Several weeks ago, I decided to enter this photograph in the Fur Rondy Photo Contest. The rules call for prints to be sized between 8"x10" and to 16"x20". I decided to do a simple 8"x10" - the big question was, who should I have print the photo? Phil recommended A&I Photographic Services. A&I is definitely for real - it's clear the big boys use this outfit! And since, I wanted my photo to look its best, I decided to go with what the big boys use.
But when one goes with the professionals, one doesn't just say "print me an 8" x 10" on your best paper using your best technology." Not even close. It's actually pretty complicated - one has to go into Photoshop and through undocumented hooks and crooks, set the printer profile and then save the image in just the right way. I spent two hours figuring it all out and getting everything just so. Or so I thought.
A week later, the printed photo arrived here at work. I went zooming upstairs to pick it up from our receptionist. I was expecting a thin little Fed Ex document envelope. But instead, Thelma handed me a very big Fed Ex Tube. Uh Oh. This didn't look like it was going to be an 8" X 10" print. More like 8 feet by 10 feet.
I got it all unwrapped and it turned out to be 30" by 36". Ooops...But, I have to say, it was a pretty fabulous 30" by 36". The photo sized up spectacularly well. Phil saw it and we both thought it looked like it had been printed at an impossible 3000 dpi. It's really amazing. So, I'm gonna have it framed. I already have a sizeable investment in it - it cost $100 instead of the $10 I that expected. sigh...
In regards to the contest, I had hedged my bet: I also ordered an 8" x 10" print from Ofoto and that print was fine. I just needed to get it mounted. I put it in the front seat of Hubert, went to pick up Tyge from the groomer and then was going to stop by the photo mounting shop on the way home. Well, Tyge jumped in the back of Hubert and then galumped up to the front seat and sat down on my photo. sigh....
This all happened 3 days before the contest entries closed. But, since Ofoto is blazingly fast, I ordered another print from them and it arrived the day before the deadline. I was cutting things close, but still had some room to spare. I brought the photo to the print shop for mounting - I explained that it needed to be mounted in the middle of a 16" x 20" piece of form core, etc. I left it with them and came back at the close of business that afternoon. The photo was mounted. But they had cut the form core all the way down to the photo dimensions. Augh....
There I was - 24 hours to go before the deadline and no photo. After quite a bit of hunting around, I found a local shop that could print the photo. I dropped the .jpg off at 10:00 AM and came back at Noon - amazingly - given my run of luck - the shop did a wonderful job of reprinting and it was absolutely to spec.
I then very carefully drove the print to Blaine's for mounting. Blaine's mounted it while I waited - they had already mounted a ton of other photos for other contestants - so they knew exactly what was what.
I walked out of Blaine's with my correctly sized and mounted photo and drove straight downtown to Stewart's Photo where I successfully and without incident managed to get my photo entered in the contest - with 5 hours to spare!
What an epic that all was!
I should know the contest results by this Friday.
3:12:43 PM 
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