FOR ART'S SAKE
Wide-format digital print is helping photographers, artists print providers and everyone in-between to create stunning large-format images. Sophie Matthews-Paul looks at some examples.
Art reproductions were required as an important element of the internal d?cor for this unusual retail outlet in London's Kings Road. These ceiling and wall images for Gail Berry's shop were produced by Stylo using its Durst Rho 800 UV-curable flatbed and roll-fed digital printer and were output to self-adhesive and pastable wallpaper materials. The results were faithful facsimiles which incorporate the accurate, warm colours and vibrancy needed to provide the necessary historic ambience.
Over to yew
When Kent-based ESP Technologies Group was asked to reproduce a series of wide-format prints from digital photographs depicting an ancient yew tree, the company didn't hesitate in offering a selection of different materials and printing technologies that meant the output could be used in a variety of display situations and locations.
The photographs of the yew were taken at various stages during the day using Canon EOS 5D cameras and a selection of L and prime lenses. The results depicted the range of textures in the bark, along with the changing light conditions, and these were enhanced further when output onto a selection of display materials using different printing technologies.
Several prints were output on an HP Designjet Z6100 which brought out the colour density of the tree and the ambient light on a range of flexible media, while excellent results were also achieved with ESP's EFI Vutek QS3200 which provided the opportunity for rigid substrates to be used for photographic work.
"This was an interesting challenge which necessitated colour accuracy and precision output across all materials and on both printers," says Stephen Hood, managing director of ESP. "We were pleased with the results as they confirm the way that conventional photography can be pushed further with the use of latter day ink and printer technologies."
Take a View
The search for Landscape Photographer of the Year resulted in thousands of entries, with more than 100 being put on show at London's National Theatre during December 2009 and January 2010. Epson teamed up with professional photolab, Bayeux, to produce the selected photographs as exhibition panels.
Bayeux used an Epson Stylus Pro 9900 wide-format printer to output the selected images, producing colour accurate, high quality prints both in colour and black and white. The files were processed using a Shiraz Rip, and each was mounted and matt laminated to give added durability for the exhibition.
The photographs' true colours were produced using the new Epson UltraChrome HDR (High Dynamic Range) ink, which adds orange and green ink to Epson's UltraChrome K3 with Vivid Magenta to deliver the widest colour gamut available today.
Take A View founder, acclaimed landscape photographer Charlie Waite, says: "The exhibition was printed digitally for the first time last year and we were delighted with the results. The support we have received from Epson will help to ensure that the winning images are seen at their very best once again."
A city in constant motion
During the autumn of 2009 four architectural photographers held an exhibition which concentrated on framing a city in constant motion, with Canon cameras and wide-format printers being used to depict how buildings co-exist with people and their surroundings. The Shift Exhibition, held courtesy of Alan Baxter & Associates, covered the work of Victoria Gibbs, Paul Grundy, Murray Scott and Martin Stewart who each looked at the way people moved around London.
The cameras used were Canon EOS 5D and 1D MkIII models, with the prints being output onto a Canon iPF8100 which has a maximum resolution of 2400 x 1200dpi and features the company's twelve-colour Lucia pigmented ink set.
Awards winning DAPA
Photographic club DAPA was formed eight years ago and has extended reach largely over the Internet. Many of the members have never met but their work is winning major awards.
"The aim of the group is to work together as a team in order to push the limits of our photography to the standards required for FIAP, PAGB, RPS and BPE distinctions," explains group founder John Powell. "Although competitions now have categories for digitally projected images, it is the quality of the prints which can make or break a winning shot and this means that the machines used need to be up to the highest standards of output.
Having recently won a national "Battle of the Clubs" sponsored by Canon, Powell and other members of the DAPA Group were impressed with the quality produced on the company's imagePrograf printers, and output in large sizes for the award presentation. "Today's technology proves that, even when our work is enlarged to poster sizes, the quality of print stays consistent throughout," Powell concludes. "This is testimony to how software handles our original files and standards of the finished results, complementing the efforts our members put into their original images."
Finnigan's Teeth
A public art project called Finnegan's Teeth, created by artist Judith Cowan, involved wide-format print produced by Watford based Stylo and installed around Kings Cross, London. Images were produced and installed under the York Way canal bridge, along the Goodsway and onto the windows of the old Fish and Coal Building.
Finnegan's Teeth is a visual journey seen through the eyes of the fictitious animal Finnegan, accompanied by the voices of the street life around him. This art project takes Finnegan's experiences and places them back into the spaces from which they came. To turn Cowan's inspirational vision into reality, Stylo needed to come up with durable graphics, with vibrant colours for three very different situations. Materials used, and printed digitally, included Stylo's BrickWrap suitable for applying direct to bricks, as well as durable Foamex panels.
The reality of living
Magnum photojournalist Jonas Bendiksen's exhibition, The Places We Live, follows publication of the photographer's book of the same name and recreates the living rooms of 20 families from the slums of Jakarta, Mumbai, Nairobi, and Caracas. By taking a photograph of each of the four walls of a room inside people's homes and using the resulting large-format prints to build 3D, lifesize replicas of the rooms, Bendiksen creates for viewers a virtual experience of visiting the families.
HP Designjet L65500 and L25500 printers were used to print the detailed interior walls of rooms and the urban landscape shots on the exterior walls. Both printers use water-based HP latex inks, reducing the impact of printing on the environment, and produce prints for both indoor and outdoor use. Material included HP Durable Frontlit Scrim Banner for high-quality, durable prints that can travel to multiple venues.
More people in the world now live in cities than in rural areas, and more than one billion - a third of all urban dwellers - live in slums. The United Nations forecasts this figure to double within the next twenty-five years. Bendiksen's book and exhibition serve to create a platform for discourse.
"There is a message. It's about the need to engage with these communities as populated by normal human beings who have their own ambitions and agendas and their own variations amongst themselves," says Bendiksen, who when starting out on the project was conscious of the fact that so many photographers had already gone out and photographed poverty and poor people. "So much of the material was predictable, clich?d, and full of stereotypes," he says. "I wanted to get away from that and to focus not on the extremities in the slums - the worst poverty, crime, or pollution - but on how people create normalcy in their daily lives in these conditions." He spent three years photographing The Places We Live.