Red River Paper Blog
How-To-Do-It
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Back to Basics: Using Focus Creatively
By Suzanne D. Williams— You can exert a great deal of creative focus control over your images once you learn how to use some of the basic functions your digital camera offers. First, though, let’s define a few terms that are essential to the process. Photographers who use the term “point of focus” refer to...read more
Think Inside the Box For Dramatic Flower Photos
By Christine Pentecost– I’ve always been intrigued by photos of flowers on pure black backgrounds, so last summer, I decided to do some black box photography, using an abundance of mountain wildflowers blooming around our Montana homestead as subjects. I began by making a box that had four sides: right, left, top and back (no...read more
Favorite Photo Places: An Amazing Wildlife Refuge
By Ron Wolfe and Will Keener– You get to the Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge, south of Socorro, NM, at least a half an hour before sunrise. You position yourself with back to the wind, so the birds will fly over you; your back to the rising sun, even better. In the near dawn,...read more
Take Great Holiday Party Photos!
By Maggie Kornahrens– There will be a plethora of cameras and smartphones at every party and soiree in the coming weeks and if you want to capture the spirit of the holidays in fresh and exciting ways, be willing to branch out of the ordinary. Cameras these days are advanced enough so that anybody can...read more
Kaitlin Walsh– Merging Art With Anatomy
by Arthur H. Bleich– Kaitlin Walsh is a biomedical artist– a rarity in the art world. Her beautifully crafted, abstract anatomy watercolor paintings celebrate the wonders of the human body in ways so imaginative it’s sometimes hard not to fall in love with her deadly cancer cells or even mundane parts of the human body,...read more
Spark Up Your Holiday Photos!
By Suzanne D. Williams– We’ve all done it, taken that endless stream of holiday photographs with the same people doing something, only we can’t exactly tell what. Then there’s the familiar, “Oh look at the tree!” only it’s slightly blurry and the top is missing. Sound familiar? Who doesn’t have similar Christmas and other holiday pictures...read more
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Our National Parks Odyssey: Ups and Downs
This is the second part of an ongoing series about Red River Pro Andrew Slaton and his wife Ellen who, along with their two dogs and a cat, have hit the road full time in a travel trailer to seek adventure and photograph all the National Parks. There have also been some side trips, some...read more
Fine Art Inkjet Printing
By Jim Nickelson– I’m often asked from friends, family, and even other photographers about why I bother printing my work when the whole world seems to be moving digital. For me, the reason is simple: creating a fine art print is my primary purpose in making photographs. As is likely becoming obvious, I am a...read more
For Love Of Lions
By Kenn Jacobs– My first published photo in a book was a pub sign–The Old Red Lion–shot in a now-forgotten English village. It wasn’t until many years later, though, that I had an epiphany when I came face to face with the sculpture of the Lion of Lucerne in Switzerland. Carved in 1820 as a...read more
Make Big Images With Small Desktop Printers
By Christine Pentecost– I have a beautiful, scenic image in my collection that begged to be displayed larger than could be output by my desktop printer– which only can use letter-sized paper. Surely, I thought, there must be some way to solve this problem and, as it turns out, there is. Image Splitter is a...read more
Exhibit Your Photos for Prestige and Profit
    By Peter E. Randall– For most photographers, the chance to have a one-person exhibit is an exciting opportunity. Then reality sets in and it’s apparent that having an exhibit is more stressful and difficult than making the photographs in the first place. The most ideal opportunity is to be invited to show...read more
Our National Parks Odyssey
By Andrew Slaton– Steam from the early morning chill rises off the Green River in the Wind River Range of Wyoming.  Squaretop, an aptly named handsome granite mountain in the distance catches the first rays of the sun, rising somewhere I cannot yet see. I sip my scalding, black coffee in our trailer and wait. This...read more
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Add Value and Security to Your Images
By Arthur H. Bleich– If you currently sell (or would like to sell) prints of your best work here’s a technique I’ve used successfully to assure buyers that if they resell my photographs some day it can be proven that they are genuinely mine and not unauthorized copies. I began doing this a few years ago...read more
Get Maximum Shadow Detail in Your Prints
By Tim Grey– In many cases a print will not reflect the full level of shadow detail as actually exists in the image file. Instead, that shadow gets “blocked up,†similar to the way shadow detail gets clipped in an exposure that is too dark. You can compensate for this issue by essentially brightening the...read more
Fuse Your Photos to Stone and Tile for Unique Gifts and Stunning Displays
By Christine Pentecost– Finding a unique niche in today’s world of photography is not the easiest thing to do. Fortunately, something as simple as making your own coasters, trivets or hanging wall decorations using inexpensive tile, Mod Podge and Red River photo papers is an easy yet wonderfully creative way to share your photography. I begin...read more
How To Shoot Prize-Winning Photos, Part 2
by Arthur H. Bleich– We continue with Part 2 of How To Shoot Prize-Winning Photos. In case you missed it, Part 1 was posted on 8/1/16. Stash the Flash. Nothing kills a picture quicker than lighting it with on-camera flash. Pasty, washed out faces and big black shadows guarantee it will never achieve prize-winning status. Unless you’ve...read more
How To Shoot Prize-Winning Photos, Part 1
by Arthur H. Bleich– Over the years, I’ve analyzed what separates prize-winning images from the rest and I’d like to share with you what I’ve discovered in this two-part series. Even if prizes are not your goal, you can take a creative leap forward if you keep these suggestions in mind. Every pro has them burned...read more
FREE GIFTS! The Nik Collection from Google and Nik Tutorials from GreyLearning
Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the past decade, you know just how coveted Nik imaging software programs are. Google bought Nik in 2012 and has announced that as they focus on long-term investments in building photo editing tools for mobile use, including Google Photos and Snapseed, they’re going to make the Nik...read more
Tri-Fold Brochures Can Yield Big Profits
                                            By Arthur H. Bleich– My first introduction to tri-fold brochures came in...read more
Paper Crafts: Make Your Own Valentine Puzzle Purse
Red River’s greeting card papers are perfect for Valentine’s Day cards  but for something really special,  use Red River’s 12×12-sized paper to make a Valentine Puzzle Purse that will enthrall your beloved and endear you to them forever. Puzzle Purse Valentines made their first appearance in Jane Austin’s time and were the rage from 1700s...read more
Cash In On Greeting Cards!
By Drew Hendrix– Electronic greeting cards may be click ‘n easy but the public still has a voracious appetite for printed cards; all it takes to enter the market and start making money is a printer, the right Red River Paper card stock and, of course, your best images. The Greeting Card Association estimates...read more
Richard Baker: War and Peace
By Arthur H. Bleich– In 1966, Richard Baker aimed his M-16 at the Vietnamese; today he uses an arsenal of analog cameras to shoot them. His goal is to photograph all 54 ethnic tribes in the country where he was once sent to fight. Now 68, the twice-wounded Army veteran has been back to Vietnam...read more
What To Think About BEFORE You Shoot
 By Arthur H. Bleich– Chances are you already know about different post production work flow techniques that can be used in Photoshop and/or Lightroom after you’ve shot your pictures. But it’s equally important to establish a workflow you can follow before you even make the shot. Here are nine things you should think about before you lift...read more
Quickstart Guide To Inkjet Papers
By Drew Hendrix –Today’s selection of inkjet papers provides amazing creative opportunities for photo enthusiasts by offering quality, control and cost savings previously unknown to photographers who worked with conventional photo papers. There are many more options to let you match the paper’s surface to suit your photographic style. Weight, texture, shade and more can...read more
Frame Your Images for Maximum Impact!
By Arthur H. Bleich– Throughout history, great works of art have been showcased in frames and your best images deserve no less. It’s amazing how they’ll stand out and gain stature; a framed photograph seems to announce: “Look at me, I’m worthy of viewing!†But how do you choose the right frame? For years I’ve...read more
Backup Therapy for Paranoid Photographers, Part 2
By Tim Grey– Variability. I am often asked whether it is best to use a full backup solution where the backup is replaced each time you perform a backup, or an incremental backup where only changes made since the last backup are copied. My answer is to use both of these approaches. There are advantages...read more
Backup Therapy for Paranoid Photographers, Part 1
By Tim Grey– To me a big part of why I capture photographic images in the first place is to preserve memories that are important to me. By definition, if I intentionally pressed the shutter release button on the camera then the photo I captured is important to me in some way. Therefore, I want...read more
Nothing Says it Better Than A Photographic Print
By Drew Hendrix– I have a friend whose daughter died when she was a teenager but he still greets her every day with: “Hi kiddo, how’s it going?†And he says she always replies with a smile from within her picture frame on the wall. He told me that when he views her image on...read more
Great Photo Ops Lurk In Unexpected Places
By Arthur H. Bleich– I rarely just wander around looking for good pictures. Instead, I almost always have a clearly defined goal in mind when I sling my Pentax over the shoulder and set out for a shooting session. For example, doing a series of images at the town’s train station in the early morning light,...read more
Fine Tune Your Exposures With “Smart†Bracketing
by Arthur H. Bleich– Most digital cameras have an auto-bracketing feature that allows three or more images to be shot manually or automatically in rapid succession, each at a different exposure. The first picture is exposed at what the camera’s light meter determines to be correct, followed by an under-exposed image and then another that’s...read more
