2007-08-25

Moving Forward

Today I posted a mission statement on the home page that you can read by clicking on the "About AaI&A" text at the bottom of the Home page. In its fledgling start-up mode, Aardenburg Imaging & Archives has a decidedly long way to go in order to live up to goals outlined in the mission statement. Nevertheless, without intentionally trying to descend too far into worn out cliches, the journey does indeed begin with the first step. To this end, I take great pride in relating two simple yet important "firsts" that have now been achieved.

AaI&A got its first participant in our Digital Print Research Program last week. It must be a very good sign that Aardenburg's first participant is a descendent of the Hyde family, who owned the Hyde house throughout the 19th and most of the 20th Century. On the way from Buffalo, New York to a vacation on Cape Cod, he and his wife stopped in Lee to see the family homestead. Excited to see it receiving a fresh coat of paint, they stopped and we talked. Our discussion led to my business plans for the Hyde House, and that to their enthusiastic support of our work. Our new #1 supporters will be the first to receive a print from the Aardenburg Collection mounted in a data logging picture frame.

Also this week, we received prints from our first contributing artist. I'm particularly pleased with the work that was contributed. Gunars Lucans, a serious amateur photographer and printmaker in Chicago, Illinois graciously provided a photograph taken along the shoreline of Lake Superior with a Sony Cybershot DSC-F717 camera. He printed the image along with an AaI&A color patch layout on two inkjet paper types, Red River Ultra Pro Gloss Plus and Epson Premium Luster Photo Paper. Gunars used an Epson R1800 printer that he has converted to a continuous ink system (CIS). His CIS uses MIS R800/R1800 Archival Pigmented Color Inks from InkSupply.com. I also happen to own an Epson R1800 printer, and I will produce a comparable set of prints using Gunars' image and the very same paper batches only with Epson's OEM inkset. All of the prints will become part of our real world print aging database, and it will give us an opportunity to see and compare image quality and image permanence differences between a popular third party ink set and the manufacturer's OEM set. Aardenburg's good fortune on the very first contributing Artist's submission is precisely how I envision our mission to unfold. Gunars' workflow also utilized a software application, Qimage, which is very popular among printmakers on the PC platform. Its image sharpening algorithm is highly prized by end-users, and the results I received are notably different from the image I just printed tonight using the standard Epson driver and bicubic sharpening in Photoshop. It is this rich and creative diversity that Aardenburg Imaging wishes to document and preserve in its growing archives. Yes, I have just described a small couple of baby steps for Aardenburg Imaging & Archives, but important ones to my way of thinking.