I delivered a group of photographs to a gallery today. Two of the pieces were printed at 33″x50″, larger than I’ve ever printed before. Now, I’ve heard a range of rants against large prints: Big prints are just a fad. You don’t have the intimacy that you do with small prints. I’ve heard that large prints are just compensations for ego, shouting out “pay attention to me!”

When I started photography, an 11×14 was a really big print. The first time I framed an image to 18″x24″, the final result seemed impressively humongous. I felt dangerous working with such a large piece of glass. Why, a few months earlier my largest images were 5×7’s and that was splurging. That changed last year when I bought a printer that uses 24 inch wide rolls of paper. These “huge” prints only seem so large because photography as a medium has, for most of it’s history, been tech-limited to printing smaller. Bigger doesn’t necessarily mean better, but smaller doesn’t either. They’re just different. And, with different options we can express different things. We’re used to paintings in large and small sizes. We’ll get used to it in photography as well. 

Now, I’m not dismissing the small photograph. There’s something precious to holding a photograph in your hand and taking in the detail. However, looking at my images printed big, the size just feels right. Especially in the images with all the little pieces. There’s enough detail to let each little piece be it’s own entity, and enough presence to stand back to observe the overall motion in the composition. Yeah, I just love those big prints.

By the way, one hazard of printing big is framing big. I spent a couple of days last week cutting two inch strips off the long side of 32″x40″ glass sheets. I had to give myself a little pep talk before each cut. You need to have a cool demeanor when cutting glass, ’cause if you get frustrated there’s nothing safe around to punch. I had a couple of cuts go wrong and felt doomed to losing every piece of glass in the case. After the next cut came out perfect, I leaned back in a sigh of thankful relief. By the time I was done, I had broken just the right amount to have enough left over to frame everything. Whew.