I often find that, once I've been going on a project for a while, there comes a point where I start to get carried away, making bigger and more complex pictures, combining and recycling more and more elements from photographs, existing digital images, and graphical frames and patterns that I've put together previously. You might call it the "decadent" phase, and I usually dial it back a bit.
However, with these "frame" pictures, I've been happy to let excess rip for a while, as it seems to suit them. In the case of these three the actual image area is about 80cm x 32cm @ 300 ppi, which would result in a framed object about 95cm x 45cm: a little on the large size, not least because I couldn't print them myself. However, printed at a tighter 360 ppi they're 66cm x 26cm (call it 80cm x 40cm framed), still large but not impossible if I use A3+ roll-paper. Something, admittedly, I have the capacity to do, but never have (I'm not even entirely sure what I've done with the roll-feed thingies). In reality I'll probably either never print them, or get them done at theprintspace, whose services I recommend to any UK or EU photographer. In which case, why not go large?
Well, one good reason not to is the cost of the framing; another is the difficulty of storing very large prints unframed. I've been here before. I seem to go through these occasional periods of gigantism, producing larger and larger pictures, until the point of impracticality is reached, and the benefits of small pictures become compellingly clear again. I still have some quite large framed work adding to the clutter in our house, pictures that were shown at an exhibition a couple of years ago, but failed to sell. I'd sort of assumed they would sell, and the price, obviously, included the cost of the framing. As it is, I'm stuck with the bloody things; a permanent reminder that small is not only beautiful, but cheap to frame, easy to store, and generally more popular with the buying public. Although, paradoxically, my experience is that larger pictures seem to be much easier to get into an exhibition in the first place: gatekeepers and buyers are not the same people, of course.
And yet here I am making these large pictures again... Some people never learn, and I suspect I am one of them.
2 comments:
Large prints or not, I appreciate that over the years you've uploaded larger versions of your images to the Hat blog. These three fill the browser screen quite nicely, thank you. In your working stiff days, you were a lot stingier about image size.
Kent,
Yes, these are 35cm wide at 96 ppi. The size on screen is obviously always relative, depending on the size and resolution of the screen you work with, but it's true I used to keep them relatively small, following the recommendations of various paranoid "experts" on the dangers of image theft (not a serious danger, at least where my work is concerned, I have since come to realise). And at least I didn't cover them with anti-theft watermarks!
Mike
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