Published December 23, 2024; this is a revised and updated blog
project page dedicated to all of my 2023-2024 Inkjet Print Projects
I am writing, in late December, 2024 this introduction to my latest revised and updated version of The Complete 2023-2024 Inkjet Print Project; it seemed necessary to try once again to simplify access to this sprawling, ambitious, very enjoyable project before I enter 2025, a year in which I expect to further expand my most recent adventure in the Inkjet Print project, that of making the larger (larger than the 12x12" prints). You will see below many large, bold, blue lettered (hyperlinked) titles of the blog projects associated with all the major phases of the 2023-2024 project, beginning with the Pandemic Inkjet Print, which was a work in progress at the time my old Epson 7600 printer died on me. After I got a new Epson 6000P printer, I decided to make a few other Inkjet Print projects, then I decided to create an InkJet Print Archive and document all of those printed images in the form of blog projects. I wanted to at least have prints made of most of my favorite images before I experienced a similar event that made it impossible for my old 7600 printer to yield good looking prints.
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I began the Inkjet Print Project in early 2023, some time after I purchased my new Epson 6000P printer. In mid 2022 I had scheduled to have cataract eye surgeries on each of my eyes in mid, and than late January 2023. Both eyes suffered from retinal tears which required me to put off printing for a while until I was able to come up with a way of printing despite sore, healing eyes and a condition referred to as disparity of vision. Printing images I had never printed before was my first initiative, and that idea then just kept growing and changing once I began a more in-depth decision-making process and began printing those images.
I decided to make 12x12" "study" prints of everything that seemed to me worthy of being printed. This decision had been influenced by an earlier six year project, The 1994-2000 Studies Project in which I made miniature snap-shot sized square silver-gelatin printed images from a large archive of earlier made 35mm negatives. I loved the square format and enjoyed the process of reducing the long rectangular negatives I had made with my 35mm film camera into square images (in most cases I simply cropped out a square portion of the longer image). After I had made over 800 12x12" square inkjet prints, and collected them in published blog projects called Books, I realized I needed to organize the work into conceptual frameworks that had recurred throughout my work including those that had been informing my work for many years preceding my creation of a blog in late 2010 and all the projects that I had than published on my blog. The many thematic collections, which I call 12x12" Projects, have grown in number to over two dozen projects.
(Many of the 12x12" Projects are 12x12" versions of the thematic collections I had created earlier: see my blog link The Complete Collection of Blog Theme-Related Photographs & Projects which exists on my blog's Welcome Page following the introductory texts.)
One of the most fascinating revelations provided by the 12x12" Inkjet Print Books & Projects
was seeing how so many of my favorite images appeared and meant different things to me when placed in so many of the different thematic Project contexts.
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Recently, when the 12x12" Books and Projects seemed to have come to an end-point, I then moved on to the inevitable problem of scale (print image size) and format (the square vs. the long, horizontal rectangle).
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In 2022, before the idea of an Inkjet Print Project had crystalized and I began working on the very large 12x12" Inkjet Print Books & Projects, I had felt a strong need to make a collection of inkjet prints of selected images from my 18 Pandemic Inspired blog projects. About a third of the way into the project I ran into several problems: first with the inks for my old Epson printer; then in the middle of the project my pooe old Epson 7600 printer died.
I became strongly committed to getting the project completed and decided to order a new Epson 6000P printer in January, 2023. But before I could get my printer, set it up, work out the bugs, etc. my cataract surgeries and then the retinal tears stalled my process until I found a way of printing despite my healing eyes issue. I explain in detail all of this in my Pandemic Inkjet Print blog project.
This Pandemic inspired project (published on my blog June, 2023) had helped motivate me to initiate three other inkjet print projects which were made at about the same time in 2023 (the titles and links are immediately below), and in 2024 I made a 12x12" Project inspired by the Pandemic.
(A Photography Project about Death, Angels & the Blue Pearl (the blog version was revised April 2023)
Inkjet prints made in 2023 (image sizes vary from 16x20" to 18x21")
18x18" images on 20x24" paper Inkjet prints made in 2023 (Blog project: June, 2023)
18x21" images on 20"x24" paper Inkjet prints made in February, 2024 (Blog project: June, 2023)
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I have already mentioned how the 12x12" Inject Prints project grew to unexpected proportions and now consists of eleven Books and over two dozen Thematic Projects. I have dedicated a blog page, complete with an introduction, to the 12x12" project which includes links to each of the 12x12" Books and Projects. Book One of the 12x12" project includes a lengthy introduction providing a more complete context to how the Inkjet Print Project in all its complexity came into being. .
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I love the square format for its ability to concentrate my vision in a straight-forward and often centered way. I have made many silver-gelatin print projects in which I have used a square format camera. But especially when I changed totally over to digital photography, I made digital files that were similar to the 35mm format which I used so often when working in film and making gelatin prints. After I completed the The 1994-2000 Studies Project which involved miniaturize square photographs made form all kinds of different formatted negatives, I became comfortable with making square images using the 4:3 format on my digital camera.
But of course not all of the images I have made could be successfully transformed from a 4:3 ratio to the square. Indeed many of my Meadow Series photographs, for example, refused to work as square images; on the other hand, to my surprise, many of the Meadow images worked quite well as squares, and both truly benefitted from a larger sized image size (i.e., other than than what the 12x12" format offered).
I began making the meadow photographs in 2010 shortly after my wife Gloria and I moved to Canandaigua, NY in 2008 (after my retirement from teaching at UW-Milwaukee). The Meadow was one of my earliest projects I published on my blog (which I initiated in November, 2010). All of the meadow images published in that original blog project were presented in their long rectangular format. Later, after working through many of the 12x12" inkjet print Books and Projects, I felt inspired to try printing some of the meadow images as square photographs and was thrilled with the results. A similar thing happened with my Symmetrical Photographs. They were originally presented on my blog as longer formatted images, mostly because the images I used for the symmetrical constructions were in the 4:3 format. But I had always thought of the symmetrical images as essentially "round" or "circular" images. Finally, I realized there was no reason not to transform the original version of the symmetrical images into square inkjet prints, and in larger sizes: both 18x18" and 21x21" images.
Many of the 12x12" prints are perfect the size and format they are in. However, in the last several months of 2024 I have been having a wonderful time making larger sized prints of some of my most favorite images that seemed ineffective in the smaller 12x12" format. The larger scale prints have yielded some very power revealing images in their different various large sized formats, including the 18x18" and 21x21" square images. I have organized the newly make larger prints according to image size and image format, as you will see below.
I will conclude this introductory commentary with a listing of the hyperlinked titles for the 12x12" inkjet print project, followed by links for my larger sized inkjet print projects. All of the project links below are essentially miscellaneous, non-thematic collections of some of my most favorite images.
For the past six months I have been focusing on making the LARGER inkjet prints in both the square and horizontal rectangular formats. There have been many images which have truly benefitted from the larger print scale which in most cases includes a tonal matte that surrounds the actual image itself. The tonal surrounding matts (they vary in width depending on the image) are an integral part of the image and all images sizes I have indicated in my projects include the surrounding tonal mattes.
The project links that follow (with the exception the Complete Collection of 12x12" Inkjet Prints project) provide an online document--or visual Archive--of every inkjet printed image I have made larger than it's 12x12" project version.
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This link includes all of the 12x12" Books and Projects.
Part I. The 16x20" Meadow Photographs Part II. Other 16x20" Images
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One last thing:
I am concerned that you see my blog images in the highest quality reproductions possible. The blog images can never be as thrilling as the actual prints, but I encourage you to look over the following statement below which I have included in nearly all of my blog projects of the last two years:
A brief note about "How to Best View My Online Blog Images"
If you are viewing this project on a desktop computer or a laptop, I encourage you to read my blog explanation regarding How to Best View My Online Blog Images. In brief, click on an image once, then once again; this will (hopefully) enlarge the image and present it in a dark tonal environment at its maximum viewing quality in terms of image sharpness, luminance, tonal gradations, etc. Once you have entered this alternate viewing space you can then use your zoom-in & zoom-out keyboard or menu options to adjust the image size to your screen, and you can darken or lighten your computer's screen brightness to suit your equipment and viewing preferences.
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This project is a work in progress:
First published and announced on
my bog's Welcome Page
December 23, 2024
Related Blog Project Links
Please visit the Welcome Page to my blog The Departing Landscape. It includes the complete hyperlinked listing of my online photography projects dating from the most recent to those dating back to the 1960's. You will also find on the Welcome Page my several Introductory statements, my resume, contact information . . . and much more.
