Snow and Fog

I recently bought a new camera. Choices abound, requiring some research if one is to make an informed decision. For my Web site I recently wrote about making that decision. The camera arrived just before Christmas. I've been spending time working with that, so I've done almost no printing lately. The 7900 has been unused, powered-up but in standby mode, since 16 December.

Today I decided to print a photo I suspected would not make a great print. The image intrigues me; it's one I spent some years trying to get, without getting the photo I'd hoped for. As I wrote for my site back in November, the opportunity is now lost. What I have is as good as it'll get. You can see the photo in the article. It's a winter scene, photographed in extremely foggy conditions. Because of the post-processing done to increase the contrast, the image is more  noisy than I'd like. The subject is (was) something of an icon around here, something everyone in the valley would recognize. I need a couple of new prints for a show that will hang next week; I thought I'd give it a shot, see how the image prints.

Given the nature of the image, it seemed a good candidate for printing on mat paper. I have a roll of Epson Hot Pressed Natural (HPN), which is very nice stuff. Given the nature of the picture, with snow, fog, and rime on the tree, something whiter seemed a obvious choice. But I've only printed client jobs on the HPN and wanted to print one of my own images on it.

I ran a nozzle-check print as usual, and found no missing nozzles. A nice surprise, since the printer had been sitting idle for three weeks. I then loaded the roll and made the print as usual. It's small, only 15 inches high x 11 inches wide (38 x 28 cm), but I think it's quite nice. The noise is pretty well controlled; the mat paper helps with that. I suspect I could print it quite a bit larger with a good result.

I had no "resetting" issues when making this print. See the last posting for details on that.

  --Jay