Printed Matter - ISSUE 12

Prints For The People + LL Membership Club Now Open!

Me with my Sony Cyber Shot in hand at Coolangata beach. Photo taken by Lux Lumen on Adox Scala in the L35AF.

Join The Lucy Lumen Members Club!

I am so excited to announce the launch of my memberships club over on YouTube! I will be doing monthly live streams for all members and there will even be cameos from the mystery man Lux Lumen!!! We will do a live hang out where we answer questions, give updates, BTS content, chat about hot topics and just generally connect with you guys in real time. Members also receive a few other fun perks too and I have priced it at an affordable rate so go on over and check it out. A huge thank you in advance to anyone who joins and the bigger it grows the more I will try and offer! Hit the button below to join, I’ll see you in there :)

I feel like we always hear people in the film community say these two things…

“Print your work” or “Get your photos off the screen and in your hands”

Whilst I agree with this sentiment, there is also a huge barrier to a lot of us in printing our own photos. Sure, some labs will still give you prints but lots don’t offer that anymore. Places like Walmart, or Kmart here in Australia, do printing but it tends to not be of the highest quality. I myself know very little about printing, I have few experiences even of seeing my own work being physically in front of me and tbh I find it kind of an exclusive and intimidating world to step into.

If things seem simple to grasp, are easy to understand and the stakes are low, it suddenly makes me wanna drop what I’m doing and get involved ASAP! That probably speaks volumes to my character as a person but this isn’t a therapy session so let’s get back to printing.

In Praise Of Kyle

In a world full of “film bros” classic cars, beanies, wardrobes full of Carhart garments that ironically no one is doing any manual labor in, oh and not to mention gifted M6’s that are apparently saving the film community, another dude on YouTube can be a hard pill to swallow.

Insert - Kyle Mcdougall. The man who shares his journey without an ounce of pompous attitude and offers as much technical advice as he does creative and artistic. He seems to have his feet planted firmly in both camps and that it something I really admire. I am guilty of completely ignoring anything technical and embracing my mistakes even when inside I am annoyed I didn’t listen when Lux was explaining….blah blah blah, about whatever new camera I was using.

Kyle is a great middle ground for me. A person I feel I can learn from easily and relate to at the same time. This video I’ve shared above is one I’ve watched across two days, on what I call, my lunch break. Which happens around 11:45am and lasts till midday. Luca will have just gone to sleep and I eat my lunch in front of my laptop with a carefully selected YouTube video. Often it’s a cooking one if I’m honest, but the last two days Kyle kept me company while I slurped chicken brodo with tortellini. Delicious.

I was so excited to hear Kyle talk about sequencing, curating and matching his work for future zines or projects as I myself have been going through that process and find it difficult. I liked that this printer he was showcasing was simple, easy, cheap and it even had a fun and silly kind of name, Canon Selphy, that for me made it seem like something I can vibe with. Kyle mentions how prints were a larger part of his business in the past so of course he had the top shelf printer with all the specs, but now was just living his best life with the Canon Selphy. I was sitting there thinking “hell yeah Kyle, this is exactly what I need” the perfect portable and easy to use printer that is on demand, affordable and will allow me to print off these little 4 x 6 images and do one, or all, of these things with…

• Give to my friends and family

• Cover a wall with all my fav shots

• Use to help me sequence, find patterns and make zines, books etc.

• Write on the back of and send to you guys once I have my zine and other products made (more on that soon)

• Make a family photo album each year for Luca to look back on

• Prepare for exhibitions in the future by seeing my work physically in front of me ( I am in 2 exhibitions this year and plan to keep submitting work and striving for more opportunities like that)

So there you go, I am SOLD on this little printer and even if you aren’t, I think Kyle’s video is useful and exactly what we need right now. We don’t need Luxury cameras, or printers we can’t afford we need more accessibility within photography whether that’s the Canon Selphy, a digicam, or a roll of Fomapan 100.

One last thing I wanna highlight this week is another legend making prints available to all of us, and that is Jason Hunter. You may know him as Fuji Hunter on IG he takes those stunning photos of corners, makes a killer reel and runs the website 2hourphoto. I saw on his story he had prints available for free through something called Gumroad. I jumped over and checked it out and you should too!

Jason is offering his 20 most popular photos free for download or you can sling him a few bucks like I did to say thanks for capturing all those moments he shares with us. I loved this concept and idea and I just think this is such a cool way to share your work with the community.

Be sure to check out Gumroad as well if you are a creator it has many options for selling things for as little as $1 or free! If you wanna get started sharing something online I think this is a really great way to do it. For physical print sales that are easy to set up and free, where you can set your own prices check out darkroom.tech for more info. If you would like to buy a print of mine to support the newsletter and the channel then hit the button below to check them out.

I hope you all have an amazing weekend full of lots of time to create, shoot and relax. Thank you so much for reading and if you aren’t subscribed hit that button so you are on the mailing list and you’ll get Love Lucy straight to your inbox every Friday. xx