(embiggenable) • iPhone
on the phone ~ (embiggenable) • iPhone
I've been thinking about a number of things, picture making wise, influenced by some the rambling on TOP - backup, storage, archives, et al. The one item that keeps coming back to my thinking space is the idea of prints.
On the walls of my house, there 68 (of my pictures) prints. On tables and in bookcases there are 25 POD photobooks + 3 "coffee table" hardbound books featuring my pictures. Not to mention, I am prepping 160 prints for my upcoming solo exhibition, my 6th solo exhition. So, suffice it to write, I am a firm believer in prints (of one kind or another).
That written, I have never been able to understand why someone would make pictures and not make prints. What would be the point?
Conventional wisdom has it that fewer picture makers are making prints. While that may be true of the legions of happy cell phone snappers, I don't believe that is true of the more "serious" picture makers. With the advent of good quality desktop printers, I believe that "serious" pictures are, most likely, making more prints than ever before. After all, good quality prints are much cheaper (after the cost of a printer) and, dare I write, easier to make than ever before.
FYI, the reason I write that it "may be true", re: making fewer prints, of the legion of cell phone snappers is that, with the advent of online POD print suppliers, it may be true that even they too are making more prints than ever before.
However, the wife (part of whose mission in life is to correct me when I'm wrong) has pointed out that, in the camera toting analog picture making past, "casual" picture makers all made prints, or more accurately, had prints made at the drugstore or similar place. And, I must admit, she has a point. However ....
.... today, more people than ever before have a "camera" in their possesion and on their person, albeit a cell phone. It is my belief that many of those people are also having prints made.
Case in point, every drugstore, chain mega-stores and other locations in or nearby my neck of the woods (I live in a forest preserve) has a walk up self-sevice kiosk for print making. And, few and far beteen are the nuber of times I have been in such a place (I never go to chain meg-stores) that there is not someone at the kiosk. And, of course, there is the (some might say) glut of online print making sources.
Does that prove that more prints made by casual picture makers are being made than ever before? I not making a bet with the wife (I'd hate to be proven wrong) on that proposition but ....
....suffice it to write, I do believe that the death of print making has been greatly exaggerated.