February 11, 2006
Losing my edge... getting it back.
I've taken maybe ten thousand photographs since I first got a digital camera in March 2004, but I had never printed a single one. Has anyone else ever gone so long without printing anything? (Once someone printed one for me.) I finally chose a few to have printed through Flickr. They arrived in the mail, I looked at them and was nauseated by how dead they looked. I was horrified. I finally accessed the rational part of my mind and could ask: Did they trim off the edges? I went to my Flickr page and looked at the originals. Yes, they'd trimmed off the edges -- not much, but enough to wreck the meaning of every picture for me. I am appalled by the insulting assumption that a photographer is just looking at the center of the picture and does not frame a composition and carefully place things at the corners and edges. What I have here is a despicable, insipid, disgusting stack of glossy paper.
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22 comments:
Send them back with a copy of this post. Tell them you want your money returned.
(verification word: beburn[ed?])
No. They did them in a normal way. It would be like sending back your cheeseburger for not being a steak. They didn't cheat me. They just behaved in the conventionally inadequate way.
I don't demand my money back at the movies because the frame is curved (although I did once demand my money back because there was a visible black line down the center of the screen). (It's the large screen at Hilldale, for you Madisonians. A ridiculous screen, where some of the best movies are shown. Fortunately, they are tearing it down soon.)
Most snapshooters focus entirely on the subject in the center of the image. In fact, optical viewfinders of most cameras don't show the full frame. Manufacturers know their main customers.
Given how few photos it seems you print, the best solution is to find a photolab that will deliver full-frame prints. Either that, or you will have to go out and buy a photo printer to make sure that each image is printed the way you want.
One big advantage these days is that a digital darkroom is less expensive (and a lot smaller!) than the old-style wet darkrooms were. (A drawback to that for some is the loss of technique and craft.)
If you're taking images that make use of the full frame, you've crossed out of the snapshooter's universe. Sounds like you should be making your own prints.
"No... They just behaved in the conventionally inadequate way"
Okay, but if I'm the proprietor of the burger joint where you order the cheeseburger and you are my customer who is not satisfied for ANY reason at all, you would be doing me a favor by giving me your honest feedback, whether it's reasonable or not, giving me the opportunity to find something I could do that would not have you walking out of my establishment dissatisfied.
I print my own -- when I DO print, which is only occasionally -- for Xmas cards and various custom cards of one sort of another from time to time:
What Americans want
FYI, I use Kodak Ultima Picture Paper and my clunky old Canon Multipass MP700 for sparkling results.
What a disappointment! I can imagine how sickened you must have been.
I know you're trying to get RID of things, not acquire them, but you really may want to invest in equipment to print your own. You can get relatively small all-in-ones which can print regular copies and photos and handle scanning, too.
I really, really resisted this hard when my husband urged this route. Boy, was I wrong, and he right.
I have a buddy who's a semi-professional photographer, and he uses www.ezprints.com. The photos come out looking great; when my parent's took the Christmas gift I got them to be framed, the people at the shop raved about the 8x10 print.
What a shame. Maybe you could change your preferences, if such a thing is possible?
Off Topic. Through a friend's blog, I just found a another wonderfull blog
"What I have here is a despicable, insipid, disgusting stack of glossy paper."
Because they trimmed the edges off a little bit?!
Wow. Sounds like we actually what have is a wild, hysterical overreaction.
As far as asking for my money back, there's no way this could beworth it for me. It didn't cost much, and it's trouble to write out a demand for a refund. (As opposed to writing a blog post, which is fun!)
"Wow! Sounds like we actually what have is a wild, hysterical overreaction." Wow! Sounds like we have a reader who doesn't get the blog called Althouse.
"What I have here is a despicable, insipid, disgusting stack of glossy paper"
Hasnt anyone wondered what in the world was in these margins that was so important. I mean...if those edges were so important why not make them the center of the picture and leave out the "inspidid disgusting" center?
These self parody posts are funny for a little while but then they get old.
If you want to start printing your own...I would lay down my life for the Canon PIXMA 950. The image quality is simply astounding, and I have total control over the appearance.
I have NEVER seen a printer like this, and I have owned about 15 of them in the last 7 years.
I got my first digital camera for Christmas in 1999, a Kodak. It was stolen and I replaced it with a Nikon. My daughter-in-law has a slightly higher grade model Cannon. I don't think I've ever printed anything taken with any of these cameras, except a Christmas letter one year that I did for my Mother and included some shots of her. I've thought about buying the printer dock that fits my camera, but couldn't figure out how to justify the money for so little need as good quality photo paper in my laser printer seems to do a satisfactory job.
My Mother was the photographer in our family, always looking for that artistic or unusual shot. I don't have that good an eye for composition and my final shot is never what I'd hoped or thought it would be.
'I don't even wanna think about whatever "despicable, insipid, disgusting stack of glossy paper" there are in your house contain.'
Chris: You sound like a member of the Arab street.
For me, the point of using a digital camera is so that I can play around with the framing and cropping myself, then I print how I want. I don't even have a 'photo' printer, just a good quality Canon, as I've found the quality of the printing largely depends on paper quality.
I've been thrilled with the results. Some I sent to my office computer, a laser color, to print very large copies.
I am embarrassed to admit that I fell for this. Temporarily.
I really thought you were serious. But then my rational mind started working again and I realized that a grown person could not possibly throw this kind of tantrum over something so little.
I guess my irony detector is off a little today. I really thought you were serious. But obviously, a distinguished law professor wouldn’t take such a huge deal out of something so small.
Silly me!!!
You can upload the pictures to Walgreens, have them printed at a store near you and pick them up. Or you could have them mail them to you. I know people that do this and they haven't complained about the service.
Why fight it? Just submit to the censorship of the trolls.
Because then they win. And they don't behave like winners.
Halo: LOL. It's the mystery of why people who don't like the blog read it. That mystery got old quite some time ago.
TheFewAndThePlenty said: I mean...if those edges were so important why not make them the center of the picture and leave out the "inspidid disgusting" center?
Because the middle is inspid and disgusting only without the edges, and the edges themselves are not that hot as the mere center of a photograph?
I invite you to contemplate the idea of composition and its interaction with aesthetics.
(Me, this next week is vacation time, and I'll be using a few rolls of 120 film in a 6x6 medium format camera. And I'll assure you that the best compositions are not always (or even usually) those with one interesting thing dead-center.)
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