This Year's Big Show

You wouldn't know it from the lack of recent postings, but I've been very busy making prints. As mentioned a couple of postings ago (7 July) Saturday, 10 August, was the annual Sandpiper Art Gallery "Festival", the one outdoor art show in which I exhibit each year. This was the 42nd year the gallery has held this show, always on the lawn of the Lake County (Montana) courthouse. It's a nice venue, with easy access for the public, a nice lawn, lots of trees for shade, and a few sites available for artists who need electricity for their displays. This was my fifth year exhibiting in the show.

I've had fewer exhibits and other art-related responsibilities this year than last; that's intentional so I could spend more time out shooting, and it's been quite successful. I've come home from most of my trips this year with several new "keeper" photos. My plan was to have a high percentage of new work on display for the festival. I started making prints in early July, getting frames and mats together, and generally chipping away at the many tasks required to be ready for the show.

In the middle of that work I completed the client print job I mentioned in my last posting (22 July). I printed this on the client's paper, a 24-inch roll of Epson Enhanced Matte. This required a PK-to-MK ink swap. The nozzle check print I ran after the swap showed no ink delivery issues. The five large prints were very nice. Another happy client. After that job I did no printing for exactly one week, when I returned to printing some of my own pieces. This required switching back to PK. After the swap a nozzle-check showed a number of small gaps in the PK channel. A nozzle check print made an hour later showed no gaps in that channel, nor any problems with the rest of the colors. I made several prints that looked fine.

Two days later I made a nozzle-check print that showed two tiny gaps in LLK. I made a coupe of prints, which looked good. The next day a nozzle check print which showed the same small gaps in LLK. Again, the prints I made looked fine. The following day those gaps remained, and again, the prints exhibited no problems I could see.

There's plenty of chatter in various Web forums about the need to run the x900 printers (and variants) often. People have looked for ways to automate the printing of a file that exercises each color channel once a day, whether or not they run any prints jobs. Several files that may or may not do this have been offered up and are freely available. The automation part is a bit iffy; some people have rolled their own scripts or programs. Windows users have a commercial option that seems to work well for most who've posted about it.

Bottom line, borne out by my experience over the past several weeks: those who print daily, or even every other or every third day, experience far fewer clogs or other ink delivery problems than those whose machines sit idle for longer periods of time. I've learned to spread out my print jobs to keep my 7900 running two to three times per week, rather than make large batches of prints in a day, and then not use the printer for weeks. While not always convenient, this has, so far, saved time wasted doing repeated cleanings prior to print jobs, and generally made using the 7900 a more pleasant (or at least less frustrating) experience.
 

In case you were wondering: we had a good day Saturday at the Festival. Nice weather, much more comfortable (less hot) than last year. Good crowds, lots of interesting conversation with visitors to our display. People were quite generous with their compliments, always nice, especially when a few back that up by making purchases!

These are photos of our exhibit, taken in the morning when a large tree left of our canopy provided maximum shade.

  --Jay