Don't read this free article on LuLa. I will summarize it for you.
We think prints and printing are super important, they're what photography is really all about. Here are some pictures of printers and some other pictures of old dudes plugging books about printing, and did you know than Epson uses blue tape to secure their printers for shipping, while Canon uses orange?
I am exaggerating, at most, very slightly. This is a gee whiz gear post.
My guess is that Lula's deal with Phase One has gotten a lot less lucrative, and they're pivoting to try to become the site with the great info on how to spend as much money and effort as possible printing your pictures. It's certainly an underserved niche.
Good luck with that, boys.
We have become conditioned to think of photography as an (artists) medium. I think that is a convenient definition---that is wrong. I think it helps to dig one layer beneath that and think of photography as the tool used to work on the medium. Other artists use brushes and pencils or chisels and I use a camera, and different kinds as well.
ReplyDeleteA inkjet print is just a medium. An 8x10 contact platinum print is also a medium. And so is a transparency back lit in a box hanging on the wall, or an iPad running a slideshow of your selected photos. Or maybe you'll project them on to your living room television using chromecast or Apple TV. Or maybe your selected medium will be a small handmade book, maybe it will be a really large portfolio display folder because you want people to see it large and up close.
I think the argument over printing or not printing or Monochrome vs. color is little different than artists through the generations deciding whether they wanted to use oils, or watercolors, or acrylic or charcoal and the accompanying different substrates (canvas, wood, metal, glass, paper...) We haven't even touched on the issue of video...almost every camera made today is capable of producing stunning video footage yet it remains completely unused by me.
When you think of it like that, the discussion over the importance of printing is little different than painters arguing over watercolors and paper, or oils and canvas, or pencil and paper. My analogy might not be perfect but let's think of the old guys on LuLa as having grown up using the medium of the print and it is what they prefer. I think that's OK.