Dan Barham :: Mountain Bike Photography

Alright, “crap” is a little unfair, but you get the picture (geddit?)

Recently I’ve been fielding a number of enquiries about the prints I have for sale, mainly regarding shipping, packaging and image availability, but one question seems to be asked more than others, so obviously I haven’t done a good enough job describing it already.

It surrounds the quality of the prints - there’s no doubt that the price is a little higher than you’ll see from the likes of cheap photo labs like Costco or poster-selling websites, so what exactly do you get for your money, aside from my enduring love and affection?

“Fine Art Prints” isn’t just a marketing ploy; well, it isn’t with me, anyway. When deciding on a method and vendor for the prints I did a bunch of research and tried out various products and styles before settling on what I thought was the best. Naturally, the business-headed capitalist in me looked for the cheapest prints possible, so I initially tried out regular, glossy photo prints - the kind you’d get from any photo lab. They were adequately done, but not really nice enough to warrant getting it all framed up and hung on someone’s wall for all eternity.

It’s then that I stumbled upon a different method of printing - Giclée, which turns out to be a pretentious name for “inkjet”. You can read a full description in this Wikipedia article, but suffice to say it’s a process that uses more, higher quality inks on ‘paper’ formed from 100% cotton rag “William Turner” paper by German art paper specialists Hahnemühle, producing a print that’s rated to last over a hundred years regardless of UV exposure, the great enemy of cheaper prints which fade in a fraction of that time.

To illustrate exactly how each print appears, I took a few shots of one before I packaged it up and sent it on its way - this one’s of Brian Earle in the Sunshine Coast, BC - an image I’d not previously offered as a print, but someone asked me for it so it’s now on the list.

Here’s the finished 12″ x 18″ print:

This is a close-up of the paper, texture slightly exaggerated by a hard light to the side. Each ridge and shallow actually enhances the detail found within each image, making it look even sharper and more intricate:

An extreme close-up with even harder light to really accentuate the relief of the paper. It doesn’t look much like this under normal lighting, but you get a good insight into the texture this way:

This paper stock isn’t flimsy or self-curling, it’s thick, weighty and stiff:

Lastly I hand-deface each one print myself in swanky metallic pen. What effect this has on the value of the print I’ll leave to your own judgement:

So there you go. Mountain bike prints by me, that are super-awesome. Buy lots, today.

Did I ever mention I had a Flickr account? During the dark, rainy winter months I amuse myself with a wide range of photography I don’t normally get the chance to partake in professionally, such as this sunset over the Vancouver downtown skyline, yesterday.

I like to think it’s keeping me fresh and inspired for the upcoming bike season, but I guess time will tell on that one, eh?