The Perfect Frame Size

About two years ago I bought a photo printer and before printing and framing my first prints, I had to answer one important question: what size prints would I generally make and which frames would I choose.  The Epson 3800 can print 17″ wide (43 cm or DIN A2+), so I could have easily decided on that size, but there were three reasons to go smaller: (1) I don’t have hanging or viewing space for such large prints, (2) the costs for ink, paper and frames would be very high and (3) my camera at the time had resolution only for prints of size 16,5 x 24,7 cm (at the native resolution of 360 dpi of the Epson driver).

I knew that I can scale the images up quite a bit, but I didn’t want to stretch it that much, so I settled down on A3+ paper size (33 x 48 cm or 13 x 19″).  For whatever reason, at that time I was only concerned with prints with aspect ratio 3:4, and prints with size 30 x 40 cm would fit very nicely on that paper.

As for the frames, I was looking for a very flexible solution: good for color and black-and-white images, horizontal and vertical orientation and suitable for frequent image replacement.  After a bit of looking around I settled on 50 x 60 cm Nielsen C2 aluminum frames  in soft frosted gray and white mat boards.  Still thinking of my 3:4 aspect ratio, the boards would be 50 x 60 cm with 30 x 40 cm cutouts.  I was very happy with the results and since then had no need to change a thing.

But I’ve recently had an offer to display some prints in a large office, and I decided to go with ten images from my Faces that Tell a Story portfolio.  So I will have to buy additional frames — no big deal.  But guess what?!  The ten images have different aspect ratios: 2:3, 3:4, 4:5, even 10:11, so what to do?  Well, here comes the really good part — Nielsen sells custom-made mat boards, so I can still use my DIN A3+ paper and 50 x0 60 cm frames.   I’ve printed the images with 2:3 aspect ratio as 30 x0 45 cm, the ones with 3:4 ratio as 30 x 40 cm, the 4:5 have come out as 32 x 40 cm and that last one, with 10:11 will make a nice 32 x 35 cm print.

He-he, I like it when everything works out nicely… 

Here is what the framed prints look like (aspect ratios 2:3, 3:4 and 4:5):

Wanna Become a Better Photographer?

The quick answer is: turn your images into prints!

In October 2007 I came this close to buying a Canon 5D and a 24-105/4 IS lens. I was tempted by the full-frame sensor, image-stabilized lens, great zoom range, lower image noise and the additional 4,6 megapixels. But while a new camera is nice, it wouldn’t have changed my photography in a fundamental way.

So I bought an Epson 3800 printer instead. The reason was very simple — I was having trouble getting good prints with reliable colors and reliable borders on a variety of papers. And to be honest, I probably also needed a new toy.

Little did I know how that printer would change my photography! Now wait, you’d say — a printer is an end-device, it cannot turn a crappy image into a great one! Well, you are right (even though the printer manufacturers would like us to believe otherwise), but I mean this. Using a printer means printing an image. But which image? So the first thing was to look at my images critically and select the better ones. But once I had those, I didn’t just print them. No, you don’t just send a good image to the printer — you edit it and make it excellent. Then you print it.

And then came revelation number one. When you hold a print in your hands you see so many faults that you didn’t see on screen, you rush back to Photoshop and correct them. Repeat this a few times and you realize that you need to learn more about sharpening. So you do and you print again. The results looks so gorgeous, you are in awe. So you rush to the store and buy some frames. You frame the prints and hang them on the walls and it’s a great feeling. That’s revelation number two.

But a few days later you want another great print to go with the first one, so you take the camera and hurry outside. All of a sudden it’s not about pixel peeping any more, it’s about covering your walls with great prints. Revelation number four.

And the final revelation? In the eyes of your friends you are no longer the nerd with the camera, you are a photographer.

Good luck!

Being a Serious Photographer

There are various definitions of “professional photographer,” but most involve something like “at least 50% of your income is derived from photography.” Well, I’ve never sold a photograph or any photographic service, so I’m definitely not a pro, but in many other aspects I behave more and more like one. For example, I carry a large camera and sometimes a tripod, I keyword and archive my images, I take back-up equipment on important shoots and I have a photographic web-site.

But I also visit photographic exhibitions, jump into conversations about photography, I talk to other photographers when out photographing. And recently I’ve started asking strangers if I can take their picture, a picture of their auto, their boots, their house, their working place. Most times I got an affirmative answer, but also a few negative ones. I imagine that sometimes the people said “no,” because they simply didn’t want to risk some nut-cake taking their photo.

But what if I had a quick way of convincing these people that I really am a fine-art photographer and that I don’t mean them any harm. Even better, what if I could show them some of my work and possibly get them really interested? Well, I might now have found this way. And it’s nothing new really, but I’ve taken the time and done it.

The first step was to print a few of my images on 10 x 15 cm paper and carry them in my photo bag. And the second step was to make business cards and carry a bunch of those in my pocket. The cards are nothing fancy — a black-and-white image on the left and my name, e-mail address and URLs to my images and to this blog on the right.

Of course anyone can take a few postcards in their hands and put a name on a business card, but I think it’s a very different feeling if someone says “I’m a photographer. Here are a few of my images, and here, take this card so you can see more images and send me an e-mail if you like.”

Both of these things are so new that I haven’t yet had a chance to try them out. But I hope they might open a few doors that might otherwise remain closed: street portraits, junk-yards, repair shops, church steeples, etc.

New Web Portfolio: Black-and-White Portraits

I must be in the mood for making portfolios, because I’ve finished another one containing eight black and white portraits. They all happen to be of people who I photographed in India, and that’s probably because people in “more developed countries” do not age so interestingly.

Three “Charcoal Shadows” Prints

I’ve slowly gotten tired of the two current prints in my office, so yesterday I made three new ones and framed them (30 x 40 cm prints in 50 x 60 cm frames). On Monday I’ll hang the new ones in my office and the old ones at home.

This is my first printed three-of-a-kind series, so I’m quite excited.

I have an even stronger third image, but it doesn’t lend itself well to a 3:4 aspect ratio, so I had to go with this one. Since I use standard frames and mattes, I have to produce standard-sized prints… Or I need to start cutting my own mattes.

Next Step: Web Galleries

Ever since this post I’ve been spending 4-5 hours a week looking through my images: rating, adding metadata, organizing, cataloging and deleting the less interesting ones. This is a difficult, tedious and exciting job, all at the same time. It’s tedious because you have to compare dozens and dozens of similar images — zooming in, zooming out, looking for the image that’s best composed and has the best focus. It’s difficult because you have to rate images consistently, assign keywords consistently and sometimes make a tough decision to delete images which are good, but simply not good enough. And finally it’s exciting because you rediscover your good images from the past.

I’m now almost through with this process, and I’ve erased about 50% of my images. I know that sounds radical, especially when many people say that since disk space is so cheap, you shouldn’t delete any images. Well, I couldn’t disagree more! Keeping all your images not only fills up your hard drive — it also prolongs your back-ups, slows down your browsing software and makes it difficult to find the great image that you are just looking for. But most importantly, keeping most images that you make leads to a decreased self-esteem.

Take my trip to India for example. Even though I’d been deleting flawed and multiple images all along the trip, I came back with about 1200 images. I knew that I’d taken some very good photographs and some average ones, and my first thought was that all images have something special in them, so I should keep them all. As time passed and I showed the images to friends and relatives, I started thinking that they are not really that great. The really good ones were still there, but having to look at 30 average photos in order to see one good one makes for a very low success-ratio. Only about 400 photographs survived my radical clean-up, but when I now open an image directory, I see only interesting, colorful and sharp images. It’s a real pleasure now to point Bridge to a sub-directory and look through the 30-40 thumbnails that it contains. And through my star-ratings I can always filter out the 25 or so top images.

But actually I wanted to write about something else today. Having sorted, grouped and rated my images, I think the next logical step is to update my Web galleries. What you see after that link is, technically speaking, my second attempt. The first one was built purely by hand in HTML, and it was a tedious and error-prone job. The current pages are built around a Flash-plugin called SimpleViewer, which looks quite chic. If I had to name any disadvantages, I’d have to say that it’s flash-based (I cannot modify it and not everyone around the world has Flash installed) and that it loads all large images immediately, even if the viewer never looks at them. But SimpleViewer is small, fast and easy to use, so I could stay with it without any problems.

Recently I saw an exquisite Web gallery, and I’d like to have something similar. This one was generated by Lightroom (which I don’t have), but it’s based on Slimbox and mootools, both of which are free JavaScript scripts, so I could build my own galleries.

So now I’m torn between SimpleViewer and Slimbox. What do you think, which one looks nicer?

Click on the Images

A friend of mine remarked that (1) the images on this blog are too small to see well and (2) when there are multiple images in one post, it’s difficult to concentrate on just one image.

Well, I’m using a fixed-width layout for this blog, and it is not possible to display anything wider than 500 pixels, so inline I’m already showing the largest possible images. But starting with this post if you click on any image, you will see just that image against a white background. And if the photograph is one that I’m particularly happy with, I’ll make the target image larger than the inline one.

Hopefully these changes will make viewing the blog more enjoyable.