Re: why not small prints?

[Tom Ferguson <tomf2468@pipeline.com>]

> From: Bill Collins <photo@intrex.net>
> Subject: Re: why not small prints?
> 
> There's no one correct answer to this, so I'm sure the discussion will go on
> for days. :-)  <SNIP>

Perhaps weeks! The "answer" to this depends on a lot of factors.

One factor is how much you lean towards pre-visualization or
post-visualization. I plan the process and size of an image as part of its
composition. That means that 95% of the time I decide those issues before I
push the shutter release. Plenty of others (Jerry Uelsman comes to mind)
work totally the opposite, shooting without any final print plan at all. I
don't believe that one of us is wrong, rather that we have found different
ways to work.

Another factor is your intended qudience/display. If these are personal
works for your own walls, do what ever "rings your bell". If they are meant
to go in a show were everything else will be 20x24 prints, make darn sure
you have a visual / aesthetic reason for the difference. If you intent to
sell them through galleries, realize that you are significantly handicapping
yourself.

Yes there are exceptions. Arg... brain freeze.. I can picture her images,
but not her name.. midwest photographer who does wonderful staged pinhole
images, all about 4x5 inches.... (sound of Tom hitting head against desk,
and still not remembering).

OK, I'm better now... anyway, from experience my 11x14 platinums sell twice
as well as my 8x10 platinums which sell 4 times as well as my 4x5 platinums.
My 16x20 silvers sell twice as well as.... you get the idea.

I still do small work. Sometimes the subject simply demands it. But, I know
that work will have a smaller audience. I have a series of infrared images
all shot at a local botanical garden. All printed about 2.5x3.5 inches and
matted to 11x14. I love them, my wife often says they are my best work. I've
never gotten a single gallery to carry them. I'm not trying to sound too
money hungry, the point is that the work almost never gets seen.

Many artists are perfectly happy (at least they say they are) without a
large audience. Maybe it is my background in the music industry, without an
audience my work doesn't feel complete. Thus, my little infrared images have
always felt like a failure to me.

-- 
Tom Ferguson
http://www.ferguson-photo-design.com

P.S. Ruth Thorne-Thomsen, that is the photographer I couldn't remember.
Ahhhh, I feel better now.


> From: Shannon Stoney <shannonstoney@earthlink.net>
> Subject: why not small prints?
> 
> This is a sort of related question to the  current thread about negative
> enlargement via Photoshop and various printers and ink systems:  how do
> people on this list feel about small prints?  I have been making contact
> prints with my 4x5 negatives all summer, in cyanotype.  I shot these
> negatives intending to enlarge them, but in the end I decided to print them
> as contact prints.  I've only shown them to a few people, and after they get
> over the shock of the blue, people think they are too small or that they
> would be better if they were bigger.  I wonder if this is true as an
> aesthetic judgement, or if it's just that we've grown accustomed to big
> prints in galleries (unless we're looking at snapshots or postcards) and we
> could get used to small prints.   I mean, why not small prints?  We accept
> smallness in the above mentioned snapshots and postcards.  My images are
> mostly landscapes; so are many postcards.  I wonder if they would "read"
> more acceptably if I called them postcards?
> 
> I guess this question has to do with expectations and how malleable they
> are. I have gotten used to the blue and I hardly see it  any more:  I see a
> range of values and textures and details.  I wonder if we could also get
> used to small fine art prints.  The first photography shows that Stieglitz
> put together I think were mostly small prints by today's standards.
> Nowadays, photographers tend to make huge prints to show in galleries, I
> suppose to give them more presence and help them compete with paintings.
> But small prints have an appealing intimacy I think.
> 
> Also, when you are making negatives intending to make small contact
> prints, do you restrict yourself to certain subject matter or compositions
> that you feel will "work" with small prints?
> 
> --shannon
> 
> -