs several corrections. Nevertheless, I am quite happy with it. I realize pulling some of my photos together and publishing them in book format is a wonderful way for me to organize and make sense out of my work. In this book, I am more interested in telling a story than I am in presenting perfect prints. Therefore, the quality of the reproduction works just fine for me. However, if I were publishing to show off my stellar qualities as a printer, I would probably be a bit disappointed. I have not researched the filed of ‘on demand’ publishing, so do not really know what kind of quality is out there and at what price.

I do find the concept of ‘on demand’ publishing extremely exciting and I am sure that as software and technology improve, this field will soar, even with fine art photographers. The blurb software, and as far as I know most of the other software programs of ‘on demand’ publishers, is a bit tricky to use, and I was quite frustrated at times putting this book together.