Did You Know?

I keep learning something new about photography, it seems like every day. I have started to get Christmas cards arriving in the mail and am proud to say I now have 3 Christmas cards up with pictures I have taken! But it's starting to bug me how dark and yellowish some of the photos come out in print. When I look at them again on the computer they just don't look that dark.

So I asked about it on a Facebook Photog group that I recently joined. Apparently you can and should calibrate your monitor. I do not have a professional monitor just a laptop that I am so blessed to have because my dear mother gave it to me. I know, she is amazing. So I searched for a way to calibrate and did my best just by eye. There are calibration programs you can buy and some printers have specific calibration tools to calibrate to their printing. Wow, who knew.

I also turned down the brightness of the screen. This will be much better for my eyes as well as help match what I see on the computer to the prints. So I got all of this done and thought I would print a picture that I re-edited on my Cannon printer. I got it all set, hit print, and it came out blue. I guess I am out of magenta ink and don't have the money to buy more ink until after Christmas. So I haven't been able to test my calibration yet. I do feel they look better on screen. I also feel I have a better feel for what I want to see in a print now which helps.

Some of the photographers in the photog group recommended mpix for prints and Costco was the runner up. I still think I can get great quality prints through Shutterfly if I can just get my editing fine tuned.

What I learned most as I got into this endeavor is that there is a never ending amount of stuff to learn when it comes to photography and along with that a never ending amount of money one could spend. It seems I don't need to set goals to reach but instead caps of money to spend and areas to explore because if I don't I am not sure where it will end.  I am still in love with this art form and love that I have something I can do for people I love.  I just have to keep telling myself I don't have to learn it all at once.