Shooting landscapes with print in mind

When he's not leading Capture to Print photography workshops from his studio in Dorset, England, landscape photographer and print guru Andy Farrer can be found exploring quiet woodlands and beaches, enjoying the process of creating his own landscape images for fine art prints.

"Landscape images belong in print," says Andy, whose wintry picture of the Jurassic Coast – titled Bat's Head in the Snow – won top prize at the 2015 Landscape Photographer of the Year Awards. "Print evokes emotion and speaks on a deep level. It engages another sense, it's more tactile.

"I want to immerse and transport someone to that place where they can feel at peace and get away from their busy lives. You hold and treasure a good print. You don't just swipe it away like you do with a screen where images are consumed much more quickly."

Print runs through Andy's veins. His father oversaw a printing press and stationer's business which included a darkroom, and Andy took his childhood fascination with the print process into his photography studies at school, where he would find any excuse to take pictures so he had something new to print. "I was always print-led, whereas a lot of people that come into our studio have been shooting for years but have never printed a single thing."

Andy finds joy in helping other landscape photographers realise the potential of print, walking them through the intricate harmony between light and land, camera and editor, paper and ink. Decades of experience have sharpened Andy's professional knowhow, and he now shoots landscapes with his Canon EOS R5 to print on Canon imagePROGRAF PRO-4000 and PRO-1000 printers.

Here, he offers a fascinating glimpse at how those print intricacies play out, the benefits of a mirrorless camera, and carving a new path in a crowded photography genre. Canon Europe Product Marketing Lead, Suhaib Hussain, also shares which printers he recommends for printing landscapes and why.

"Landscape photography and print is a circular process rather than linear. When you start printing, you become aware of the things that don't necessarily translate to print very well, which informs your edit process and what you capture," says Andy.

It's just one of several key lessons he's learnt over the years.

Creative and technical details are all the more obvious when making large prints for extended viewing, so Andy adjusts his process accordingly. "For landscapes, I'll be out shooting the same thing again and again until I get exceptional conditions. For woodlands, it would be mist or a hard frost. We don't get many hoar frosts [a feathery frost named for its hair-like appearance] in the south of the UK, so whenever it is really cold I'm keen to get out."

Since upgrading from his Canon EOS 5D Mark III (now succeeded by the Canon EOS 5D Mark IV), Andy has customised his Canon EOS R5 for shooting landscapes – and the occasional photo of his dog. In addition to the EOS R5's 45MP resolution and In-body Image Stabilisation, he makes particular use of two more of the camera's key assets: focus peaking and live histogram.

"At the capture end, I need to know if my picture is sharp and that I haven't blown any detail [highlight clipping]," he explains. "If detail is soft, it will look even softer in print and the more you scrutinise it. Focus directly translates to print sharpness and so focus peaking is really helpful.

"A big advantage with my EOS R5 is that focus, exposure and histogram are displayed clearly through live view, or in the EVF, which is supremely helpful in bright light," Andy continues. "From a capture point of view you know that you have sharp focus with a mirrorless camera in a way that you couldn't be as sure of with traditional DSLRs."

The live histogram is based on the embedded JPEG (and not the RAW file), which reflects the in-camera picture style. For example, a high contrast Landscape Style might indicate clipping sometimes as much as 3EV before you even see it in the RAW file.

"It's a good thing to print," enthuses Andy. "It will add maturity and restraint to your processing. Every part of the image has a purpose. When looking at a print, that is exactly how the artist intends you to see it, whereas on screen you don't know the size of the device it is being viewed on, nor what brightness or colour temperature the screen is. Also, it's very difficult to convey the texture of land on a screen like you can with print."

Understanding the differences between print and screen is key to translating what is in your mind's eye when on location accurately onto paper. "A backlit screen is very different from light reflecting off a piece of paper that isn't illuminated," says Andy. "It's quite typical for inexperienced printers to make dark prints. At our print studio, we usually get sent dark digital files because people are looking at the pictures on a bright screen. But you can't turn up the brightness of a piece of paper."

Screen calibration to a known brightness value in conjunction with the printer is key, and Andy uses 80cdm2 for processing landscape photos.

When saturation has gone overboard, there can be colour clipping where those colours cannot be reproduced by the inks. Green hues tend to be difficult to print, for example. Soft proofing indicates which areas of the image are outside the capability of a selected printer and paper.

"Super-saturation and blown-out highlights are fine on a backlit screen, but when you are printing you really don't want this loss of detail because you'll end up with a print with no ink in certain areas, which looks weird. Bare paper catches the light differently, so you really want a bit of ink everywhere," explains Andy.

It is striking how a print-led landscape photographer like Andy can be on location and visualise the scene in print and which is the best paper to use. "When clients receive their print it's a tactile experience, so you want the paper to be part of the image. A misty woodland picture on a slightly textured matte paper has a real lovely quality to it."

There are two main types of printer to consider for landscape photographs: cut sheet and wide format. Cut sheet printers such as the Canon imagePROGRAF PRO-1000 can print up to A2 size, as well as panoramas, and are practically easier for large numbers of small prints with internal borders. Wide format printers such as the Canon imagePROGRAF PRO-4100 use a long roll of paper and offer greater workflow efficiency, including larger ink cartridges.

Photographers who need to print both wide format and cut sheet could use two Canon imagePROGRAF PRO printers together. "There are no discernible differences between prints on my PRO-4000 (now succeeded by the imagePROGRAF PRO-4100) and PRO-1000 printers," says Andy. "We've done the same image on the same paper and even interchanged the printer profiles, and the results are impossible to tell apart. You can process the images in the same way whether printing on either printer, so time is saved at the edit stage too. It's one less thing to go wrong."

Longevity and colour accuracy are vital components for prints that will be sold or exhibited. "Pigment inks have a much longer lifespan than dye-based inks when exposed to light and gas," says Canon Europe's Suhaib Hussain. "Also, a wider range of inks supported by the printer means a wider colour gamut is achievable in prints, crucial for landscape photographers who want to display colours as accurately as possible."

Best cut sheet printer for landscape photography: Canon imagePROGRAF PRO-1000

This A2 cut sheet printer boasts a 2400dpi print resolution and LUCIA PRO 12-pigment ink cartridge system and is ideal for a home setup. "The imagePROGRAF PRO-1000 can be easily integrated into a studio or workspace," says Suhaib. "It also has an extra trick up its sleeve – it can expand the print length up to 1.2m for panoramic prints."

Best wide format printer for landscape photography: Canon imagePROGRAF PRO-4100

With a 2400dpi print resolution, wide-ranging media support that includes matte, gloss, fine art, canvas and baryta papers, the ability to store numerous custom print profiles, 12 LUCIA PRO pigment ink colours and ink cartridge capacity up to 700ml, the imagePROGRAF PRO-4100 is the ultimate wide format printer for landscape photographers. "It shares all the same core benefits as the entire imagePROGRAF PRO printer series, but with the ability to print on a roll 110cm (44in) wide," says Suhaib.

Whichever printer you use and however you choose to use it, Andy has some final words of advice for creating memorable landscape photo prints. "Print more often and slow down when you're printing – consider the longevity of an image. It's about creating something to treasure."