Print your digital images.

I attended a seminar recently given by a well-known photographer and he made the comment, “Print out your digital images. Otherwise, the images are just a bunch of neatly arranged 1’s and 0’s in your computer’s memory.”

I agree with that statement: print your digital images. Not all of them, though. Just ones that you know others would appreciate. [I’m not going to go into color management and monitor calibration right now. That’s a whole subject in itself.]

I’ve seen many great scenic photos on Facebook. Friends have shown the photos they’ve taken with their digital cameras. I am impressed with the images. Then again, think of it, the image is only 5×7 on the computer screen, even smaller on a phone screen. All images look sharp and nice when they’re 600 pixels in size.

But, I wonder how would those images look if they were printed 8×10 or 16×20?

Print the image out, send it in to an online lab and have a large print made. If resolution is a worry, such as an image taken with a phone, print out a section of the image and see what it looks like. Some images when output large may take on a painted effect.

A photo that I took of the Des Moines Skyline that has sold well, took on a painted effect at 36 X 24 print size. I took the photo with a first generation 6 mega-pixel Nikon Digital camera. I printed different 8×10 sections of the image to check clarity. I enhanced some of the color saturation. For the most part, though, the image was only slightly retouched.

Image below is an 8×10 sampling of the 36 X 24 image.

The full 36 X 24 image of Des Moines Skyline.

This recent photo (below) of the new Des Moines pedestrian bridge was taken with a Nikon D7000 16 mega-pixel camera. The image is much sharper and yielded a nice 36 X 24 image that a Des Moines business recently purchased.

The next image is one of my favorite photos. It was originally shot as a black and white, then I had the negative scanned.

The following photos are some of my favorite scenic images that make great large prints, filling blank wall space beautifully. They don’t need electricity or batteries to be seen. They are available 24/7 for the viewer to enjoy. They let the viewer get lost in thought and steal away some time from reality.

Thanks for stopping by!

Next issue: I don’t know what I’ll write. There’s been a lot of things happen lately – some really great things and some not so good. But the not so good happenings are not that bad. However, they do bring up some interesting points about the professional photography business and its challenges. Stay tuned.