why prints matter
This week, go and get yourself a few prints of your favourite photographs you have taken. If you already have prints of these photographs, find other pictures that you've taken that perhaps family or friends like and get them printed. Share them out hand-to-hand. Post them with letters. Write on the back of them and use them as postcards. Whatever. Just get a generous round of prints done.
When was the last time you got yourself prints of photographs you've taken with your digital camera? Do you get them printed often? If not, why not?
After all, what would you do (and what would your kids, your grand kids and their kids do) if eventually the imaging servers were taken off-line and were to die, with all the digital memories stored on them being lost to digital nothingness? We might not have the negatives or slides of our families taken decades ago, but at least we've got the photo albums, or the box of photographs under the bed or in the cupboard.
For me, I have felt the effect of film versus digital, especially when it comes to prints.
Whenever you went and processed a roll of film, you'd pay for a set of prints as well. Unless you wanted to do your own printing at home (and thus had the equipment to do so), you would rarely ever ask the lab to do a 'dev and no cut'. Every roll of film I shot as a kid with disposable cameras the like all came with a set of prints to keep, deface or share.
With the development and constant improvements to digital technology, not that many people have their photos printed anymore. Even though printing is really cheap these days, it's a case of people not being bothered to upload pictures at a time to a website or having to go to the shop with a CD and sit there to wait for everything to load up to the lab's computer system. With sites like Flickr, earlier imaging hosts like Photobucket, early blogging systems (Blogger, Typepad, LiveJournal &c.) and of course e-mail, these have brought about the ability to 'share' without having to get a set of prints done.
I find it hard to have stuff printed now, purely because I have shot so much digitally that I feel I'd be overwhelmed trying to pick out pictures I want printed and put into an album. Even though the 'drag and drop' facilities they have for creating photo books is too much for me sometimes. Nevertheless, I still manage to get quite a lot of stuff printed to send to friends, as well as enlargements once in a blue moon for clients. Then yesterday I fired up Photobox, an excellent quality printing website I have used for years, and for the first time in ages I ordered an enlargement for myself to use as a 'test' print for one of the frames I'd bought from IKEA.
I hooked it up on the wall above the sofa, which has remained blank for years. Levelled it out. Re-adjusted.
I stood back.
I know that it is a photograph that has probably been taken time and time again, but I don't give a monkeys. I felt this warm and fuzzy feeling of achievement. It got me thinking though: When I'd first uploaded the photograph to Aperture, obviously the biggest resolution I would get to fit on my screen would be something along the lines of a 4x6. So to see it on my wall above where I sit as a 12x16 wasn't quite the same – it was better. The resolution of my 5D meant that it was really more suited to enlargements (because when I get 4x6 prints printed, they don't quite seem so good).
"Looks f*cking awesome," I thought to myself. I even went to wake up Mike to show him and he was suitably impressed.
I wanted to take a shot of me sitting on the sofa looking proud as anything beneath my work, but I am still in my bedclothes and my hair is a bit of a bird's nest at the moment. ;)
why prints matter
This week, go and get yourself a few prints of your favourite photographs you have taken. If you already have prints of these photographs, find other pictures that you've taken that perhaps family or friends like and get them printed. Share them out hand-to-hand. Post them with letters. Write on the back of them and use them as postcards. Whatever. Just get a generous round of prints done.
When was the last time you got yourself prints of photographs you've taken with your digital camera? Do you get them printed often? If not, why not?
After all, what would you do (and what would your kids, your grand kids and their kids do) if eventually the imaging servers were taken off-line and were to die, with all the digital memories stored on them being lost to digital nothingness? We might not have the negatives or slides of our families taken decades ago, but at least we've got the photo albums, or the box of photographs under the bed or in the cupboard.
For me, I have felt the effect of film versus digital, especially when it comes to prints.
Whenever you went and processed a roll of film, you'd pay for a set of prints as well. Unless you wanted to do your own printing at home (and thus had the equipment to do so), you would rarely ever ask the lab to do a 'dev and no cut'. Every roll of film I shot as a kid with disposable cameras the like all came with a set of prints to keep, deface or share.
With the development and constant improvements to digital technology, not that many people have their photos printed anymore. Even though printing is really cheap these days, it's a case of people not being bothered to upload pictures at a time to a website or having to go to the shop with a CD and sit there to wait for everything to load up to the lab's computer system. With sites like Flickr, earlier imaging hosts like Photobucket, early blogging systems (Blogger, Typepad, LiveJournal &c.) and of course e-mail, these have brought about the ability to 'share' without having to get a set of prints done.
I find it hard to have stuff printed now, purely because I have shot so much digitally that I feel I'd be overwhelmed trying to pick out pictures I want printed and put into an album. Even though the 'drag and drop' facilities they have for creating photo books is too much for me sometimes. Nevertheless, I still manage to get quite a lot of stuff printed to send to friends, as well as enlargements once in a blue moon for clients. Then yesterday I fired up Photobox, an excellent quality printing website I have used for years, and for the first time in ages I ordered an enlargement for myself to use as a 'test' print for one of the frames I'd bought from IKEA.
I hooked it up on the wall above the sofa, which has remained blank for years. Levelled it out. Re-adjusted.
I stood back.
I know that it is a photograph that has probably been taken time and time again, but I don't give a monkeys. I felt this warm and fuzzy feeling of achievement. It got me thinking though: When I'd first uploaded the photograph to Aperture, obviously the biggest resolution I would get to fit on my screen would be something along the lines of a 4x6. So to see it on my wall above where I sit as a 12x16 wasn't quite the same – it was better. The resolution of my 5D meant that it was really more suited to enlargements (because when I get 4x6 prints printed, they don't quite seem so good).
"Looks f*cking awesome," I thought to myself. I even went to wake up Mike to show him and he was suitably impressed.
I wanted to take a shot of me sitting on the sofa looking proud as anything beneath my work, but I am still in my bedclothes and my hair is a bit of a bird's nest at the moment. ;)