Blog #80 Give it Away, Give it Away, Give it Away, Now
What I've got you've got to give it to your mamma
What I've got you've got to give it to your pappa
What I've got you've got to give it to your daughter
You do a little dance and then you drink a little water
These lyrics were famously penned and performed by none other than the
Red Hot Chilli Peppers in 1991 from their song titled Give it Away Now.
You might have guessed that this week’s blog post is about printing and sharing your images. In Blog #68 titled Photography is a Gift, I advocated for sharing images of friends and family. This can be accomplished through social media outlets of course but is ultimately more effective when images are brought into the real world and printed.
Printing doesn’t have to be a complicated process. I bought new ink jet printer recently in wide format meaning that it takes A3 sized paper [297 x 420 mm, 11.7 x 16.5 in.]. Of course there are bigger [and way more expensive versions] but for a reasonable price, I picked up this baby and dragged her home. This thing is huge but for just shy of $200 USD it’s really pretty cheap. Printers have come a long way and most regular jobs can be done on this machine with photo quality paper. The results have been really good so far. The model is an HP OfficeJet Pro 7740. If you’re in the market for a new printer, let me share this pro tip:
If you ask nicely, the salesman might throw you a pack of A3 photo paper for free as well!
Good luck lugging this thing home it’s about the size of a large microwave oven. Wifi means that anyone on your network can print from any device pretty much, a really useful feature.
Sharing images is a great joy that every photographer should indulge in from time to time. For example, some friends had an awesome beach wedding party recently and I made some pictures that I shared [and will be printing and framing] for the married couple. I view this gift as something special since they cannot buy it or make it themselves.
If you don’t give away your pictures, “You’re a punk!”, says LA street photographer, John Free. I love that guy!
The light is always right.
jhg
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