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123webguru News Desk
Blow-Up: Snapshot to Poster
CALL it the Lambie Solution.
Tyra Pacheco of Acushnet, Mass., 50 miles south of Boston, was stumped for a way to decorate the new bedroom of her 4-year-old daughter, Annie. In a flash of inspiration, she took digital photographs of two of Annie's most beloved stuffed animals - Soft Lambie and Baby Lambie - and zapped them off to an online photo lab, Ofoto (now kodakgallery.com). Ms. Pacheco had one of the photos enlarged to poster size and three others made slightly smaller. She framed them and hung them on the wall.
Annie was delighted to see her snuggly toys magnified to the monumental dimension of Soviet worker heroes. Ms. Pacheco's total bill: $50 for the prints and about $20 for the frames.
Gone are the days when an 8-by-10-inch print seemed huge. As a new generation of multimegapixel digital cameras floods the market, more and more of the new art going up on walls across America are blow-ups of pictures the wall owners have taken. Even the most amateur digital photographers are finding that shots from their vacations or of their families and pets can take the place of museum prints. Others are simply snapping digital photos of fine art at museums and having enlargements made. And some people are so taken with this new hobby that they have stopped collecting art altogether in favor of their own digital creations.
"Most people will have a deeper connection to pictures they've made of things they care about than they have to something made by someone else," said Peter Galassi, chief curator for photography at the Museum of Modern Art. "And the technology has changed, so it's now very easy for the labs to do it."
Some home printers will produce prints up to 13 by 19 inches, but for anything larger, a specialized printer is usually required. Professional cameras, however, are not necessarily needed. Ms. Pacheco's 3.1-megapixel camera - a level now found in cameras for as little as $100 - produced pictures of lambies that were so sharp you could see the crinkles in their synthetic wool. Even larger prints can be made with many middle-of-the-road cameras.
Web sites like Shutterfly and Kodak's gallery may not see themselves as the vanguard of a revolution in domestic aesthetics. Their job is to make sure that no surface - whether coffee mug or wall space - goes unadorned by a favorite photo.
Their services, and those provided by high-end photo shops, have come in handy, however, as digital cameras have reached a critical mass. Of every three cameras sold last year, two were digital, according to Photo Marketing Association International, a trade group.
"We couldn't have had this conversation a year ago," said Mitch Goldstone, an owner of 30 Minute Photos Etc., in Irvine, Calif. Mr. Goldstone is seeing an increasing number of customers order multiple 20- by-30-inch enlargements.
At least half the orders he gets are for bigger prints, Mr. Goldstone said; the biggest he offers is 30 by 40 inches. He has also seen high- resolution photos of fine art come through his lab, taken at museums by tourists who want to avoid paying for posters at the museum store. "Michelangelo's 'David' is a favorite one," he said.
Dr. Richard Selby is one of Mr. Goldstone's best customers. A retired neurologist who lives in Dana Point, Calif., Dr. Selby is a frequent traveler to exotic places - Ouagadougou in Burkina Faso in West Africa, for instance - who likes to bring back gifts for friends and family members.
But he has found that he no longer needs to cram statues from places like Papua New Guinea into an airplane's overhead compartment. Instead, he gives 8-by-10-inch prints. As for himself, he orders enlargements and puts them on his walls. When he grows tired of the pictures, he puts up new ones.
Dr. Selby often uses an 11-megapixel Canon EOS 1Ds, but has also seen "amazing things" with a seven- megapixel Canon PowerShot SD500 Digital ELPH. He is especially impressed by how easily he can order enlargements. "I press the button and it's done," he said. "Then I have it back in a day."
People respond differently to a large photograph than they do to a snapshot. The viewer is forced to confront it more directly. Making an image big magnifies its perceived importance, giving it meaning that it may not have evoked in miniature.
Although amateur photographers do not necessarily have an eye for photographs that are aesthetically well served when made huge, that may not always matter. "People should put whatever they want on their walls," Mr. Galassi said. "If they want me to hang their pictures at the museum, that's different. But if they're only themselves and their friends to look at them, why not?"
Not everyone agrees. "Honestly, some photographs function better when printed small, and it's a more intimate experience," said Matt Lipps, a professional photographer in Los Angeles.
"If you take something that's a one-to-one experience and blow it up large, you can never get a proper distance from it," Mr. Lipps said. "It puts it into a public that maybe it shouldn't actually be in, whether it's in a home or not."
Photo sites, however, are finding that big sells. Shutterfly now offers to print digital photos on stretched canvas, as large as 24 by 36 inches. The company did brisk business with the canvas prints around Mother's Day, and expects Father's Day to be busy, too.
"As we start to think about what is beautiful to us and what we wanted to be surrounded by, it's our own personal memories and our own personal creations," said Jeff Housenbold, the chief executive of Shutterfly, whose own office walls are covered with 20-by-30-inch shots of his children.
Talent with a camera is not always necessary. Mr. Goldstone said that his employees often tweaked the photos that came in, adjusting color and intensity before sending a print out.
"We want customers to believe they took the world's greatest picture," he said. "They don't need to know there's quite a bit of work done to it."
Jonathan Goody, a real estate developer in Piedmont, Calif., describes himself as an average but avid photographer. Artwork he buys is quickly being supplanted by artwork he creates. Mr. Goody has decided to chronicle his trips around the world, with a focus on major transportation hubs - downtown Tokyo, Piccadilly Circus and Times Square - all of which have replaced other art on the walls of his two homes.
Mr. Goody said he had no interest in putting photos on anything other than photographic paper. "I don't want T-shirts and mugs and mouse pads and sweatshirts," he said.
Mr. Goody wants prints, and he wants his prints big. Some of his enlargements are 4 by 5 feet. "I frame it and mat it as I would any original piece of art," he said.
When traveling, after a long day behind the viewfinder, Mr. Goody goes to his hotel room and uploads the photos to Mr. Goldstone's site. "He has them on my doorstep when I come home," he said.
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