Mark Lukes: Philanthropic Photographs

“I was a school teacher and an avid photographer,” recalls Mark Lukes, co-owner, Fine Print Imaging, based in Fort Collins, CO. “Back in the 1970s, I had a friend—a fellow school teacher and photographer—and we were looking for places that could print what we were shooting. But we couldn’t find anybody who really understood outdoor photographers’ mentality.”

From that frustration grew the inspiration for Fine Print Imaging, which had humble beginnings in the basement of Lukes’ colleague’s home. “We started to do our own printing, and eventually began to print for others, just through word of mouth,” he remembers. As the decades since unfolded, the business evolved—from film lab to full-service print supplier.

Since the beginning, Fine Print Imaging has been keenly focused on a niche market. “We print for people who are trying to make a difference—people who are telling the story of what’s really happening to this planet,” he explains.

Much of the print work Lukes and a staff of 16 produce is large format and for exhibition and limited edition sale purposes. Clientele is split down the middle, with approximately 50 percent representing artists and 50 percent photographic arts.

“From the late 1980s until the early 2000s, we enjoyed our heyday. The biggest changing point was the advent of digital camera, and more importantly, the advent of the digital printing,” asserts Lukes. He reminisces about the first LightJet printer—now owned by Océ North America—to come to market, and the Durst Image Technology US LLC Lambda after that.

“It wasn’t until pigmented inks came out that everything changed. When people could print archival-quality images, the photographers were empowered. They could control the process from start to finish—from the point of shooting, to Adobe Photoshop, to output. They had complete control,” recalls Lukes. This not only changed the workflow; it changed the nature of his business, yet again, as some of his best customers began to invest in digital print equipment of their own.

The company relies on 50- and 60-inch printers from Roland DGA Corporation’s Hi-Fi series, and most recently invested in an Epson Stylus Pro 11880 to produce artwork that comes in from several sources, including Fine Print Express—a fully automated e-commerce-capable Web-to-print storefront, Fine Print Imaging’s clientele, and members of Art for Conservation, which is part online gallery and part social networking site.

Lukes acknowledges that technically inclined photographers usually make the transition to printmaker fairly easily; however, he cautions, there is still a demand for talented suppliers specializing in fine art and photographic reproductions.

Fine Print Imaging clients rely on the staff to make educated recommendations about media. At the start of the relationship with a new client, the supplier sends out sample packages and often accommodates requests to see customer-supplied artwork printed on an array of media.

The trickiest part of supplying print to artists is not only giving them a quality reproduction, but maintaining the aesthetic integrity of the image, according to their very particular—myopic—expectations.

“If an image was photographed in low-light conditions, I’ll bring up the shadow details without blowing out any of the details or highlights. Sometimes the photographer will see a proof and say, ‘I printed it at home on my inkjet printer, and it was much more muted than that, and that’s what I want.’ I may think, ‘but it won’t sell,’ but to that photographer it’s not about that; it’s about telling the story. As a print supplier, you have to be sensitive to that.”

Barbara Bordnick: Infinite Possibility

“For me, it’s made a huge difference,” marvels Barbara Bordnick at the advent of digital inkjet printing and its ability to enable the creative process and business of photography. “The entire body of my flower work could not have been done if I wasn't able to print for myself.”

Bordnick herself is an internationally acclaimed photographer with a rich, 35 year career in portraiture and fashion photography, publishing, and teaching.  Her photographs have been featured in publications, broadcasts, traveling exhibits, and on permanent display.

Today, Bordnick often captures images with the aid of a digital camera—a Canon U.S.A., Inc. EOS 5D Mark II, which she likes for the quality, weight, and portability. Though, on occasion, she still gets what she calls “the itch” to shoot film.

Large format digital print comes in handy when Bordnick creates individual fine art prints for private buyers, as well as when she’s organizing prints for an exhibition. She had the opportunity to test a Canon imagePROGRAF iPF6100 a couple of years ago and developed a fondness for the device—a 12 pigmented LUCIA ink set, 24-inch print engine, capable of generating a 2,400x1,200 dpi maximum print resolution.

Though she doesn’t profess to enjoy experimenting with various combinations of consumables—digital inks and papers—she isn’t averse to trying out new digital printing papers as they come to market. Her preferred paper supplier is Legion Paper Corporation, maker of the Moab by Legion Paper line of digital inkjet papers.

“When they have a new paper they send it to me. I’m delighted to try it,” reports Bordnick. “But I do have favorites. I print my flowers on one paper; I print my nudes on another. I print my proofs on a different paper. It really depends on the end use.”

“I’ve become what I think is a substantially good printer,” she adds. “It is part of my process like the darkroom always was. I made creative decisions in the darkroom. They weren’t just technical decisions. It’s the same thing when I’m making prints.”

Conclusion

There’s a consensus among photographers—wide format digital printing is awesome. While they may leverage digital print in different ways—some employ their own printers; others defer to trusted suppliers—on this basic principle, they all agree. For it’s the advent of good, photographic-quality inkjet printing—that makes it easier to be in the business of photography and recreating larger than life artwork for the masses.