Hi Tyler, I couldn't agree more! The coating technology fascinates me, and I intend to study it in more detail.
Thank you for your kind words of support. My digital print research program needs a few thousand subscribers to be sustainable in the long run, or a different business model, or a miracle, whichever occurs first! In this near depresssion economy a positive outcome is not a very safe bet, but I'm quietly confident I will get there somehow.
Best regards,
Mark
http://www.aardenburg-imaging.com
LOL, everyone wants a free lunch, that is sad, but that is true. Everyone thinks they should be able to send you some samples, have you spend dozens of hours of your time analyzing them, and then dozens more hours compiling your findings in writing so they can read "everything they wanted to know" at their convenience ... all for a "Thank you." (And in many cases not even one of those )
I can empathize. I have written thousands of articles on dog breeding, disease-management, prevention, kenneling protocols, etc. ... all "for free" ... for many years. What I finally have done is compile it into a book and have been selling it online ever since.
As an adjunct to all of the wonderful information on your site, Mark, and perhaps as an even bigger motivator for people to subscribe to the latest articles on your site, you might want to consider offering
a full and complete book of all your findings, either as an alternative source of income, or "on top of" a web subsription. For example, regarding veterinary medicine for small animals and livestock, there is a veritable tome of information called "The Merck Veterinary Manual," a 2700-page masterpiece, the entirety of which is published for free online. And yet even though it is free I still paid $50 to have a hard copy delivered to me ... because it is nice to have the physical book in my hands, whenever I need it and wherever I want to take it, as opposed to being restricted to a website reading and having to click through the sections I read. While websites have their use, ultimately having the physical book in hand is a hundred times more useful (to me) than having that same info "on a website." Thus you might want to consider compiling all of your research into a physical book too, as Merck did.
With traditional publishing, it used to be a hassle. You had to "get approved" by a major publisher, wait for months for them to turn your work into a book (and they go at a snail's pace), and then you had to wait several more months after that to get 10-15% of the residuals somewhere down the line.
Even when authors tried to bypass traditional publishing, by
self-publishing, that too had many drawbacks. With traditional self-publishing, your alternative was to shell out $4,000 to $12,0000 of your own money and "buy" between 1,000 to 5,000 copies of your own book, stockpile them all somewhere, and then try to advertise and sell these physical items on your own, both to recoup your investment as well as to (hopefully) profit. On top of all that was the fact you then had to do all of the packaging, plus all of the back-and-forth driving to the post office, so basically you just gave yourself another time-consuming job to do.
But with the advent of
online self-publishing, you don't have to spend a dime and you don't have to stockpike a book—and you don't have to wait one second longer than it takes to upload your completed .pdf file to get your book out. You merely put your articles together, upload your completed .pdf file, and from that second forward all you have to do is push a button and a book gets made. No expense, no hassle, no stockpiling. The size of your book, and the amount of profit you want to make off of each one, will determine your price. For instance, a paperback version of my book costs me $9.60 to make, about $10.00 to ship, and I sell it for $75. I thus profit $50-$55 per copy, and every time I get an order I just punch-in the person's info (copy-n-paste it), click a button, and the book gets manufactured and sent to the customer without any further involement from me. No packaging, no mailing, no more hassle.
If the idea of self-publishing the sum and substance of your work is of interest to you, go to
www.LuLu.com and you can amass, compile, and then upload your .pdf renderings of all your findings—and, once uploaded, you can print out either a professional paperback or a professional hardback book in the next second, singly or by the hundreds. You can do it in black & white as well as in color. Doing so might prove to be a valuable adjunct to your website, and the hard part is already done (the research and the writing); all you have to do is put it together in a chronological order that makes sense, in one single .pdf file.
Just from reading the few free .pdfs online that you offer for free, I can only imagine how valuable having all of them together, in hand, would be to a person—especially if he took the time to read and re-read them all.
Your update .pdf reports not only could be uploaded online, but created in pamphlet form and offered to non-subscribers who could purchase the latest findings cheaply.
Anway, I am rambling, and maybe none of this would be of interest to you
Oops, I know exactly what you mean. I had no idea what LOL meant for the longest time. Your are not alone!
Me too; the first time I saw LOL online I thought it meant "Lotsa Luck"
RIP stands for Raster Image processor. In plainspeak, its a custom printer driver software, often with custom built-in capacity to do page layout of multiple image files efficiently and on a network where more than one person is sending print jobs. RIPS have also traditionally had special calibration features that give expert users control over the way the printers lay down color (ie. giving invidual inkjet nozzle/colorant control to the user). This was an important feature in earlier days of inkjet printing when the printer supplied software and calibration routines were not so good. Third party RIPs often produced better image quality results due not only to better color control but also superior dot pattern screening patterns. RIP manufacturers had the opportunity to perfect these issues while the printer manufacturers were busy trying to build better hardware! But the whole industry has matured. My advice today for a photographer just getting involved in inkjet printing- Don't even think about a RIP. Just learn to use the driver that was supplied by the original equipment manufacturer (OEM.... yikes I just defined the second term you didn't know!)
OEM stands for Original equipment manufacturer as noted above. For example, if you own an Epson printer and you are buying OEM ink you are buying ink manufactured by or at the very least re-branded by Epson. Inks purchased from other ink manufacturers besides the printer manufacturer are sometimes thus called "non OEM" inks.
Don't get discouraged. Digital photography and printmaking is based on very logical and common sense principles, but it does have a boat load of terminology, choices, and different pathways to similar end results!
Best regards,
Mark
http://www.aardenburg-imaging.com
Thank you very much for your time and for the breakdown. I for one will go ahead and subscribe to your website when I feel I am ready. I have so much learning to do I think my head is going to explode
In addition to learning how to use my 50D, as well learning how to use the next 4 lenses I plan on getting this year, I am going to be buying (and trying to figure out how to use) Adobe CS4 to process those images—which I understand takes a veritable college course to do—and once
that is done I am going to get a fine art printer. Both Michael's DVD and your website I am sure will prove invaluable to me. The more I really think about the whole process, the more I realize I have to learn.
As Avalan said, I need to get my colors and processing right, but before I do that I need to get my picture-taking and camera skills right. It is hard to try to learn and do everything at once, but I am an obsessive person my nature, so I will get the gist of it all sooner or later. I expect to have my bearings pretty well set by the end of this summer, and once I do this I will be ready to understand the whole "from camera to print" process—or at least enough of the basics to get off the ground
Jack
