Weitsee Reflection - printed

I ordered a large format print of a photo again, and it arrived here today. I ordered from the online shop of "seen.by" - their selection policy may be questionable (I always wonder what kind of editors select "art" and by which criteria:-P), but the prints they offer sounded interesting enough to try it (don't get me wrong, there are some real gems on that site, its just that I'm like "WTF?!" about a large number of photos they show in their "select" section - which contains what they consider "best of the best" ...well, taste is a very personal thing, isn't it?).

Anyway. I picked a rather old photo - well, old at least for me since I've come quite a long way regarding photography from summer 2007 on when this photo was originally taken:


Weitsee Reflection • Summer 2007, Nikon D70s, ISO400, 1/13s freehand

There were two reasons to pick this photo: 1. its still one of my favorites (part of my renewed "Landscapes & Scenery" album) and somehow defines my personal "style" (more on that below) and 2. its suffers from a certain (though small) amount of camera shake.

"WTF?" you might ask considering reason #2 - well, I wanted to see check something that I've read on my favorite blog, The Online Photographer - the editor mentioned a while ago that he simply ignores a certain amount of camera shake and simply prints the photo anyway (but maybe not very large, I can't remember, and I can't find the post again). You may call me insane to spend about 120€ for a fine art print to verify this of course, but thats what I did.

What can I say? The dude is so right (once more). I ordered the print in 80x45cm (its a 16:9 crop; I think that translates to something like 33x18 inches in the developing countries that still haven't adopted the metric system;-) and when you're looking at it from a reasonable viewing distance (which is about one and a half or maybe two meters for me) there is absolutely NO problem with the sharpness. In other words, its simply not evident that I screwed up by simply not having my tripod with me (and oh yes, my attitude towards tripods has changed quite a lot since then!) and tried to compensate that by squeezing out one stop with ISO400 and shooting at the very limit of what VR can compensate (at least when you're worn out from a tour into the mountains and very very hungry;-).

And the print itself is simply AWESOME! I ordered the "plex" version (scroll down to the bottom of the page to switch it to english) - the finished print is glued on a platter, and on top of the print itself is a thin (about 2mm) transparent plexiglass platter - this gives an enormous depth to the photo, and a look that is equal to a glossy TFT screen (sidenote: which is completely unusable for serious photo editing, IMHO).

Whats nice about the print service of seen.by is that they check the resolution of your upload and only offer print sizes that will be of good quality (the above photo has a width of about 2900 pixels and its total resolution in the 16:9 crop is 5 megapixels).

And finally... (closing words, lot of text again, I know!) I mentioned "personal style" above, and I want to explain it. I consider this photo a "classic" of my personal style of landscape photos. First, it contains water and a reflection, and I really really like that.

And second (more importantly), it has a certain quality of "emptiness", an absence of a bold center point of interest... and I don't know, I simply like this kind of shots very very much (if you look at the Lanscapes & Scenery album, you will find more of that). I know that these are not the most catchy images and they certainly don't serve the cliche of "successful" landscape photos (at least thats what I think), but I think its more important to do what I really want to do - after all, its my hobby and I have to do what makes me calm and fills me with joy the most. Otherwise I'd need a different hobby. :-)

Music for the moment: Hecq - "Night Falls"