How two photographers are exploring the versatility of Canon professional photo printers for their prints, books and exhibitions

Photographers Julie Stamenic and Hanneke Van Camp are both drawn to the natural world for their work. Luxembourg-based Julie specialises in photographing horses for clients, as well as creating artistic nature and surf photography, while Hanneke finds warmth and beauty in the frozen north. She’s based in Belgium but spends the majority of the year travelling through Arctic Europe and capturing evocative images with her Canon EOS R5.

Both photographers offer prints for sale, but they are exploring how having a Canon imagePROGRAF PRO-310 professional photo printer in their home offices can bring added value to their work.

Julie has always printed photos for clients, but says she initially avoided doing it herself as she thought it looked too difficult. "There was this barrier of colour grading and printer management that sounded complicated." She has had mixed results with outsourcing her printing, some good experiences and some really bad – "having a pale image that’s been printed super-saturated, and the company say it's your fault" – so she wants to take control of her printing to be sure of getting the results she wants.

With a Canon imagePROGRAF PRO-310 installed in her home office, she can now offer clients a true hands-on approach to quality control at every stage of the process. The LUCIA PRO II inks will ensure that prints last a lifetime, too. "For me, it’s important to be able to offer a museum-quality print, as that really adds value."

As well as selling prints directly to clients, Julie will be offering prints through her website – although she's still working on her business model. "It’s hard to know whether to release collections on a monthly, quarterly or yearly basis, or if it's better to have a print shop that's permanently updated with new prints," she says. "I also need to think about which papers I want to offer and whether I will include a framing option too. So I need to define my offering first."

The Canon imagePROGRAF PRO-310 won't just be a workhorse in Julie’s home office. Thanks to the manageable size of this professional printer, she’s also looking at taking it with her when she’s shooting on location at a stableyard.

"If I’m doing a full day with three or four clients booked at the stables, then I would have time to shoot photos, select the best images with each client, edit the images and then print them. At the end of the day, people could come and collect their prints. To keep things simple, I'll probably have to do just one or two prints per client, but it'll be nice to be able to give people a physical A3+ photo after a shoot. Images aren't made to live on an SD card or a hard drive, and a print is the last link in the chain."

Running workshops is a core part of Julie's photography business, and she's considering how she can add value with the printer here too. "The courses are focused on learning about photography, but we do post-production in the afternoon and I think it could be interesting to show that printing is actually really fun."

Like Julie, Hanneke has been exploring ways that she can get the most from her Canon professional photo printer beyond selling prints online. She employed it to help in the preparation of her first solo photography exhibition and fine-art photo book.

Seeing images in print offers a completely new way to engage with them, compared with simply clicking through them online. People connect with your work on another level, agrees Hanneke, "especially if it's an exhibition, because you can curate images to tell a story. You can shape how people experience it, and almost make them feel as though they're walking through a nature reserve. It's more personal than viewing images on social media, because you decide how the work is seen – you can influence where people look and maybe even make them pause a little longer to look at an image."

Hanneke has approached the layout of her book, Sápmi – Living Landscapes, in a similar way, arranging the warmer and cooler images so that readers experience them differently depending on how they move through the pages. "The way the pages have been cut means that you can see all the photos with golden tones, or only the blue ones," she says. "Or you can move through more slowly and see the alternating warm and cool images.

"For me, it really symbolises the contrasts in northern Europe. That's why I wanted to do it that way, and it’s nice to be able to play around with that in an exhibition as well. That kind of thing is more difficult to achieve if you don’t show your work in printed form."

There's a lightness of touch to Hanneke's landscape images – soft colours, delicate textures and details glimpsed in the mist – which could prove challenging to render accurately in print. By using the Pattern Print feature in Canon’s Professional Print & Layout software with the Canon imagePROGRAF PRO-310, however, it's possible to create a contact sheet proof showing variations of an image, then choose the one that matches your intention before printing.

Choosing a photo paper that supports your creative vision is an important part of bringing an image to life in print. As well as being equipped with a library of profiles for Canon photo papers such as Pro Premium Matte and Premium Fine Art Smooth, third-party paper profiles can be installed and used in Professional Print & Layout. "Most of the time, I print on Hahnemühle Photo Rag – either Ultra Smooth or 308," Hanneke says. "For the exhibition prints, I've selected Canson Rag Photographique. It's really smooth and super-matte, and I think it's so beautiful with the snowy scenes."

As mentioned, Julie is still weighing up which papers to use. "I really like matte paper, though, as I don't like it when you have reflections on prints." Julie really means that – she has even removed the glass from some of her own framed prints hanging on the walls of her home.

If Julie could offer one piece of advice for fellow photographers starting to print their own work, she says to keep it simple. "Don’t spread yourself too thin – perhaps stick with only two types of paper and two sizes to begin with, otherwise it becomes too complex. And learn as much as you can about colour management. As photographers, sometimes we're not into that side of things as much as we probably should be."

Printing has also made Julie reflect on her own creative process. "But of course, I'm hoping printing will improve my photography as well, because it will challenge me – you don't look at your photos in the same way anymore when you know you're going to print them."

Be prepared to make mistakes when you start printing, suggests Hanneke. "That's where you learn. I think it's good to just try new things and see what works for you. There are so many different papers you can try, and once you hold your first print it's something special – and so different from seeing your work on a computer display."