As a photographer a lot of things end up being outsourced especially printing. Over the years I have worked with all kinds of printers from Costco and Wal-mart to printers that work exclusively for photographers. When I moved to Phoenix I was kind of stuck, I couldn’t find a printer in town that had the right materials or equipment to print my work. I was still outsourcing to a printer in Utah. And then I met Peter and Stephanie at Mighty Imaging here in Phoenix. Not only are they the most approachable of any printer I’ve worked with they use the right materials and the best equipment including a LightJet RA-4 Color printer:

LightJet digital printer has set the standard for true photographic quality. By exposing photo media with laser light, you’ll receive image quality superior to any and all wide format output available anywhere.

There is no ink - no printhead going back and forth, hence no banding and no grainy dot matrix pattern. Just unsurpassed sharpness and color. If you want to provide the ultimate output for fine art, display, exhibits and trade show graphics, this is it.

My Fine Arts work is currently at a maximum size of 30×50″ but Mighty Imaging is true to their name with the ability to print images up to 48×96″. This was a problem for most print vendors that wanted to move my work over to an inkjet printer after 8×10″. Since I pride myself on being a craftsman as well, one of the first things I look for in a printer is what type of materials do they offer, in particular do they print on Fuji Crystal Archive photo paper. Fuji paper is the only paper that can capture the subtleties and particular color palate of my fine arts work and no I don’t want to try Kodak. With Peter’s company this is not a problem they offer every style of Fuji paper that I wanted to use and more.

Our partnership is larger than just a vendor and client because after viewing my work Peter insisted on opening a store of my work on their website giving me access to another audience. This is a partnership that will continue because Mighty Imaging have covered the basics of business and mastered the craft of printing large format images.

Okay, something a little different. I am going to avoid all the third person talk about the work like it is in a museum stuff. Hopefully you read this blog because I am honest and serious about what I do.

I honestly have been developing this series in places all over the world for about eight years. It is a process that is slow and sometimes surprising with long periods where all is working as it should like evolution. To develop a personal language out of all the formal considerations of color, composition, texture etc and personal considerations of time, context and philosophy it just takes time. It is a work that is about direct observation of beauty, and on that premise is really about hope. And hope is something all transplants need to find in the desert.

When I came to Phoenix and started this series I was really pissed off about being here. I had just been moved out here (wife’s work) from Austin, Texas and felt like I never had a chance to fully developed a series of work out of that city. My rules were set up to work in Austin and the ideas that were available for exploration in that city just weren’t available in Phoenix. Like so many other transplants to this city I had to let go of what my previous experience was and embrace the new opportunities that Phoenix had to offer.

Letting go was not as easy, I didn’t even photograph anything for a couple months. I would drive around and all I saw were the sandstone brick walls and the black trash cans. For a color abstract expressionist this was like hell, and just about as hot. However, I kept looking because I knew there must be something out there, and frankly I needed to find it. I needed a creative outlet to survive the isolation that Phoenix, just by it’s very culture of expansion, had imposed on me. I had to learn how to source material from the city I started by walking my neighborhood and then expanded to other parts of Phoenix… little field trips, explorations that didn’t guarantee any reward but were required.

Check out the series in full at tysoncrosbie.com

Please leave your comments and criticisms below I would love to know how this succeeds and fails. If you love it pass it on, if you hate it tell me why in the comments below.

Thanks.

Tomorrow is the online release of my Phoenix 20 series. I am excited and nervous. I am excited to have a new audience that will view the work, I am nervous that I don’t have a strong enough connection to my new audience to get any feedback about the work. I am also curious about how my new online network will aggregate, judge and ultimately ignore or promote the work. I would love to know why or why not.

In the art world if you recommend something to another person and that person doesn’t like it your taste is questioned. This is very bad because “good taste” is the ultimate art collectors, curators and academics commodity. Good luck trying to break into that very tight herd unless you can distract (controversy) or convince (politic) the leaders of the community to support you.

I have a feeling social media may have a more democratic answer to this problem, though I don’t believe it to be an intrinsically better system. I think it has the potential to do great things and level the playing field, which is one of the reasons I am in this space and trying new things. However it is important to remember that democracy in it’s purest form has the potential to be even less forgiving and may be a far more difficult herd to tame.

I am trying to say as varied as possible with my lighting and composition. The repetition of the series is really dominating the work and I am finding it difficult to create new ideas with the same faces. I am seeing the end of dog a day just ahead and frankly I am a little sad. I enjoyed this project.

A fellow photographer told me that the transition from pets to fashion couldn’t be bridged. I always like a challenge like that. I hope that you all have enjoyed the series as much as I have. Thank you for your participation and allowing me the opportunity to share these documents, experiments and photographs with you over the last month.

I know it isn’t over yet but I felt like thanking you.

An article was just posted at Phoenix Artspace about my new abstract series that is being released on May 1st. There is also a book that has all 20 final images from the series being released on May 15th. More info forthcoming.

I hope that you head over to phoenixartspace.com and read the article and let me know what you think in the comments below. And of course you can view my soft edit of the series on flickr. All comments and criticism welcome.

And finally a link to the page where the final series will be released online May 1st, 2008.

Awww. Sleeping brothers. The other four can be seen by clicking on the image above. Enjoy.

This is the new image for dog a day, it is also my wife’s “favorite image so far.” and I agree.

My education on the history of photography is one of my most cherished possessions. And so the reference to early photo history and the pictorialist movement in this image really excite me. It was a movement that tried to establish photography as a fine art often by distorting the lens in an attempt to mimic the effects of the impressionist painters that were popular at the time.

With no intention of doing so (I realized as I was writing this entry) contemporary photo history also has a reference as well by one of the artists to cause controversy for National Endowment of the Arts, Andres Serrano. Of course this image is far less controversial and has no intentional religious or political foundation. It was just a creative way to photograph my dog Huxley.

For me being able to reference work to the past elevates the experience of creating. Do you think understanding history is an important element when creating? Or is it enough to be talented with color, composition, lighting, following trends, etc?

I knew this shoot was going to be trouble. Ever try to get your dog to do yoga? It seemed simple enough he is seemingly always doing these great stretches and is incredibly flexible, 86 images later we got a couple good ones.

Day 21. I actually got this image done before noon today, actually while eating breakfast. As the sun comes up in the morning we get this pretty dramatic shadow coming through the back gate, since I generally talk about photography as the act of recording observation I’ll just say: I like how this looked.

The reason I needed to get done early with Dog a Day today was because Phoenix Art Space came over this afternoon to interview me about my upcoming Fine Art project. I will link the article on tysoncrosbie.com/blog as soon as it is posted next week.

The Phoenix series of images is currently being edited to 20 from about 2000 raw images taken over 10 months. I will also be placing all twenty images in a self-published photo book scheduled for release May 15th, 2008. Look here for more information around the 1st of May.