SteelOrchid Photography

Tag: Fine Art

  • What’s new in March?

    Fine Art Shop

    It’s been a very busy month…but we managed to find enough time between weddings and events photography to get the new Fine Art shop on the road and on schedule. We’ll be adding more prints soon so please come back for another look.

    Wedding Shop

    We are also developing a Wedding Shop, where couples will be able to log in to their own page and pay for their wedding package in installments.  We’ll also be selling some wedding fare in the shop, for example personalised thank you cards for the happy couple and gift vouchers for family and guests to buy. So, yes, it’s another “watch this space”. The wedding shop will be online soon with a simple selection of products.

    Wedding Albums

    To help out in these uncertain times, we are reducing the price of our storybook wedding albums. This year, they will start at the same price as traditional (matted) albums, from £395 for a 30 page book with a level one cover.

    Events Photography

    On the events front, we have acquired a brand new Fuji dye-sublimation printer, so we’ll be able to print even faster than before and produce bigger and better prints at events. We are already expanding that side of our business and believe that we are now the premier events photography team in the Oldham area for producing instant prints on the night. But we don’t confine ourselves just to Oldham – we can cover most areas of the north, including Yorkshire, Cheshire and Derbyshire. For charity events we can arrange to donate to the charity a part ofour profits from the evening.

    Exhibition Photography

    We’ve been too busy to do much exhibition work this year so far as competitors, but Chris was invited as a judge at the Southport National Exhibition of Photography (Digital Section) and also the first UK International Small Prints International Salon (Birmingham event). She has thoroughly enjoyed judging both events. Chris also picked up another award for her fine art print “Ivy Impression” in the Southampton International Salon of Photography at the beginning of March. This work is now available to buy as a “Signature edition” print in our shop.

  • New Fine Art Prints

    Whilst Mike has been working hard on the innards of the new SteelOrchid Fine Art store (online shop), I’ve been populating it with products ready for next week’s launch – with some old favourites and some brand new work.  For discerning collectors we have introduced luxuriously double-matted signed prints in our new  “Signature” collection. If you would like to own a print but prefer to dip in at a less expensive level, we have introduced some smaller sizes of mounted prints at very affordable prices.

    Our collection of prints would not be complete without a Saddleworth section – being based in one of the most beautiful and varied areas of the Pennines, local shots are an absolute must and this winter has provided some interesting opportunities for capturing the best and most dramatic of Saddleworth weather conditions.

    We have some special offers for the first few weeks and will be introducing featured prints at special offer prices on a regular basis…so please keep coming back for another look! In the meantime, here’s a taster…

    Chris

  • Fine Art Printing

    Fine Art photographic printing took a major leap forward in the last few years with the introduction of high quality pigment ink printing. We upgraded to the HPB9180 printer last year and, hey, is it brilliant?! Low metamerism, low bronzing on gloss/lustre papers and bright saturated colour on matte and textured fine art papers make this a very desirable piece of kit. After several months of making prints with this beast, I have come up with a series of papers that work well with it. There’s a growing list of icc profiles available at HP here and it’s a simple process to load them – just follow the instructions in the HP Digital Imaging Monitor.

    All of the following papers produced very good results:

    HP Advanced Photo Paper Glossy
    As you would expect with a paper made for HP pigment inks, this paper gives an excellent result with good detail, low metamerism and only a little gloss differential. It’s a good all round gloss paper and, at 250g/m² it’s a good weight and feels like a wet process photo. Be careful only to choose “advanced” papers from HP and not the more readily available “premium” papers, which are made for dye inks and do not produce as good a result. Unfortunately, in the UK, it’s quite difficult to obtain HP’s own paper in anything above A4 size.

    Epson Premium Semigloss Photo Paper
    This paper gives an excellent result with the HP inks. There is just a little gloss differential (which you can see if you tilt the print so that the light hits it at an angle). It’s best used with the icc profile downloadable from HP, who seem to have realised that people will make prints with other manufacturer’s papers and cater for it. Thanks HP!

    Epson Archival Matte
    A good everyday paper with a smooth white finish which takes the ink well. A minor crit is that the paper is rather thin and so the resulting print doesn’t feel too much like a high quality piece of art. It’s great for sending away to competitions though, where it’s light weight (192gm/sq m) is an advantage and it’s the cheapest of the bunch to buy too. (more…)