I tend to get obsessed with detail oriented things and the lead-up to our official PhotoSeed launch party on Saturday, July 16th, 2011 was no exception. First off were the invitations. With my goal of making each invite a kind of keepsake for recipients attending or not attending the party, I first tried running thick-stock watercolor paper through an ink-jet printer and got results which were not consistent, with roller lines from the printer making more of an impression than Jay David’s outstanding PhotoSeed logo and custom typography did, and with the printer rejecting the thick paper stock on the second run through.

Just wanted to spead them all out one last time before entrusting their journey to Uncle Sam.

 Plan B entailed going to a well-known and fully capable print shop in our fair city. They were gracious and ran a comp on a high-end color laser copier but the color wasn’t even close, with the ink resembling an elastic skin on the paper surface.

 With my mind made up that the look of the invitations had to resemble a fine print, I revisited the idea of watercolor paper as Plan C, which involved part of a Saturday in St. Louis yakking to a very patient salesperson at a large art-supply store. I settled on some large sheets of French Arches watercolor-very thin- that would not pose a problem with the inkjet printer. I commenced in trimming them down to size in the store and later feeding them one by one into the printer, twice, in order to print the verso party particulars. Success at last. My wife Shannon came up with the groovy idea of incorporating a Haiku into the invite as well:

Fritter away!

Still have not opened Russia and a few other countries, but I'm looking forward to it.

 On launch day, beer, procured from 14 of the 17 countries currently represented in the PhotoSeed archive, was on hand for party tasting. An unexpected gesture from site developer Tyler Craft, who could not attend, seemed appropriate. A bottle of wine which he had ordered on the internet arrived in the morning and I used it later to raise a glass with thanks to everyone who has made PhotoSeed a reality. Thank You!

In the aftermath to the virtual ribbon cutting,  Spence, left, and PhotoSeed designer Jay David pay homage to a cyber-shrine of site developer Tyler Craft, (and himself-thank you very much) during the party.

Jay checks out one of the large plate Stieglitz gravures on the site (Wet Day on the Boulevard-Paris, 1894) using the lightbox mode.