Make Prints, Make Smiles
You may remember that, in early March, I photographed the panel discussion at Princeton of the group of photographers that shot Bruce Springsteen through the years.
I mentioned in that post how I wanted to do a group shot of all these gents – Danny Clinch, Ed Gallucci, Eric Meola, Bob Santelli, Barry Schneier, and Frank Stefanko – for documentary purposes. These guys are the main group of photographers that have documented one of the biggest cultural icons of our time through the years.
I wanted THIS photo for historical purposes. Who knows how many times these gents will be all together like this again? I wanted to record this event.
As I was driving how that night, I was listening to Save My Love (loudly, I might add, I was still jazzed from the shoot) and I got the idea to make prints of that group shot and send it to each of those in the photo. I thought that would make a nice souvenir for them.
That’s what I did – I annotated the image with the location and date, then had AdoramaPix do their printing magic. The first one I gave the print to was Barbara Webb, Director of Events at the Morven Museum. The first thing she said was “This is great! Who makes prints anymore?”
I LOVE that reaction about a print. And that’s exactly why I think you should still make prints and give prints away. In this day and age, they are interesting and unique. They don’t have to cost a lot for quality work and it’s special.
Last week I sent them out to everyone in the image. Well, I hand-delivered Danny Clinch’s to him at his Transparent gallery in Asbury Park (unfortunately, he wasn’t there but the gallery manager, Tina, said she would be sure he’d get it.)
And this week, I got some nice messages from Eric and Barry as they received their copies. I hope the others like their prints as well!
As an side….my new little “touch”…a stamp on the back of the print. I don’t know about you, but when we used to get our class pictures back in the day, the print always had the photographer’s studio stamped on the back. I thought that would be an old-school but unique touch for my mailings. So I set out to see how to get one.
A few months ago, a young artist commented on one of my photos (from my home region of the Wyoming Valley in Pennsylvania, actually) and, in looking at her profile, I see that she did rubber stamps. Sadly, I didn’t take note of her handle and couldn’t find her again. However, did find rubberstamps.com, so I looked over their site and decided to go with them.
It came out really nice and was very affordable. In retrospect, I wish I had gone with a New Jersey state outline rather than the camera, so maybe I’ll do that for the next one. I gotta say…it was pretty fun stamping the backs of the prints and the envelopes!
Physical prints delivered via snail mail. Old school.
Remember, folks, make prints. Give those prints away.
© Mark V. Krajnak | JerseyStyle Photography | All Rights Reserved 2017
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