Today’s e-world has opened a multitude of ways for artists and photographers to make their work accessible for viewing. No longer must one have a gallery exhibition or a published book under their belt to garner an audience. With only a computer, one can open their own website, post images to collaborative websites, send images via e-mail, generate downloadable pdf portfolios, and publish e-books.
These are all marvelous and, for the most part, relatively new ways to share, market, and even sell images. But, for me, the most important end product is still the print…..the tangible, mountable, frameable, and ‘hangable’ hard copy print. There is still something special about being able to experience, examine and even pick up an image that carries with it the unwritten statement that it is the final common expression of an idea; that it is the best output that the artist was able to achieve. Simply put, there can be no question that the print is the way the artist meant for the image to be seen, as even with monitor calibration there still ends up being, at least in my experience, some variation in the way an image appears on different computers. Once printed, it has been set free by the artist and is now part of the viewers experience .
Interestingly, it doesn’t usually take me very long to bring a photograph from a RAW file to a low-resolution, internet ready image. However, to turn that RAW image into a ‘perfected’ large print that I am ready to ‘set free’ can take quite a bit of time indeed. I think that is interesting. I think that perhaps there is a message in that.
5 comments:
I couldn't agree with you more. So much is lost viewing photographs on the web. Printing is quickly becoming a lost art.
I tend to agree that an image really isn't complete until it is printed. I have so many images that have never hit paper though. It takes time, materials, etc.
I am very curious about the photographic e-book. I recently read an article in Outdoor Photographer about a couple that are doing this with some success.
mark...I read that same article and cut it out to save. I do think that many of the newer ways of presenting and distributing images are definitely worth looking into. Like you, I also have lots of images never printed. But it does seem like the ones I do print are the ones that I think are my very best.
I agree with you there Howard - it's amazing that I print only a few - and they're my 'favourites'... but the ones I do print, I keep visible on the wall or 'out' where people can see them. I'm not into printing myself, I would prefer to give this over to the pro's, because of cost, and I expect that e-photo's will become more impressive and detailed over time.
indeed!
to me it is still a gold standard. more and more people do not understand this; and with digicams now available for low price (even a decent camera like D50 which does a good (technical) job 70-80% of the time) many people think - well, I can do that too. They just need to start printing their images.
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