I saw this question in a recent video for a Photo Cloud system and thought it was a brilliantly clever line. The company asking the question uses a communal Woodstock approach in the hopes of obtaining new clients. (And by Woodstock, I mean the 1969 Free Love Fest in Max Yasgur’s farm in Bethel, NY, filled with sex, drugs and rock and roll, not the little yellow best friend of Snoopy. Although that could probably work, too.) Read more…
Getting an authentic tintype of yourself or one of your photos isn’t easy. Unless you live near Photobooth in San Francisco or know how to make one yourself, your options are extremely limited. There’s a new option available, however, and this one will let you order a tintype from the comfort of your couch.
Restoration company Digital Tintypes recently announced a new website by the same name that will take any photo you give them and turn it into an 8″ x 10″, 5″ x 7″, 2.5″ x 2.5″, or 1″ x 1″ pendant tintype using the original processing techniques. Read more…
Printic is a new service that mixes two popular cultural movements. The first is that nostalgic pull back towards the days when we actually got to hold our pictures in hand; the second, the square crop, retro, lo-fi movement.
So what do you get when you combine these two? You get a service that lets you select and crop photos directly from your phone, and send Polaroid-style high-quality prints to whomever for just $1 a piece. Read more…
Photographer Matthew Brandt takes a unique approach to photography, where the subject of the photographs take second place to the methods he uses to print them. His photography — ranging in subject from lakes to buildings to bees — have been printed using everything from dust, to Kool-Aid, to human tears. Read more…
Businesses aimed at dealing with an increasingly digital photography world are popping up all the time. Beyond just retro photography apps and lo-fi attachments that make it seem like you’re shooting with an old camera, the problem now becomes how to prevent those photos from disappearing into binary oblivion.
If you want a way to display and rotate through your latest prints and instant photos, you can try making yourself a photo ledge. It’s a simple photo holder created using a long piece of plastic u channel molding, available at your local hardware store. Find a way to attach it to a wall — perhaps using velcro, tape, pins, or adhesive — and you’ll have yourself a convenient little ledge that you can use to show off your images. The photos simply rest inside the gap in the plastic ledge, so you can quickly swap prints in and out when you grow tired of certain images. Head on over to Photojojo for the step-by-step tutorial.
The appearance of real world world objects changes depending on lighting, but photographic prints do not… yet. Researchers at HP and UC Santa Cruz are working on a method of printing images of objects or scenes that allows lighting to affect the image. For example, a statue in a print would cast different shadows depending on which direction light strikes the print. The technology is still in its early stages — the prototypes don’t look much like photographs — but perhaps one day it’ll be paired with 3D cameras to capture realistic 3D prints that don’t require glasses.
If you’re looking for a thrifty way to have gigantic (monochrome) prints made of your photographs, look no further than your local Staples. Monica and Jess of East Coast Creative write,
Have you heard about the engineer prints from Staples? Oh.My.Goodness. They have completely changed our life for the better. Just wait, you’ll feel the same way. Take your favorite picture into Staples and ask for an oversized print (they come in multiple sizes, but the largest is 3’ by 4’. They’ll make a copy right there for you, and the best part… it costs less than $5 for a print! You’re only able to get the picture in black and white, but who cares?! It’s 5 bucks! The tricky thing is that the picture is printed on very thin paper, so you have to be careful not to bend or mark it.
They’ve written up a tutorial on how you can make a giant DIY frame for these massive prints.
Instacanvas is a new service that helps Instagram users make money by selling their photographs as canvas wall art. Users can display their images through the “online gallery space” on the site, and sell their images to buyers as canvas prints without having to do any extra work. Instacanvas acts as the middle man, doing all the printing and shipping, and takes a 20 percent commission from sales. The prints start at $40 for a 12×12-inch canvas and go up to $80 for a 20×20-inch one. Photographers are paid via PayPal once they earn more than $100 in sales. Instagram users have bought into the idea: the service amassed over 4,000 users in the first 72 of beta testing.
PDN has published an interview with art collector Jonathan Sobel, who’s suing photographer William Eggleston for creating and selling new prints of iconic photos that were once sold as “limited edition” prints. The new prints that recently fetched $5.9 million at auction were digital prints that were larger than the original ones.
The dispute boils down to this question: If an artist produces and sells a limited edition of a photographic work, and then re-issues the same image in a different size, or in a different print format or medium, does the re-issue qualify as a separate edition? Or do the new prints breach New York law that defines “limited edition,” and therefore defraud the buyers of those original limited edition versions of the work?
The answer could have a significant effect on the photographic print market. A number of photographers issue limited editions of their works, then later issue new editions of the same works, reprinted at different sizes or in different mediums. The reason is obvious: When an edition sells out, and scarcity drives up the price, artists want to cash in on pent up demand.
Sobel, who has spent 10 years studying and collecting Eggleston’s work, claims that eight of his prints that were previously worth $850,000 have been devalued by the recent sale.
