A Clog and a Batch of Prints

I've had some nice sales recently in local galleries. Most of these have been small matted-and-bagged prints; several of those have been photos of the snowy owls which graced us with their presence for four months this past winter and spring.

A local gallery has an unusual exhibit, for which photographers were asked to provide a selection of their work to be used at inspiration for paintings, carvings, pottery, and works in other media, by artists in the area. About 60 photos from eight to ten photographers (including me) were made available for the painters and other artists. These artists then had several months to create whatever work the photos inspired.

The original photos, and the works they inspired, where hung together for the exhibit. The result is a fascinating show, fun to browse. Some of the artists interpreted the photos literally. These were mostly painters, who created paintings quite similar to the photos. A few painters did much more impressionistic paintings, while others took an abstract approach. There was also some fabric art, one large, painted wood carving, and some ceramic pieces.

Three of the ten photos I offered were selected; I had a framed print of each in the show. I had the good fortune to sell two of those photos right away. The buyers were out-of-towners passing through, so they took the photos at the time of purchase, leaving voids in the exhibit. Having more of the same frames and mats in the same sizes on-hand, I made new prints to fill those voids. Almost immediately, one of those "replacement" prints sold. Naturally, I printed a replacement for that one, too, which I'll deliver to the gallery tomorrow.

As usual, I ran a nozzle check print. Nearly all of the LLK channel was missing. Only a few broken bars at the top of that pattern printed. This is not the first time I've seen LLK go missing. When it's happened before, a normal pair cleaning (LLK/Y pair) has improved the pattern, but not completely cleared the problem. A second normal cleaning of the pair often leaves a few missing nozzles, requiring a "powerful" cleaning to make things right. Fortunately, the most recent firmware update for the 7900 added the capability to execute powerful cleanings on channel pairs. So, for this problem, I ran a powerful clean of the pair right from the start. I then printed a nozzle check, which showed the problem resolved.

A snapshot of a section of my magnetic "viewing booth". This is a 48 x 54 inch

galvanized steel sheet, hung to cover the doorway to a basement crawl space. My 

5000°K bulbs haven't arrived; the awful color you see here was provided by a 

florescent fixture above the left, and daylight on the right. Yikes!

With that out of the way I proceeded to make seven prints. Those are shown above on my magnetic viewing panel. The replacement for the twice-sold picture is at right, printed on B size (11x17 inches) Canson Infinity Platine Fibre Rag 310. Wonderful stuff. The raven picture at left (on GGFS) is my most popular image. The matted-and-bagged 11x14s are cheap to purchase, and sell about as quickly as I print them. I wish I had a few more pictures like that!

  --Jay

The Espon Rebate Follies Continue

I've spent the past few days in The Palouse, in eastern Washington. The weather wasn't good, making my shot-count fairly low, but we explored and found some places we'll visit again. There's some stunning scenery of wheat and canola (rape seed) fields and the infrastructure required to farm them. I have a weakness for decaying old farm buildings, which are plentiful in The Palouse. The bad weather gave me an excuse to concentrate on some of these old derelicts. I'm about to begin making prints for my upcoming summer shows; those will include a few photos from this trip.

Wheat fields in The Palouse on a rainy May morning

While I was away I received an email from Epson, indicating my "rebate" roll of paper had shipped! I returned home to find, on my front porch, several boxes, one of which bore Epson labels. Finally, the efforts to get the promised rebate from Epson had succeeded. But wait—maybe not.

The label on the shipping carton indicated the contents were Exhibition Canvas Matte (Epson # S045257). Upon opening the box I found it did indeed contain a roll of canvas. I was sure I'd requested Exhibition Fiber Paper (S045189). Either I checked the wrong box on the rebate form, or Epson sent the wrong item. I reviewed the emails I'd sent to Epson, which included the rebate form, the purchase receipt, and the UPC barcode from the shipping crate. I had checked the EEF option, so the error was theirs.

After all this time, after sending the required supporting items to Epson three times, in three different ways, they finally fulfill the rebate, and they send the wrong item. I'm trying to think of some other way this could have been screwed up.... Nope, can't think of one.

I fired off an email to Erika, the person with whom I'd corresponded previously. I explained that I'd received the wrong stuff, and included a copy of the rebate form clearly showing the checked box for EEF. I received a replay indicating the situation would be reviewed.

Dear Jay Cross 

Thank You for your email concerning your rebate.   It has been received and sent to the Rebate Center for inquiry on the documents needed for processing.  We are sorry for any inconvenience this mishap has caused you.  Please allow 3 to 4 weeks for processing for rebate.

Sincerely,

Erika

Epson Call Center

It's not entirely clear what this means, what will happen next. Who knew this was to become an on-going story, The Great Epson Rebate Follies.

  --Jay

Rebate Update

If you've been following my rants about the Epson "rebate" (#1, #2, #3), you know I've been waiting for a 24 inch roll of EEF since November, 2011, and that I've been repeatedly sending Epson's rebate servicer, per their instructions, the required information. Perhaps some good news: I received this in an email today:

Dear Jay Cross,

Thank you for purchasing Epson.  Your  rebate submission has been received and is in process.  Please allow 4 - 6 weeks to receive your rebate and/or premium item.

(I hadn't realized I'd purchased Epson. I suppose I'll have to start attending shareholder meetings now.) There was more, describing the advantages of registering my printer, which I did months ago, and listing various "offers" I don't care about.

It's not much, but it's the first unsolicited response I've received, which I perceive as a Positive Thing.

  --Jay

Consistently Inconsistent

My apologies for the long silence. Many distractions this time of year, not the least of which is photographing spring flowers and our sometimes interesting weather piling up against the west slopes of the Mission Mountains. I've not been printing much, so there's been little to report.

The 7900 was set up for printing on matte papers (MK was loaded), thanks to some client printing I wrapped up a couple of weeks ago. I recently needed to print a couple of small prints for a client, who wanted them right away to be framed and hung the next day. Her files were in pretty good shape; the job wouldn't require much of my time. But it would require swapping MK for PK.

I ran the process as usual: just press the button and wait a few minutes. When I've done this before, the printer would show a progress bar while swapping ink, report the switch was finished, and then run a cleaning cycle. Then, upon making the first print, it would run a second cleaning cycle. It has done this second cleaning only when switching from MK to PK (not going in the other direction). Until now the machine had always behaved this way. I've confirmed with friend Dean that his 7900 does this in exactly the same way: one cleaning cycle when swapping PK to MK, but two cleanings when swapping MK to PK. The last time I did this swap, because my LK and LLK inks are somewhere under 1%, to complete the cleaning the printer required that I install new inks for those channels. After the cleaning I removed the full cartridges and installed the near-empty ones. Those have been in place since my last swap.

This time, however, the machine behaved quite differently. I initiated the switch. When the process completed, I printed a nozzle check. The printer did NOT run a cleaning cycle before printing. It also did not require swapping the 1% cartridges for full ones.

After the nozzle check (no problems), I made the two client prints, one on GGFS, the other on EEF. Again, no cleanings, no requirement to install the full cartridges.

I've no idea why the thing behaved so differently this time. No complaints, of course, but I would have expected the process to run just as it has several times in the past.

  --Jay

Epson Rebate Follow-up Follow-up

As I've written about a couple of times (most recently here), when I bought my 7900 last October, Epson was offering a rebate of a roll of paper or canvas. I submitted the required documents in the required way in early November. When I checked the Web site they provided to determine the status of my rebate, the information showed it was "in process", with a submission date of 11 November 2011. Months passed. The roll of paper never appeared. I followed up and was told they had no record of my paperwork. I was asked to fax everything, essentially starting the process over. I did as instructed. I was specifically asked to provide a telephone number, at which I'd receive a call within five days indicating my rebate was being processed.

That was on 18 April. If you've guessed that I never received any call, you've guessed correctly.

Today I called, and of course spoke with someone other than the person I talked to last month. I explained the entire story again. I listened to a keyboard's clickety-clicks for a few minutes, and was then told they had no record of receiving the fax. One might conclude these people are wildly incompetent, or perhaps simply determined to not honor the promise made on the rebate form.

Have you guessed that I had to start the process over yet again? You're good. This time, however, I was given the option to email the required documents. I've no idea why that option wasn't offered last month. I was given an email address, but told I couldn't send large attachments. "Large" wasn't defined.

So, I've resent everything via email. The only challenge was completing the rebate form, which is a PDF.  I have no dedicated software that can type on a PDF, but this isn't rocket science. As it turns out, LibreOffice can, after a fashion, using its Draw application. A little clunky, but the result was fine. This left me with the invoice (a PDF), the rebate form PDF, and the UPC code from the shipping crate. I'd photographed that with my point-n-shoot, so I could attach that as a small .gif. I sent two emails, a part 1 of 2 and a part 2 of 2, splitting up the attachments in case putting them all in one message would have been "too large".

The good news: I received a reply, apparently from a human, to each of the two emails. In one of those I was told it would be two weeks before I could again check the status. A polite way of saying "don't bother us for a while", but that's fine if, when I DO bother them next, they tell me the thing is on the way.

I don't intend to give up on this. I have followed Epson's rules precisely. I've sent the required documents via US Mail. I've sent the required documents via fax. I've now sent the required documents via email. If I have to send the documents again, I'll have to get in my car and drive the 2000 miles from western Montana to Strongsville, Ohio, and personally deliver them. OK, maybe not. A courier service would be far cheaper.

Stay tuned!

  --Jay