Watertown, Connecticut
One of the frustrations of showing or viewing pictures online is that web JPEGs just don't have the presence, or the legibility, of even a modest sized print. In, say, a 9x12 on 11x14, the hand-painted lettering on the gray shed in the upper left background just grabs your eye and brings you in to look closer. Even more so in a 15x20-inch print. Of course Blogger will give you a somewhat larger and clearer presentation if you click on the image, but even so I think that the detail, and so the whole point of the picture, still gets lost unless I point it out this way:
detail
So, having found the detail, does the main picture make sense? Read a little closer to the way a print would? I don't really know, but then, all this web stuff is pure experimentation.
3 comments:
Tyler, I don't exactly seek out pictures that include text, but in places where text—billboards, street signs, graffiti—is part and parcel of the environment I don't avoid it, either.
Years ago David Vestal wrote that the same sort of pictures worked very small and very large: bold, simple graphics worked big and small, while intricate pattern and detail worked best at moderate print sizes (notions of what constitutes large and small print sizes have changed drastically over the decades, of course).
Another related item, something I read, author not remembered, at least forty years ago, was that small camera work liked to be printed big, and big camera work liked to be printed small. For the most part, I've found that true, often printing my 35mm film work as 8x12 or 12x18 enlargements while staying with contact prints for 8x10 and 7x17 negatives.
Carl, this lack of detail in the all-to-small web images that blogs typically allow was the reason for me to develop my own wordpress theme with bigger images where possible - and additionally using mechanism that optimize the data volume for different displays. (Not worth the effort for my typical visitor figures though, but that I only learned afterwards).
And the 'medium' styled blogs allow even bigger images, like here:
https://medium.com/@leelefever/ready-for-rain-f14703d4f4a8
Maybe that's one solution for that dilemma.
Carl,
I understand your point, and will admit I totally missed the detail you pointed out on the main picture, even when I made it larger. My eye was drawn to the garage and the red Private Property sign. I'm not sure that seeing this in a print would've made a difference, at least to my untrained eye. I'll take your word for it though.
Ed
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