Ruth came to see me about scanning a 35mm and 120 negative that were particulary important to her. With the new Nikon 9000 negative scanner being put through the trialling stage, I was happy to show Ruth what I could do.
The first image taken on 35mm shows Ruth and her husband’s Land Rover with Mount Ararat, Turkey, back in 1970.

The second image is a 120 negative. It shows Ruth’s husband on the left when around 12 years old, and his father. They had bought an old market garden, with ruins in the background, near Blairesk Hall, Edinburgh, Scotland. The top photo was enlarged to an 8 x 12 and the bottom 12 x 16, both producing nice clear images.

Grant Marshall from Marshall Arts called me enquiring about getting panoramic photo canvas prints made. Grant takes panoramic images with a specialised panorama film camera producing stunning photos. Grant and his wife Sally were looking for someone who could provide quality service and prints for their business. They had been disappointed previously with service and quality from other printing businesses so looked on the internet for someone new.

Grant and Sally liked what I had to say so made a visit to see my work. They were impresssed by the quality of the prints made on my Hewlett Packard Z3100 with Breathing Color Chromata canvas. Leaving an image with me to print, they came back to see the final result. Grant was very happy with the end print, later calling to tell me the canvas was a breeze to work with when mounting. The picture above shows a later order of Grant and Sally’s - a 2 metre long panorama looking over Pouto Lighthouse on the Kaipara Harbour, New Zealand. Their website can be viewed at:

Gavin came to see me about copying and restoring a series of old photos. They were photos of his grandfather and brothers working their business Rangiahua Sawmills based in OKaihau, Northland back in the 40s and 50s. During World War II the brothers had enlisted to fight in the war, but were brought back to run the mill to provide timber to build mine sweeper ships.

All these photos were taken on a Kodak Box Brownee camera. I find all these photos enlarge to quite large sizes providing excellent detail you normally wouldn’t see. All the photos were scanned with half of them restored as well. Gavin has just called back in to have some more photos fixed.

Karen came to see me about making a canvas print montage from a series of holiday photos. She and her husband had been on holiday over in Rome. They wanted a canvas mounted print made up to remind them of their trip. We discussed what photos would look best and what to use as a background. We eventually ended up with this image - Coliseum ruins turned to black and white in the background, one large photo above and three small ones below. Karen ordered a 54 x 40cm print. Karen was absolutely thrilled by the end result and only wished she’d made it bigger!

I had a well deserved break of two weeks after the busy Christmas rush, not that it feels like it. I managed to take a few days away down the line catching up with family and friends. Above is a panoramic photo I took of Raglan Beach, about 40 minutes drive west of Hamilton, New Zealand. This was a series of 11 photos stitched together to produce one large 145 Megabyte file - so it would easily make a large canvas print! Of course it was hastily shot on the day, but it goes to show what can be done.

Now back to catching up with the orders that came in over Christmas, no time to stop! Break Over!