Photo of the Week 2015-02-09

I know that I'm not the first person to experience frustration with (in)ability to produce satisfactory results from a creative endeavour, but lately the results from some of my photographic outings have just not made the grade ... and damn it's been frustrating.

So this weekend I decided to switch things up and forego the regular outing with my friends to stay home and work on a few photo related projects. All involved printing, something that I hadn't done in well over a month, maybe even two.

I had to get the printer running to make sure the print nozzles don't clog anyway. This can be an issue if left idle for long periods of time and I have a printing session with a client coming up and wanted to be sure everything was in good working order. My usual routine is to print once a week, even if it's only a 4x6 proof, it keeps the ink flowing. With my printer, I also need to alternate between matte and gloss black once in a while to be sure each keeps flowing.

To get started, I decided to print last week's photo of the week. I frequently do this and take it to show my mother when I go visit her in the nursing home. It usually provides a talking point after the usual, what's new, how are you, how is Lynn, how are the boys ... but I digress. I needed to make a few changes to printer and driver settings and it took a couple of 4x6's to get things the way I wanted. Then I churned out an 8x12 that I was satisfied with. There, now what's next .... ?

Well, I mentioned I have been frustrated with my recent images, but there was a series of abstracts in the snow that I had spent some time processing to bring out the feel of what I had seen at the time. After some work, I had managed to develop a look that showed potential and I decided to give printing one of them a try ... and damn, I liked it.

snow fold

There is something very satisfying about completing a creative project, in this case seeing the final result, a print. In hind sight, my recent creative frustration may have been, at least partially, the result of not seeing my images through to completion in a print. 

My session continued with the printing of several other images and by the end I was feeling much less frustrated and ready to get out an make more images.

Note to self ... PRINT !

DJE