12th
September
2023
When smaller seemed better
I have been sitting here thinking about the good old days when people were able to store all their pictures in a cookie can. You know, those boxes that contains awful cookies from England. The cans were good for photo cell as long as you kept the print size really small. Did you ever notice that in the good old days people had photo albums that contained pictures that were tiny by comparison to what we think of now. I’m going to go with measurements like two by four or two by three period and there is a reason for that flows that worked in a dark room many pieces of photo paper came in 8 by 10 which was a portrait size. And if you cut that piece of paper in half you could have a 4 by 5 which was actually a fairly good size of print and if you are crazy you go for two by three or three and a half. Small enough to tuck in the corners of a photo album and there you have it the history of what we used to deal with when it came to getting pictures. Because of course there was a cost involved in such things. When you exposed a role of 12 exposures 436 exposures and asked to have them printed the local studio like to sell you 4 by 5 which was considered to be an enlargement and meant they could charge extra money for it. I was quite old when I printed my first 16 by 20 which required access to hardware that very few people could find. In fact at that time there might have only been a handful of people in the whole province that could produce such a huge piece of photo art. I was one of them but I did not do it often. Too much time and chance of waste. Much better to stick with the 8 by 10 that people consider to be a portrait. And if you had access to frames you could have a wall of art in your home or your office or your grandmothers home. The world was open to you all it took was a camera hours of time lots of money and a willingness to have failures. Now we do everything on printing presses and we produce things that are tiny. Because of course the average photo album has not changed in size for a lifetime and if you can’t put a picture in it what’s the sense of having an album. My view of things
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