Ciociaria Christmas, Fiuggi 2011 Douglas Stockdale
Wishing you all the very best for this Christmas season, as well as Happy Holidays to all you celebrating your various religious events.
This is also another year in which I take on Costco for the printing of the Christmas cards. In years past, I would print the Christmas cards myself, first 4 x 5″ silver gelatin and selenium toned prints tucked into a simple folded sheet of Arches watercolor, then segwayed to ink jet prints and lately the merry Costco prints. Not exactly an elegant evolution, eh?
So the last couple of years, I have been selecting an image to grace the Christmas card, last year it was the whole family photograph, this year I opted for a photograph that I had made last year in Fiuggi while working on my Ciociaria project (and the larger version is included in the book). For my Christmas card photograph, I always allow myself some creative liberties. This is also coupled with low expectations as to what Costco will print, so I am usually content with however this turns out. Not like it is going into an exhibition.
In this case, I provided a little more cropping of the orginal photograph to tease out my “Charlie Brown” Christmas tree as the main subject. Then a little softening and lightening of the edges, trying to be a little liberal knowing from past experience with Costco, what you see will never be what you will get. From past experience, I also know that Costco will not be concerned with their color control, so I dummy these settings as much as possible. Likewise, I also added another contrast curve to lighten the background enough so that it did not turn to sea of muddy and dark tones.
The end result was not too bad and the cards look pretty decent. As expected, the picture did not appear cropped as indicated when I used their kiosk to make my order, but my liberal allowance in the edge treatment did manage to provide most of the effects I was after. This year, the colors (sRGB) and tonal range were pretty close. I am happy, the adventure was fun and I am guessing that just about everyone who receives our cards this year will probably enjoy it and not know the differences.
Best wishes for the holidays!
