How it Works

The GivingPictures program is very simple. We travel back into the bush until we find people who have never held a photo of themselves or their children. We capture their image on our digital cameras and then print them a photo.

History

The program was inspired by our trip to sub-Saharan Africa where we witnessed professional and amateur photographers take countless photographs of the local people. I thought it completely unfair that the mode was always take - never give. I was discomforted by the fate of the photographs, that the professional photographer would sell them and the amateurs display them, with no compensation of any kind to the African people featured in the images. I resolved that for the rest of our world travels we would carry a small portable printer and supplies, even if we were traveling by motorcycle with very limited storage space, and we would seek to, in some small way, even out the balance between taking photographs and giving the same. 

Print Life

The photographs produced by our Canon Selphy CP-730 printer have a rated archival life of about 100 years.

Printing Time

Printing time is about 60 seconds per 4x6 inch (10.2cm x 15.2cm) print.

Gear

The equipment requirements for the GivingPictures program consist of a compact, portable dye sublimation photo printer, printer supplies and one or more digital cameras.

Our current GivingPictures equipment package includes

• Canon Selphy CP-730 printer 

• Canon CBA CP-100 printer car battery adapter kit (powers the printer with a vehicle's battery)

• One or more of our Canon digital cameras listed here

Printer Technology

The printers use a dye sublimation process to produce the prints. The colors are produced by multiple passes of the printer paper past a thermal printing head while in contact with the corresponding segment of the CMY (cyan, magenta and yellow) printer ink ribbons. The print makes a final pass over the print head to apply a sealing overcoat, which is the last segment of the four part printer ribbon.

Consumables Cost

The printer paper and ink ribbons come in a set, with the ribbons matched to the number of prints in the pack. We try to buy KP-108IP (100 print) packs whenever possible as they are most economical. Typical cost for the KP-108IP pack is ~$25.00 USD plus the cost of shipping to wherever we are in the world.