Special Edition Print Folios

What is a print folio? • What can you do with a print folio?

Folio #1
Forgotten Places: North Dakota Volume I

Also available:

Free download (5.8MB)of an
electronic version of this folio in PDF format.

ForgottenPlacesVol-I (Click to download the PDF file.)

The PDF document contains all of the images and content
from the printed folio for viewing on your computer.

About the Images in the Folio

Many photographers are drawn to abandoned places, buildings, and vehicles or other objects. I am no exception. Not only is the visual impact of such things reason enough to want to photograph them, there is poignancy in places and things that were once useful or loved that are now no longer so.

When I received Tillman Crane’s 2010 workshop brochure in January, 2010, I was instantly captured by the first workshop on the list: “Abandoned Farms of North Dakota.”

This would not be a trivial undertaking. I thought hard about it for about two days. At various times in your life, I think, you just have to decide to do something you want to do. As the Nike slogan goes, “Just Do It.”

So on April 30 I boarded Amtrak’s Capitol Limited in Martinsburg and the next day the Empire Builder from Chicago to arrive in Rugby, North Dakota the morning of May 2. Rugby’s main claim to fame is that it is at the “geographical center of North America.”

For a week six other photographers and I followed the guidance of Tillman and local photographer Dan Smith as we explored locations around Rugby. During those six days I was captivated by the visual feast offered by the old houses, barns, abandoned vehicles, and the wonderful surprising texture of the prairie landscape.

The images in this folio were captured in Rolette and Pierce Counties during that workshop.

You can view all of the images in this folio here.

The ten images are available in a folio of prints packaged in a specially designed folio cover as illustrated here. The folios are sequentially numbered and offered in an open edition.

The ten prints in this folio are printed one at a time in my studio using 100% cotton fine art paper and archival pigment inks on an Epson Stylus Pro 3800 inkjet printer. The images are printed approximately 6×9 inches on 8-1/2 x 11 paper. Each print is carefully evaluated and guaranteed to meet the same standard as my larger exhibit prints.

Price: $95 plus shipping

What is a print folio?

The concept of this kind of print folio was developed by Brooks Jensen, publisher of Lenswork Magazine. He describes the folio as “a collection of loose, unbound prints defining a content that is more like a book than a random stack of unsequenced prints.” The prints are presented in a specially designed folio cover, also designed by Brooks, made from archival, acid free art paper.

The pricing philosophy is affordability. Priced at less than $10 per print, a folio of small prints is a very affordable way for someone to acquire high quality prints from photographers whose work they admire or would like to collect.

The covers were custom produced for Lenswork and up until recently there was nothing equivalent generally available until Neil Enns started Dane Creek Folio Covers, which brought this concept to photographers at an affordable cost.

What can you do with a print folio?

The traditional thing to do with a fine art photograph is to frame it and display it hanging on a wall. However, I have been told by more than one person that they love my work but they just don’t have any wall space available for one of my prints.

The main concept of this print folio is that of an unbound book. While any (or all) of the small prints in a folio like this can be matted and framed, one of the main alternatives is to view the prints “in hand.” The paper used is a heavy fine art paper with a luxurious texture and the prints are small enough to be easily viewed by holding them in your hand. When not being viewd, the folio will fit nicely on a bookshelf.

Of course matting and framing is also a good option, either singly or in groups. Because these are fairly small, they can be grouped in several ways, or two or three images can be combined into a single frame as a triptych.

Finally, one person I know described how she purchased a folio of prints and gave some of them as gifts.