Finally, here is a second Piezography print.

Making Piezography prints turns out to be much more challenging than I expected.  The subtle differences between an image on a screen and an image on paper are quite large when one actually confronts them.

I suppose that the difficulty partially comes from the fact that the images are already done on screen.  There is a step of translating in printing them.  As I already mentioned, our computer screen generally has a much wider range of dark and light, but on paper we have a tactile subtlety that can’t be matched with an image on screen, at least not today.  The Piezography printer setup simply has the capability to print with higher resolution than what we see on screen.  Also there must be some fundamental differences in perceiving an image with an artificial light source behind the screen and an actual object reflecting a natural light source.

As we are all aware, the visual experience on the web truncates part of our perception and renders it somewhat different than the actual experience.  But I guess that’s a topic that should be discussed separately.

Jon Cone, the developer of Piezography, provides a preview setting for Photoshop which mimics how the image will appear on paper.  The setting is quite useful in the process and I will certainly use it for making new images.

I can describe the general difference between screen and paper but simply translating it mechanically just doesn’t work as you’d imagine.  It’s like playing the same song with different instruments perhaps.  I want to fully utilize the timbre of the printing method.  And since I am the one who came up with the visual narrative, naturally, I feel the liberty of turning the process into a whole new making process.

Anyway, I’m very happy with the print.  Hope you like it too.