Taking print further

Taking Print Further

Taking Print Further

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odak produced a deluxe edition of our book, Rochester from the Air, to demonstrate special capabilities of their NexPress digital color press, including light black ink for smooth highlight rendering, and dimensional printing to create a simulated leather texture on the covers.

The book was on display at Kodak’s first “Taking Print Further� global customer event in Building 28 at Eastman Business Park. Building 28 was originally built in the 1950s as a 333,000-square-foot employee recreation center. Housed in the 6-story structure was a swimming pool, gymnasium, bowling alleys, rifle range, billiard room, camera club, auditorium-theater, handball and squash courts, and a sun deck, as well as cafeteria and service dining room areas. The swimming pool on the fifth floor was never completed for cost reasons, spawning a Rochester urban myth that the architects forgot to calculate the weight of the water when they designed it. The 1,964seat theater was completed in 1958, and recently the Rochester Association of Performing Arts (RAPA) has signed a long-term lease to use the facility for stage productions.

Three RIT Photo students who contributed aerial panoramic images to the book, Madelyn Hammond, Justin Scalera, and Ryan Flanagan, attended the event. They explained to attendees from around the world how the photographs were made. Among the guests were several who were former students of mine.

For many years in the 1990s I taught a seminar on digital printing to Kodak employees in the basement of Building 28. Now, a quarter century later, I found myself on the third floor of that same building with born-digital students showing a magnificent book printed on an incredible Kodak digital color printing press. They have no idea how thrilling the experience was for one who saw the whole digital revolution from the beginning.

Frank Cost March 1, 2018

About the Author Frank Cost is the James E. McGhee Professor of Visual Media in the School of Photography at Rochester Institute of Technology. He has taught a wide variety of courses in the field of visual media for more than three decades.

Frank has been photographing professionally since 1975 and has authored both textbooks and experimental photobooks exploring new forms of graphic expression enabled by digital technologies. He can be contacted at frank.cost@rit.edu. To learn more about Frank Cost and RIT, visit the following URL: http://cias.rit.edu/faculty-staff/2 This book is a Fossil Press Instant Book, published on the same day as the events depicted. Most of the photographs were taken automatically with the camera on a two-second interval timer. The rest were taken the old fashioned way, by a conscious photographer looking through a viewfinder.

See if you can tell the difference.

Books that gain value with the passing of time.

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