My son Charlie is doing something I would never have been brave enough to do at his age, or maybe ever.
He's running to be VP of his school's student council. While this is really no big deal since he's only in elementary school, it's been fun to see him have the courage to take on this new challenge. And it's something neither of his parents would ever have done.
He has to give a speech in front of all of the 3rd, 4th and 5th graders in his school. It's full of ideas like all-day recess, pizza for everyone, movies in the gym. You know, all the typical things that are most important to elementary students.
As part of the requirements, he had to create 6 posters to hang in the hallways. That's a lot given all his other requirements with after-school sports, homework, helping out at home and needing time to relax and play, so we helped him. I wish I could take credit for all of the creative ideas on his posters, but Pinterest is a wonderful thing and we took full advantage!
Since I forgot about his plan to include pictures on his posters, we had a last minute impromptu session in the rain on Saturday to get a couple to include. We don't have a color printer at home and we needed the pictures quickly for the Monday due date, so I sent them to a local copy store to be printed. And the results were... green.
Ugh. Yes, green. They were not green on my computer. They guy at the store thought he knew the reason why they printed green and he tried to adjust some things on his computer, but they weren't green on his computer either. The problem was the printer.
I'm not going to name this store because that really isn't my point. I wasn't expecting anything special since I requested them to be printed on regular card stock (that's not what I got). However, given my choice of printing labs, I was expecting better color quality images than some other 1-hour options available locally.
I don't want to bore you with all of the details of monitor color calibration and color quality in print images, but taking your digital images just anywhere to have them printed is risky business. In this case, it really doesn't matter since this project is just for fun. However, I would hate for one of my clients to walk away from their session with prints like these.
Almost all of my clients want all of their digital images and choose to print them on their own. And I get it! There are so many ways we can use our images and so many printing options available. But this green printing experience is exactly why I offer professional printing services and I would love for more people to take advantage of this option. A professional photographer who contracts with a professional printer takes extra care to make sure that the print you receive looks just like the one you love on your computer screen.
As we enter a busy time of fall family sessions, please be careful where you choose to print your images and always, always, always let me know if you end up with something that is green... or any other color that makes your sweet babies look like aliens.
Now, if anyone has any ideas about how not to feel green while I watch Charlie give that speech, I'm all ears!