16. The Joy of Paper

A gourmet guide to my print making: Illustrated edition

Mar 01, 2024

I love digital photography!

The speed and convenience has me hooked. With film, I never could have had 50,000 photos organized and easily retrievable. Sharing was laborious and I don’t think I ever successfully spotted a photo (and my dodging and burning was not much better.)

Sadly, being digital means no 4x6 prints

But, as I talked about in issue 5, I miss the 4x6 prints I would get when I developed a roll of film. For a while I’d been meaning to put together a big order to send to Shutterfly, Walgreens, or wherever I could find the cheapest prints. But it always felt like a big job because I had to gather all the potential images and then decide how many were worth it. Decision paralysis led to none being printed.

The spark

Then back in December

Susanne Helmert

1 posted A Winter's tale where she talks about a project that got her so excited she “felt the urge to create a little handmade zine to celebrate this beautiful ‘event’. The zine isn’t really anything fancy: simple prints from my small portable printer and a bunch of different papers I had lying around in my studio which I hand-stitched together. All done in one session in the afternoon.”

“You certainly don’t need high-quality materials to create something with meaning for you and something that makes you happy”

At the end of that blog she wrote “I wanted to share this little zine with you, to show you that you don’t need an elaborate concept or a big selection of photographs to choose from. You don’t have to work on it for weeks or months. You don’t have to go to a fancy place to photograph. And you certainly don’t need high quality materials to create something with meaning for you and something that makes you happy.”

That was my inspiration. I went out and got some nicer semi-gloss laser printer paper and dug out my paper cutter. I also found a cheap notebook, tape and binder clips and went to work.

Hooked

At first, I tried 4x6 sized prints and stuck them in the notebook. Then made some wallet-size prints for reviewing and shuffling. and finally used the binder clips to make a quick photo book of Thanksgiving.

Nothing was really that spectacular but I was hooked. I had gotten the images out of the devices and off the screen and was thrilled.

I knew where this was headed. I really wanted to work on a zine—and I had watched many videos on how to do it. It seemed daunting. So many of videos made it out to be a long in-depth process.

Was a zine really easily achievable?

I reread Susanne’s words and dove in… and then I realized I didn’t know any current layout programs. sigh. But I slowly figured out if I was doing something simple I could use Google Docs to layout each page and the zine company would figure out how to make that into a book. After I laid out the books I remember back to 90s when I had a print driver that could make little booklets (I used to use them to print pocket-sized phone books). After some digging I found Create Booklet 2 and that did the trick.

Success!

It took me about a dozen tries to get everything right (double-sided properly, borders, just the right number of pages, etc.) but by the end of the day I had a zine!

I offered these in post and within a few days sent off three to substack friends (90¢ postage/each) including one to

Mark McGuire

in New Zealand. Mailing there was about $4-5 and the woman at the post office was delighted to see something going around the world. It took about six weeks to get there but what a thrill it was to see my work in someone else’s hands.

Next I went to Mixam and had two professionally printed copies made (they generously sent me three!). They cost about $3/each and postage was $3. For $4 it was really motivating to have something I made in my hand.

Want my zine?

If anyone wants a copy of my zine, I’ll order a bunch and send you one at the cost of: Send me something back. e.g. your zine, something you made, a print, an old zine you are done with, a photo book you no longer read, etc. Send me a DM or reply to this email.

I’ve learned a lot these past few weeks about the mental aspects of creating and the benefits of getting images onto paper. In addition, I had a huge learning about the technical side (especially getting the best possible prints off a laser printer). If you’d like to know more about this aspect, just let me know and I’ll write some more about it.

5x7s instead of 4x6s

I’m now regularly using my later printer to make 5x7 proof prints and sorting, selecting and bringing them to the photo class I am enrolled in.

I hope this inspires you to go create. If so, I’d love to hear about it.

Warmly,
josh