I recently undertook the photography and design for a series of 8ft x 4ft pvc banners to be displayed outside a local restaurant. As a photographer I spend a lot of time staring at my images, about a foot away from a computer monitor which is around 2ft across. I will zoom in to 100, 200 or even 400% magnification and I forensically examine the image and worry about pixellation (despite the fact that my camera shoots around 21mp).
This banner is testament to the reality that pixellation is really only highly apparent on digital media like an electronic display and that once you factor in things like halftone patterns and viewing distance, such effects on large scale printed media are very much lessened. If this image was to be displayed on an 8ft x 4ft LCD screen, it would look blocky indeed but on an inkjet print of the same size the results are fab.
Photography isn’t just about pixel-peeping on a screen – it’s about enjoying and sharing the physical prints and, in my view, the bigger the better!
