The Photographic Print

The Photographic Print

Why? Because it is more important to view printed images than ever before.

by William Lulow

I wrote a piece back in June of 2019 about making prints. I update it every once in a while, the last time was in March of 2023. I think it is still as important as ever for photographers to make prints from their digital files or from their negatives, whatever format they prefer. One of the reasons is that it is the way images were meant to be seen. But we have all become much too dependent to looking at our various screens when we are looking at photographs. Scrolling through thousands of images has become the norm. But just take note of how you view photographs on either platform. When you look at your smartphone, for example, you are looking at an image, when it occupies the entire screen, of roughly 3.5″ by 2.5″. If you are looking at a tablet, iPad or something similar, the screen size is approximately 10″ on the diagonal. So we are not talking about large images here. Your computer screen could be substantially larger, but all screens don’t behave the same way. Some screens are sharper than others and the colors may be slightly different. Whenever a screen is larger, it usually takes more pixels to fill it and consequently to make a clear image. Again, we are also swiping through literally thousands of images each time we look at our photo app! I had a friend once who wanted to show me his vacation pictures and then handed me his camera, put it in “playback” mode and showed me which button to press to play the next image! To me, that is not how photographs were meant to be viewed. I would have preferred him to make a couple of really good prints that were representative of his travels.

But looking at an image on a smartphone presents a totally different experience than looking at one on a wall in a gallery, say. One of the first things you notice, as I have noted, is that you skip from one image to the next relatively quickly. In order to “study” an image, you have to enlarge it on your screen which means that you can’t view the total image, only parts of it. This detracts from the overall experience you get. Now, think of the images you actually stop at to examine more closely. Then think of why you stopped at that image. If you can examine that motivation, you might get a hint at the kinds of images you need to shoot to make people stop and look at them closely and have a sense of awe when they view them.

So viewing a photograph on a screen is somewhat of an unsatisfying experience compared to attending a gallery exhibition or seeing a series of photographs on your own wall that can be viewed from afar as well as close up. The other thing is that no matter what people tell you, you can never get a high-enough quality image from a smartphone unless you take the trouble to mount it on a tripod (which you can do), or take other precautions to keep the phone as steady as possible. The iPhone 13 has an upgraded camera from some of the earlier models, but its resolution is still only 12MP (megapixels). You can make an excellent 11×14″ print from that resolution, but not too much bigger than that. One of my regular DSLRs has 18MP and the other has a 32MP sensor. I always have judged the resolution of any of my images by making a standard 16×20″ print. If the detail in the image was sufficient to make an excellent print that size, I knew I had enough detail in the original image. That was how I judged my image sharpness and “enlarge-ability.” I have been somewhat obsessed with making even larger prints these days for exhibitions. I now like to make 20×24″ prints. One reason is that I like not having to view the picture from such a close range. It is also easier to see and if you do move closer, you can really inspect the print to get a good sense of its quality. And, larger prints make a greater impact, all else considered. (Sometimes small prints can be effective as well. It depends on subject matter and how they are treated).

A DSLR with an 18MP sensor, creates an approximate 50MB JPEG image which translates to about 60×40 inches as a print. If you shot the image in RAW format, it would generate roughly a 90MB file which you could use to fill up the side of a building. There is no doubt that, up to a certain point, the resolving power of the sensor will determine how much the image can be enlarged before it begins to lose some sharpness.

Here is an image I like to use for comparisons:

This was an image I made in Portugal a number of years ago with my Canon 60D and a 20mm f/2.8 lens. This made a perfect 16×20 enlargement which was almost like some of the continuous tone images I used to make in the darkroom. Here is another made in Normandy, France just last October:

Both of these digital images made excellent quality 16×20″ prints as has been my standard for resolution, sharpness and overall print quality for the last twenty years or so. Prior to switching to digital photography, I judged my continuous-tone images the same way – by making 16×20″ prints.

One other image I love to use is one I made of the Grateful Dead’s Jerry Garcia at a concert the band gave in Boulder, Colorado back in the early 1970s. This image was made with a 35mm Nikon F camera, probably with an 50mm f/1.8 lens with Tri-X film. Here it is shown blown up to a 34″ x 42″ size with the frame:

When you think of the size of a standard 35mm frame, this image represents a substantial enlargement. Even up close, and even though it was made with a 35mm piece of film, it still stands up to examination for clarity and detail. That’s when I know the original image was made properly. It is probably important to note that Kodak Tri-X film made for 35mm cameras in those days was actually, physically different from the same film made for medium or large format cameras. The emulsion backings were different as well as their size. This made a difference when it came to overall sharpness. Prints from 35mm film cameras were easy to discern because the resolving power of the film was a bit less than from larger negatives.

These images need to be made to high standards because they are printed and then displayed for folks to examine up close or even from a distance, as in very large prints. Some have an impact if made smaller, others have a different impact if made larger. But prints are made to be studied, thought about and discussed. Images on a camera’s SD card are more or less “throw away” items unless they are worked on and exhibited in some form. Here’s another image that made a great 20×24″ print:

This image required a scout of several spots in Grand Teton National Park, Wyoming to find just the right one.  Then it took some work on the computer to get all elements represented correctly. Finally, it took a really good print to give it some impact. That’s how photographs should be viewed.

It should be noted that Ansel Adams, the great landscape photographer who worked mostly in the 1940s and 1950s, always worked on his images, sometimes for weeks at a time in the darkroom. He didn’t have the benefit of (or should I say wasn’t hampered by) computers that did all the work electronically. He did everything by hand, dodging and burning in various details of his images sometimes for weeks on end.

But when you work hard to get an image just right, so it represents your particular view of what you have seen, you want your viewers to study it carefully, not swipe past it on a screen. That’s why making a print is so important and even more so given all the technological advances that have become standard now in photography.