civilized ku # 72 ~ size is a relative thing
Friday, December 28, 2007 at 09:37AM 
Size is relative • click to embiggenTwo good questions, relative to the size thing, emerged from yesterday's entry.
#1) from Jim Jirka; "If you don't want to go back to the big ass film, just take 40 digital images and stitch. That would allow you your large print size, without the costs of film ... Do you think that would be an alternative?"
I have been thinking along those lines but it seems that the problem with that is motion. If things move, and they do in the natural world - water, clouds, all manner of things in the wind - there is the problem of registration when you stitch. I have run into this problem previously and have been able, with a lot of hand work, to solve it to my satisfaction so I guess it could be a solution. Before I make the leap backwards(?) to film, I will be giving it a try.
#2) from Aaron Hobson, son of The Landscapist; "what about the logistics of these prints being sold??? that is my big question. Who has 25 feet of wall space for a photograph?"
I have often wondered about the same issues and I suspect very few people have that kind of space. I suspect that most of the really big photographs being produced are intended for a single audience - curators at museums or wealthy individuals who purchase and then donate them to museums in order to create an art-patron legacy.
But, to clarify my 'big' intentions, I am iclined to the notion of moderately big, which is to say (in the case of my square stuff), a print size of 4×4 feet. A size that, in the confines of an 'average' home, is very large but not so large as to require a single-purpose room to accommodate it.
Reader Comments (4)
I own a 36x36 print. Framed it is about 45x45 or something in that area. It is very large but fortunately I had a very tall room and a big chunk of wall space to put it on. So 48x48 matted and framed would be difficult to fit into very many homes IMHO.
Motion can be a problem, but the stitching programs are getting fairly good at working around it. This is eight images stitched together:
http://www.neutralhillsstills.ca/index.php?showimage=139
My stitching software, PTGUI, did a masterful job of coping with the motion in the clouds and the grass. Only had to perform three or four small manual fixes. I fed the same images into PS CS3 and that was a disaster.
It was always my intention to print the Roads and Horizons photographs big - in the 36 in to 40 in range. They are all shot on 4X5 with high quality lenses so they'll print that size quite nicely. But I always get overwhelmed with the cost and logistics of making and framing prints that big - so I haven't printed them that big yet. Someday maybe.
Stitching 40 images? You're kidding, right? Or your time is valueless. What's wrong with simplifying and using...dare I say it?...film? Maybe I'm spoiled living in a town where there's still a lab that processes E6 daily. For the time being, I'm sticking w/ my auto nuthin' 4 x 5.