A New Print

My popular 2008 "Snow Raven in Yellowstone" photo.

My most popular image, one I can hardly print fast enough, is of a raven in the snow, seemingly complaining about the bad weather. This was made in May of 2008. Because this picture has been so successful for me, I've continued to look for similarly dynamic images, particularly of ravens in snowy conditions.

I love shooting in snowy weather. It's cold, wet, often windy, and generally just messy. I'll set up my gear, spend 20 minutes working my subject, and when I get back in the car I'll have three inches of snow on my shoulders. I do worry a little about the moisture affecting my gear, but so far I've been lucky and suffered no equipment problems.

We were in Yellowstone in May (2011), and once again spent several days in blizzard conditions (rain at lower elevations). One of the photos I made then was of a raven in snow. Unlike the 2008 situation, this time it was snowing really hard. I was pretty sure at the time the photos would be worthless, but one never knows until the files have been downloaded and examined on a larger screen.

Today I made a print of one of the raven photos from that trip. As usual I started by running a nozzle check print. The 7900 had been idle since 1 November, a full five days. I expected nozzle clogs across the page. But there was none! As mentioned in an earlier posting, I've left the printer's default "Auto Nozzle Check" enabled. My Canon iPF 5000 does regular nozzle checks and cleanings, waking up at all hours, making noise for a few minutes while checking, and then either going to sleep or continuing with the noise to run a cleaning cycle. On the Canon this is not optional -- it can't be turned off. I have never heard the Epson start itself up and do any kind of process. It's either very quiet, or it's not done anything similar to the Canon's process. Regardless, there were no clogs after this five-day idle period.

I wanted the new photo printed on one-half of a 13x19 sheet. I sized the image to 12 3/4" wide by 8 1/2" high to fit a mat and frame size I keep in stock. I sharpened based on past experience with the Canon. Although the two printers use very different dithering patterns and printhead dpi, after resizing the image for the Epson I sharpened for the same look on-screen as I'd always done for the Canon.

The printer driver dialog box, showing the Position fields and the values I used.

I then brought up the print driver, selected the appropriate profile for the Ilford GGFS, selected the sheet size, and then completed the rest of the print settings as usual. When saved this returns to the main printer driver dialog, which has fields for setting up the print position on the sheet. I unchecked the "Center image" box, entered .4" for the top, and 0" for the left. As you can see, this pushed the preview image off the page a little to the right. When I clicked the Print button, a message was raised telling me the image was outside the margins and would be clipped. I OK'd this; a few seconds later the 7900 started printing on the sheet I'd previously inserted.


The resulting print is terrific. The top margin is exactly 1/2", a bit larger than I specified. The left margin is 3/32" wide. The right margin is 1/16" wider. Given the nature of this image, which doesn't have much detail in the background, it's a little hard to tell with certainty, but it appears about 1/16" of the picture was clipped on the right, as the preview indicated, that being the side with the slightly wider margin.

One surprise during printing: On the Canon, when I'd print something like this, an image considerably smaller than the sheet size, the printer would print the image, and when the last of the ink was laid down, eject the sheet. The 7900 printed the image, but continued to feed the empty bottom half of the sheet in the normal way, with the printhead making passes back and forth as if there was something to be printed. It did indeed print that area, laying down a very fine pattern of faint blue-ish dots, which I can only see when I view the page under magnification. I've no idea what's up with that. Of course this means I can't use that "empty" half of the sheet for another print, as I'd planned to do. More to learn....

  --Jay