Is there a point in making prints anymore?

GSNfan said:
What makes you think galleries will not isntall HD/ displays? ..........................................
Click to expand...

Simple, people will not go to the gallery if they cannot see the real thing. They will just stay at home and check out an electronic image on the internet.

That is not to say that galleries will not evolve to be able to show motion art or sound enhanced art. But that is an addition, not a replacement for classic original 2-D art hanging on the wall.
 
This is the classic internet false dichotomy. Too many are arguing either that there's no point in making prints at all, or that there's no point in electronic imagery. Distressingly few seem prepared to concede that there's room for both.

Cheers,

R.
 
I'm sure everyone has touched on one thing or another on this, but I'll say my piece.

In most cases, value of a photograph comes from the actual content. Depending on whether it is stored, sold, bought, and shown drives people's preference on the medium: digital or print.

For storage, some people choose to store digitally while others in prints. People who choose digital may be because it is very convenient and obviously less bulky. Others who choose print may see it as a tangible asset and feel more comfortable having something physical.

For buying and selling, value in a photograph lies not only in the content but also the format as well. Digital format, as it is not something tangible and cannot be authenticated, and more importantly, very easily duplicated (CTRL+C, CTRL+V), will not commend much value than if it was in print. Prints can be numbered and signed, sold in fixed numbers, and this adds value. As a seller/buyer of photographs, it makes more sense to limit the number of copies to maintain value.

For Showing to friends and family, I would say this is half and half. Really depends on the preference. Some people like to show on screens and flip through like an album, and others likes to show them by hanging them up on walls/physical albums. Personally, having multiple screens hanging on walls doesn't make any sense. Digital screens will always be more expensive than paper.

My 2 cents..
 
Last edited:
I think it's important

I think it's important

I've noticed after printing 100 8.5x11 b/w and color works, that I'm not shooting with the DOF I'd like. The DOF, when I look at the print from 10" is less than what I saw on the screen or on the 'puter.

It's good to print regularly, and check things out.


GSNfan said:
With tablet PCs, e-readers, smart phones, ipads, other pads, OLD displays, e-paper and finally HD monitors/TV with very high dynamic range, is there any point in making prints any more?

Once a print was the only way to see a photograph the way it was intended to look like, and projectors for slides, now you can look at a photo even in the back of the camera in the LCD, and then your computer monitor and so is everyone else and in all digital display devices.

Why make prints, especially if you're not shooting for money and especially when no one is asking to see your prints?
Click to expand...
 
Roger Hicks said:
This is the classic internet false dichotomy. Too many are arguing either that there's no point in making prints at all, or that there's no point in electronic imagery. Distressingly few seem prepared to concede that there's room for both.

Cheers,

R.
Click to expand...

Your point is well taken. My understanding of the OP was to question if there was still any point to making prints; I did not take this to exclude the value of digital images. I have thousands of images on my website that are for the benefit of a limited audience. I certainly agree that web hosted, or electronic viewing is the current mainstream method of viewing photographs. I use that method the majority of the time myself.

As you have pointed out, there is a place for both. I still enjoy a print well matted and framed and hung on my wall. I also enjoy the feel of a book or album in my lap as I leisurely thumb through pages. As a percentage of the images I view, they compose a fraction of a percent.

Prints may be come less common in the same way that hand written journals and love letters are perhaps less common than they once were. The point I have wanted to make is that in my experience, it is the hand written note, the hand written journal, and the hung print that have had the most impact on me personally. I believe that is true for others as well. I also don't believe that is a micro view of the world - just a different way of experiencing it.
 
Ah, the tennis girl scratching her beautifully-formed bum, Athena poster icon of the early 70s. Go on: tell me an electronic image would make you smile as much. I never bought that one, but I bought others, and 'won' yet others.

From where I'm sitting by my internet computer I can see (going clockwise)B an original promo 8x10 from Harvey (Jimmy Stewart), three hand-coloured engravings of wild pigs, a piece of embroidery, a photo of my late mother-in-law and her younger sister, aged 13 and 7, taken in the 1920s, an 8x10 Hollywood-style portrait I took of a friend's daughter when she was 11 (she's now 26 -- I may have to take her wedding pics in September), a picture of a drummer in Times Square, a 5x7 inch still life of artichokes printed on POP, Frances's name and mine in Tibetan calligraphy, and a 1981 Academy Awards program (Frances was an usher).

Would I get the same from a screen? I think not. Physical pictures have a history, a presence. Fleeting images on a screen, don't.

Stuff that stays on your wall says something about you. So does refusing to make/display 'real' pictures.

Cheers,

R.
 
SciAggie said:
Your point is well taken. My understanding of the OP was to question if there was still any point to making prints; I did not take this to exclude the value of digital images. I have thousands of images on my website that are for the benefit of a limited audience. I certainly agree that web hosted, or electronic viewing is the current mainstream method of viewing photographs. I use that method the majority of the time myself.

As you have pointed out, there is a place for both. I still enjoy a print well matted and framed and hung on my wall. I also enjoy the feel of a book or album in my lap as I leisurely thumb through pages. As a percentage of the images I view, they compose a fraction of a percent.

Prints may be come less common in the same way that hand written journals and love letters are perhaps less common than they once were. The point I have wanted to make is that in my experience, it is the hand written note, the hand written journal, and the hung print that have had the most impact on me personally. I believe that is true for others as well. I also don't believe that is a micro view of the world - just a different way of experiencing it.
Click to expand...

Some art theorists are quite dismissive of the 'precious object' (as in the orginal print, the love letter, whatever). I feel rather sorry for them. The 'precious object' is by no means an essential part of all art, but equally, it cannot be totally ignored in all art.

Cheers,

R.
 
Prints have WAY better resolution than a monitor. They are just flat out technically better. Look at a 5x7 darkroom print, your ablity to see very fine detail is limited only by your vision. Now look at the same image at 5x7 on a computer screen, the fine detail just isn't there. You have to blow up the image to see it.

What I want to know is what is the point of having thousands of dollars worth of Leica glass and cameras if you're going to look at the pictures at 72 dpi?
 
Last edited:
easyrider said:
The result will be that there will be very few family albums. The electronics get outdated, hard drives, die, etc. Most images will perish. No visual history will be left.
Click to expand...

Thank goodness. Have you seen what most people look like nowadays?

PKR said:
I read recently, that with the danger of data loss to digital images stored on magnetic or optical media, an archival print was the only current method of preserving the image properly.
Click to expand...

And the means of looking at an image that doesn't require electricity. I much prefer a good print to what I see on a screen. Sure the screen can be poppier or snappier, but a print has texture, changes with the light and has a physical presence an LCD does not. I played around with video and Super 8 film in high school, what can I look at now? The Super 8. The video (on beta) is long dead.
 
As for galleries displaying images on screens or LCD's that happens a lot at the gallery where I shoot the occasional opening. They also have a very high powered digital projection system that uses an entire wall of the gallery and a lot of what is there is stills and not necessarily video. Its struck me as odd at first but I'm kind of used to it now and do tend to see it as the future of imagery.
 
I bought a nice enlarger more than a year ago with every intention of learning to make prints. Never used it. I am more than happy scanning negatives. In fact, before I buy my next camera, I will almost certainly sell off my scanner, my film cameras, and lenses.

I understand the impact of hanging prints on a wall, But, I don't do that. Besides, I can store thousands of images online, but only hang a relative few on my walls.

The people who I want to look to at my pix want to see them online. If I don't post them at a site they can see, they won't see them. Simple as that.

It's time we recognize that shooting and tweaking images for online display is as honorable as working in a wet darkroom. You all didn't ride a horse to work today, did you?
 
I'm very happy that the general public is embracing digital photography (capture and viewing) and leaving silver-based photography for those who wish to continue to express their creativity in the traditional way. In the same way, I'll bet many painters were happy when photography was invented.
 
You probably agreed with Cypher in the Matrix too, didn't you? 😉 (gently kidding)

I will make prints because I enjoy holding a print in my hands, and prefer it to looking at a screen. I am proud of my work when it hangs on a wall. I have less emotional attachment to images in bits and bytes and LCD's. If this is not the case for you, then that is perfectly fine. 🙂
 
There is not much point in making prints of all one's work ( or vacation snapshots and family pics) anymore. It's much easier to keep it stored digitally so it's readily accessible to be looked at anytime (can't do that with negatives). And post it online, so it's easily shared. In this the times have really changed (for the better).
I see the point in printing a few selected images (the - very subjective - best of one's work) to hang on a wall, exhibit in a gallery, coffee shop, or whatever.
Also prints make good gifts that are not matched by .jpeg attachments or facebook wall posts. And the the craft and time invested in the print-making adds value to the print from a human/emotional point of view. People love tangible objects and the idea of uniqueness.
As for for artists that want to sell limited editions - try to sell a limited edition in .jpeg format. Perfect reproducibility of digital images might get in the way of that.

GSNfan said:
With tablet PCs, e-readers, smart phones, ipads, other pads, OLD displays, e-paper and finally HD monitors/TV with very high dynamic range, is there any point in making prints any more?

Once a print was the only way to see a photograph the way it was intended to look like, and projectors for slides, now you can look at a photo even in the back of the camera in the LCD, and then your computer monitor and so is everyone else and in all digital display devices.

Why make prints, especially if you're not shooting for money and especially when no one is asking to see your prints?
Click to expand...
 
Viewing a photograph on a good monitor is superior to a print, just as slides were, because of the higher contrast ratio. I got into a bit of an argument with a customer service rep at X-Rite because the Colormunki Photo maxes out at a luminance far below what a modern screen can deliver:

The ColorMunki software will not allow a range over 140cd/m luminance value. This would basically defeat the purpose of using a device to measure luminance when you set the values this high. While your monitor can be extremely bright however using a value of 300+ would allow your monitor to show you a brightness value that would negatively affect your prints and they would end up coming out so dark that you would be unable to see them. The industry standard for photographic works is to use the luminance values setup at anywhere from 80 – 120cd/m. That said, if your ambient light conditions are ranging very high then you should probably be using a value of 120cd/m which is the industry standard and what we recommend.

In the ColorMunki software there is an option to set the luminance according to your ambient light conditions. This is a pretty high threshold in the software where as you have to read somewhere around 350-400 lux to get a target luminance above the 80 threshold. If it does go above this value then you certainly will want to stay within the 120 range. Anything below that will give you a target value of 80.
Click to expand...

Of course, the implicit assumption behind that line of reasoning is that the only point in color calibration is to make prints, when prints are now the exception rather than the rule.

The only prints I make are large ones (11x14 or 13x19) for hanging, and there is only so much space available on the walls. I do agree with the previous poster that Blurb books are an excellent way to showcase photos.
 
Sorry to put it so bluntly, but if you have to ask, then you are just another guy with a camera on the craptastic internet, not a real photographer.
 
Last edited:
I have always enjoyed looking at prints much more than on a screen. The prints I make in my darkroom I also know will last a lifetime unlike digital images and I will be able to enjoy them for a life time too unlike digital- Kievman
 
The posted question somehow brought to my mind the question: "Since we have many ways of transportation, is it still meaningful to take a walk?"

While making prints will not improve your physical health, like walking does, your soul may benefit from it.
Making prints is not necessary, but it is not unnecessary either.
 
Gallery Prints

Gallery Prints

GSNfan said:
What makes you think galleries will not isntall HD/ displays?

Neare: Proof of ownership is in the content and not the container.
Click to expand...

Its been done all ready, galleries have put up LCD's/TV's and recently at a David Hockney exhibion rows of iPads, you can see a video clip here http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-11666162

I donk think the idea will take over prints as you still need to be able to size an image, frame and mount into different styles,colours and textures, frankly I see the screen a symbol of work, people want to see something that makes them relax there eyes in my opinion.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom