Print viewing distance

[Donald]

Are you saying that you would hang/sell a piece that you knew had minute imperfections.

No, but what we mean is dependent upon the definition of 'imperfections' we each use. I think your definition and mine are very different. Mine would include, composition, atmosphere/mood of the image, exposure, lighting, presentation of the image.

[pnodrog]

I have just thought about another parameter what I don't think has been discussed (If it was, I missed it). That is the content of the image. IMO, if it is large bold content without a lot of fine detail, then the viewing distance might comfortably be longer. However if it is an image which is made up of fine details, we might want to view those details from a closer distance.

I have not seem references to the image content vs viewing distance in any research. I wonder if the members agree with my hypothesis?

Example of an image that doesn't contain a great amount of fine detail, my daughter's Labrador, Shadow"



Example of an image with detail is this view from the City Walls of Xi'an, China...

I agree with Richard that content has a bearing on size. Photographs used for adverts cannot just be scaled and work as effectively. Small advert in publications need a larger and more dominating point of interest. Avatars and stamps are the same in that a simple bold photo works best (unless of course chauncey drags out his magnifying glass or microscope)

[Dave Humphries]

I think James's post confirms Richard's thoughts on subject matter, it can be relevant.

Perhaps moreso to the photographer

[FootLoose]

Some interesting points have been made in this discussion which all relate to people's different areas of interest in photography. The sharpness of an image is something that sets photography apart from other pictorial arts. You won't necessarily see any finer detail in a painting, for example, by positioning yourself at nose length from it. (You might see brush strokes and bits of pigment, but that is not what we are talking about.) But do you always want sharp images?

Recording the scene before you in all its minute detail is one aspect of photography. Taking that scene and turning it into a work of art is another.

But regarding viewing distance: at what height do you hang your photos?

I wear multi-focals, so if I want to view an image on the wall at closer than arm's length, it has to be hanging at my head height, or slightly above, so I can tilt my head upwards to see through the closer focus length in the lower third of the lenses.

[Mike Buckley]

Good point about height, Greg. I tend to think most people hang pieces too high in both residences and commercial offices. I prefer hanging pieces at average head-height. I'm about average height so that works to my advantage.

[rpcrowe]

Greg mentioned... "But regarding viewing distance: at what height do you hang your photos?" and Mike remarked, "I tend to think most people hang pieces too high in both residences and commercial offices."

I am guilty of hanging things too high because at a bit over 6'1" (a bit over 185 cm) I am a little taller than the average person. My wife is about 5'2" (about 157 cm) and we disagree about the height pictures should be hung. She wins of course...

As was mentioned earlier, lighting has a great deal to do with the display of an image, whether that image be a painting or a photograph. The photo of Shadow, the Labrador looks good under any light. However, I have an image of the Grand Canal of Venice, Italy, at dusk, that (IMO) looks spectacular when lit from above by a picture light but, is kind of uninteresting when lit by more subdued light...

[lukaswerth]

For me, the net is a medium to give an idea of a picture, of my pictures, I should say. There is art meant for the net, fascinating art (360° images, for instance), but my ideas about my pictures is hanging somewhere in an original, for display. I write this because I feel the haptic experience of the analog world has its own quality... something perhaps necessary to make explicit in these days of emerging information capitalism. I am also interested in alternative process prints which may only secondarily be scanned and uploaded, and there is always a difference between an image file and the original. Oh that day in Paris when I looked for the first time at some original gum prints of Robert Demachy...
So, about sharpness: for me this is an aspect which is integral to the image, a part of the image's statement. I like large prints, and often I want them sharp enough to be inspected in detail, as you would do with some miniature or with a picture from an old photo album: this has its own magic, a picture which draws you into it. For me, nothing more frustrating than a picture which I need to see from a distance, and when I get nearer it gets all blurred or pixelated... I associate this with the advertising industry which for me with respect to art (and otherwise) is something like the contemporary Antichrist.
Sharpness can of course be played with: the use or home-made or deliberately bad lenses, motion blur, the soft sharpness of well executed pinhole photographs - and yes, also the infamous bokeh ridden to a premature death ever so often in these days. But all this is very different from simple over-enlarging, or sucking the last blood out of this poor genuine fractals - Algorithm.

Lukas

[xpatUSA]

. . . oh, that day in Paris, when I looked for the first time at some original gum prints of Robert Demachy . . .

So, about sharpness: for me this is an aspect which is integral to the image, a part of the image's statement. I like large prints, and often I want them sharp enough to be inspected in detail, as you would do with some miniature or with a picture from an old photo album: this has its own magic, a picture which draws you into it. For me, nothing more frustrating than a picture which I need to see from a distance, and when I get nearer it gets all blurred or pixelated... I associate this with the advertising industry which for me with respect to art (and otherwise) is something like the contemporary Antichrist.

Lukas, I like that association . However, even though I've never viewed a real Renoir for example, hopefully a dog turd on the pavement would not be rendered in a fractal fashion and neither would I care to 'zoom in' on it .

[Inkanyezi]

Lukas, I like that association . However, even though I've never viewed a real Renoir for example, hopefully a dog turd on the pavement would not be rendered in a fractal fashion and neither would I care to 'zoom in' on it .

I do not doubt that it will be done. I vividly recall Irving Penn's cigarrette butts. OTOH, maybe it has already been done...

[lukaswerth]

Ted and Urban,

tongue-in-cheek, I suppose. I have seen real Renoirs and did not discover any turds. In a painting by George Grosz, however, they can be found in someone's head - Otto Dix also painted similar things; I remember a dachshund lifting its leg on a crippled man without legs pushing the cart on which he sits over the pavement.

So seriously, why not? Photography is a medium which excels, among other factors, in just rendering surfaces and their structures, to the extend of leaving all else out of the picture in fact, I would say, no medium is so apt to significantly render what is not included in the frame. A dead bird on a pavement, someone's spit on a wall can all make great photographs. And what about a big turd covered by those green iridescent flies?
Or, on a different but for me somewhat related note, just yesterday I showed in a lecture to my students two pictures lifted from Facebook or such like social media which showed Islamic State terrorists posing with severed heads of their victims. Sparked a discussion, trust me. I didn't have a chance to influence the technical quality of those pictures, but if I ever have the chance - or the misfortune - to be able to expose a picture with such a subject myself, I would like to have everything as sharp and as grueling and as large as possible - for me this would be a way to pay respect for the dead and their suffering.

Lukas