Personal use - higher end/ fine art papers yes or no?

Just a curious question. The weather over here in the southern hemisphere is warming up and I have been a bit more active with photography. Most people at my camera club use labs and simply use the Fuji Archive Crystal paper or maybe a lab that uses a large format inkjet or they might have their own A3 Canon or Epson printer and use mainly premium semi-gloss paper. The prints are generally matted up and put behind a glass. Those are not fine art, museum / exhibition paper. For those of you that use these high end papers when do you use them? I obviously don't sell prints.

 

 

Cheers.

If I end printing my stuff I'd draw a line between digital and conventional B&W. For digital I'd prefer a tough finish like either RA4 paper from a lab or some solid rather glossy (no Chromolux) stock at work; either laser printed or UV hardened Inkjet + clearcoat. For personal use I would love to stay away from delicate surfaces like ordinary unfinished inkjet or offset on uncoated paper, where clearcoating would be futile. Among domestic digital printers the dye sub ones looked so far most convincing but I am too cheap to buy into them. Maybe I'll get a Canon Selphy someday, to produce passport pictures. I wish there were B&W laser home printers capable of producing newspaper quality. For me an ability to stand unused in a corner is a very important trait of a home printer.

That's just me. I appreciate when my stuff can stand a bit of abuse and I am kind of tempted to someday own a box of SRA 3 prints to go through without too many worries about the prints.

 

In a wet darkroom FB paper has an appeal worth going for, so that is where I might end using something from the fine art / museum / exhibition realm.

FTR: I am a pressman by dayjob and it isn't unlikely that the job messed with my attitude and mindset towards printing.

Anything that especially appeals to me I print with a Canon Pro-100 printer on Hahnemuehl photo rag pearl, 320 gsm, for my portfolio. Tests for tacking up on the wall to see how they wear on me get put on cheap glossy paper. The good paper is expensive but beautiful-- I wish there had been a silver paper like it when I had a darkroom! I chop it up to make small 3x5 test prints first, until I get what I want so there is not much waste using it.