2D: Photo Scanning and Printing at NextFab

Theatrical Debut

September 16th marked the opening of a solo exhibit of my photography in Santa Fe, NM. The photography on display was photographed between 2009 and 2015 and representative of my travels to Haiti, Africa, India, Nepal, Tibet and throughout the United States during that time period.

While my cinematic work had been shown theatrically (I am a film maker by profession), this was the first display of my still photography in a theater, The Jean Cocteau Cinema, an art house theater owned and recently re-opened by “Game of Thrones” author George R.R. Martin.

The show was divided into two sections, one representing film and the other digital photography. NextFab’s 2D department allowed me to optimize both the film negative and the digital files for print and take them through final printing.

The film photography was 35mm black and white negative, purchased and processed in Kathmandu, Nepal. This is significant because technically precise film photography depends on tight chemical tolerances and fresh film stock, neither one available locally in Kathmandu. The result is far from precise from a technical standpoint but it’s aesthetically wonderful. The effect on the photographs makes them reminiscent of a bygone era, much like a visit to Nepal. I wanted to keep this feeling as it represented the place as I saw it. To add to the effect, the camera http://modafinil200mg.net that I used was a 1/2 frame camera which enhances the grain of the film. The camera had no exposure meter, only manual exposure, shutter and focus and a fixed focal length lens.

I was dually fortunate to have shot film as my hard drive with all digital photographs from the trip was corrupted, leaving only the negatives as record of my adventure. The negatives were scanned at NextFab using the Epson Pro 750 Scanner and imported into Adobe Photoshop before printing on the Epson Stylus Pro 9900 printer.

The digital half of the show was presented in vivid color and high contrast, creating a strong counterpoint to the black and white images.

The color images were shot in the Canon RAW format, processed in Photoshop and printed on the Epson Stylus Pro 9900 printer. Shooting in a RAW format allows the photographer to capture the most information in the photograph saving the final processing to be done in image software such as Photoshop or Lightroom.

In addition to the photo preparation for the show, display tags were cut and etched from black acrylic on the Trotec Speedy 500 laser bed.

Come and see!