Workshops
Realize your artistic vision by mastering the secrets of creating digital fine prints.
Dates:
Oct 30, 2023 - Nov 3, 2023
Levels:
Intermediate,
Advanced,
Workshop Fee: $1495
Workshop Duration: 1-week (Monday-Friday)
Workshop Location: On-campus
Class Size: 8
In this course, students learn a workflow for creating fine digital prints. The workflow includes digital capture, digital processing in Adobe Photoshop and/or Lightroom, printing on an inkjet printer, and handling the finished print. Digital processing and printing topics include maximizing image quality at capture, color management, sharpening and noise reduction, black & white printing, proofing, matching screen and print, and making local and global edits to color and tonality.
You will also discuss the qualities and characteristics of a fine print, many of the plethora of options for inks and papers available to today’s printers, and how best to produce a print to realize an artistic vision, including choosing the best paper for a particular project. As the week progresses, we will focus on assessing prints, judging how best to improve them, and then demonstrating how to make those improvements.
Particular consideration is given to making large prints. Students have the opportunity to examine the challenges of printing on a large scale and to learn a wide range of techniques for maximizing overall print quality and for creating and handling large prints.
Students will work with Epson printers and will be printing primarily with Epson, Canson, and Hahnemuhle papers. We will also discuss printing on non-traditional substrates such as rice papers. Additional papers may be purchased from the Digital Service Department on campus.
Course requirements
This course requires that students use the school (Mac) computers. Students should bring files on a portable hard drive.
All images copyright Jim Nickelson.
Past student work
Charles Leverett, Penny Linn, Edward McCranie, Sherwood Samet
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Instructor: Jim Nickelson
Based in Camden, Maine, Jim works as a fine art photographer, custom digital printer (as Nickelson Editions), bookmaker, and teacher. Before committing himself to the photographic life, he pursued the classic artistic career path of NASA engineer and corporate attorney (with a B.S. in Aerospace Engineering from Univ. of Texas at Austin and a J.D. from Harvard Law School).
Jim has received numerous awards, including being honored as Artist-in-Residence at Acadia National Park, Chiricahua National Monument in Arizona, the Baer Art Center in Iceland, and the book arts studio at Maine Media Workshops + College. Jim has exhibited widely, and his work resides in museum, corporate, university, public, and private collections across the United States and Canada.