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I've mentioned it before guys print your photos it's really important if you want to learn more about your work but also if you want to become a good photographer now there's the right way to print your photos and the wrong way and that's what I want to talk about today in this video and I'll show you some examples of prints that I've made in the past five years there are different reasons why you should print your photos first of all it's just nice to hold your photo and look at it it's a different experience you know and then once you hang it on your wall you can actually enjoy it where do most of your photos end up your hard drive right and then you look at them again maybe a few years later so if you print your best work hang it on your wall you can enjoy it every day and it's totally fine to hang your own work in your living room some people think it's a little bit weird but I don't see why that's the first reason why you should print your photos but you should also print to learn you can't compare a print to a photo on a screen it's totally different a screen emits lights and the print doesn't and also every time I print my work I'm surprised by the fact that some photos work as a print but some don't and that's really important to know if you want to create a photo series for an exhibition for example don't just look at your photos on a screen print them when you start selecting and the best thing about the print for me is the viewing experience you'll notice so many more details and you'll appreciate them more the thing is you can look at your photos on your computer and then zoom in and move around to look at all the details but it's never the same as actually standing in front of your photo and then move closer to look at all the details you can take in the whole image while you look at those details and you can compare it to looking at photos on the screen you should really try it especially with landscape photos for example with lots of details it feels totally different and at that point you can learn a lot about your work also the technical aspects maybe the noise is not as bad as you thought it was when you were looking at it on a screen or maybe the photo is not as sharp as you thought it was or maybe the focus is not a hundred percent exactly where you wanted it it's amazing what you can learn you should try it that's a great question and the best thing you can do is do it yourself buy a printer buy your favorite paper and print your folders yourself now I get that for most of you it's probably too expensive to buy a printer same for me so there's another option and that's to send your photos to an online platform they will print them and ship the prints back to you that's a fairly good option and I've tried different ones myself there are some really good ones out there but it also depends a little bit on where you live because you don't want the shipping costs to be more than the print itself so it's an OK option but there is a better one and maybe even better than doing it yourself in some ways here's how I do it right now there are a few print companies around here and I just tried a few now that might sound the same as just ordering online but here's the difference some of those companies especially the smaller ones allow you to be there when they prepare your photos for print behind the scenes so you can see your photos on their screen with their color profile right before they print them and they will tell you what it will look like if you have to brighten up the shadows a little bit more or maybe the colors have shifted and you can also make a little test print take this photo for example first you decide what the important areas in your photo are or the important colors and for this one it's the skin tones and the Reds so I asked them if they could print a little square that had a lot of red and skin tones and it's really important that you can do that because you don't want to find out that the print is wrong after you printed it and then you have to pay for it so if you can find someone like that it's almost like printing it yourself no well maybe not exactly the same but you can learn a lot about super professional printers and software and you can learn about how they do it you can also see and feel the different papers they have and it's all a little bit more personal than an online platform you have a lot more control over what the final result will look like so if you can't afford to buy a printer like me try to find one who does it for you where you can go behind the scenes okay so it's really a matter of taste but here's what I think I've been printing ever since I started studying photography every week we had to print one photo for an assignment and then we talked about it in class we had printers in the school and we did everything ourselves now they had to be presented printed on paper with the mats is that what they call it in English a matte it's like this piece of cardboard cut-out that goes over the photo here's an example this one's framed but here you can see what I mean yeah I don't like those I think it looks a little bit old and boring I try to tape a print straight onto the wall but if this is what you like then just go for it ever since I graduated I haven't used a mat again so what do I do now first of all I always use paper I hate prints directly a metal or glass or canvas is even worse but again it's personal so if you like that that's totally fine for me it's paper only so I've tried a few different things in the past ten years and the first thing was mounting my photos on this foamy thing I don't know if you can see it it's very light but that's also kind of the problem because it damages and bends really easily maybe you can use it to present your photos to clients and things like that but don't use it as a final product because if you hang this on your wall it will Bend use it for print proofs and test photos and things like that after that I used some stronger materials the first one for X let's this one this is a photo from my graduation project where I twisted some fairy tales so it's very tales with a twist don't ask anyway this is paper mounted of 4x it's like this strong heavy plastic and they have it in three millimeters 5 millimeters 10 and so on so that's a lot better than the foam but you have to make sure that you pick a thick one especially for really large prints because it has to be strong enough so it doesn't Bend the larger your print is the thicker the 4x has to be so it doesn't Bend and even for small prints I would go for at least 5 millimeters but it does look really nice and what they also do let me take this again it's mount an aluminum frame to the back like you can see here to make it even stronger so it doesn't bend and you can also use this of course to hang it to the wall it's a good option but for me not the best one let's talk about the paper itself first because of course that's also important and for this project this graduation project I picked a matte paper no gloss at all and that was the wrong choice a paper like this loses a lot of contrast and deep blacks and I would never go for a matte paper again unless it's for a very specific assignment or project or something like that so Forex is great the papers I used back then were also really good but what I'm using now is what I'm in love with and that's Purita paper mounted on die bond so let me show you die bond it's right here and it's basically a piece of flexible plastic kind of thing mounted between two sheets of aluminum and it's super strong but also fairly light and that's really important because the 4x I showed you before it can get quite heavy if you have a really large print and this doesn't Bend nearly as much even if you pick a really thin one like this super strong and like I said the paper that I use now is Morita paper it's a paper they use a lot for black and white prints because it has super detailed deep blacks but also really nice bright highlights and often a burrito paper also has a slightly warmer tone which I really like [Music] now it looks good for black and white but also for color because it really brings the colors to life and finally it's not matte it's not glossy it's something in-between and it looks a bit more organic I recommend you to try a burrito paper at least once to see if you like it so that's what I like a burrito paper mounted on dye bond and at the back I always get these aluminum profiles to hang it to the wall now if you have a really really large print it might be a good idea to get these profiles all the way around to make it even stronger personally I like frames but I know that a lot of people like frameless because it looks a little bit more sleek and modern and you always have that little elevation so it looks like the photo is floating but I prefer frames another thing you have to decide is if you want that white space around your photo now it's a matter of taste but if you're selling photos for example you really need to print with the white space around your photo to keep the corners from the actual print from damaging but I also like the look of that white space around the photo for exhibitions for example I usually print with the white space and then I frame them I really like that little bit of breathing room around the photo but not always for this one for example that I made for Joanna to hang in our living room I decided to go for no white space and a simple white frame and I really like the look of this photo on a white wall because it's the center of attention and there's no distraction by the frame but it's still there which I really like and that's it guys now what's the most important thing to remember from all this if you aren't already doing it start printing your folders because you really have to hold your work and enjoy the details that you can see on the screen start printing right now thank you so much for watching and see you in the next video