(Shot with a Canon 60D, in the studio and printed on Inkpress Pro Silky paper, 300GSM. This paper is super sturdy and has a nice sheen to it. Naturally, I made copies for the family!)
I was reading Andrew Sullivan's interesting article in a recent issue of New York Magazine which dealt with our growing addiction to devices of one sort or another. We all have smartphones these days, in addition to our regular computers and/or laptops/tablets. There is no questioning the fact that we are on these devices every single day for many hours. Some may question whether or not we are "addicted" to these things, but we all use them. Just walk down any street in this country if you need proof! Mr. Sullivan points out that we just might need a good rehab program to help us get back to "reality" rather than "virtual reality!"
How does this relate to photography, you might ask. Well, I've been writing in this space for quite a while now that we now see photographs mostly on screens of one type or another. The shots I take of my new granddaughter on my smartphone are terrific, but when I do a real photo shoot with her and then print the pictures for the family, it's quite a different experience. They become treasured items rather than simply another image on a screen.
This is one important reason why I've said, "Photographs need to be printed!"
When you go to someone's home and see photographs of their family members in frames prominently displayed on the wall or on a piece of furniture, you understand how important printed photographs are to people. I know people who have come back from a vacation and shown me unedited images, still on their smartphones! Think how much more impressive it would be if only a select few of them were edited, cropped, printed and framed.
Photographs were meant to be exhibited. By this I mean that they should be carefully edited and printed on paper for people to view. When you view images on a screen, they are often fleeting and the size of the screen itself usually doesn't allow for introspective perusal, as images in a gallery or museum might. So, I encourage all my students to print their edited images. In addition to being much more impressive as prints, images are often much clearer and sharper on paper than they are on almost any screen.
Photographs, by definition, are "light pictures." Try to break the addiction to screens by printing your images!
William Lulow
William Lulow is a commercial portrait and corporate photographer in the Greater New York Area. His clients include IBM, Swiss Re, Westchester Magazine and Michael Baker International (Engineering), among many others. William is also a certified teacher of photography having been an adjunct professor at New York's New School For Social Research. He publishes daily blog articles on photography. His goal is to raise people's awareness of photographic principles in order to better their photographic efforts.