a real keeper

Can you remember the days when you took photographs and then rushed to the shops to get them developed?

The excitement of not knowing what you’d managed to get.  And finding those stickers on your new images explaining where you’d gone wrong.  But best of all, holding your photographs and sharing them with friends and family.  And, for that extra special shot, getting an enlargement made up so you could frame it and put it on show.

I liken it to listening to a long-playing record.  Sure, the music is the same, but the experience is wholly different.  You take in the whole thing in a relaxed and non-rushed manner.  In stark contrast to skipping tracks on your iPhone or, getting back on the photography track, whizzing through images on your computer.

I really enjoy printing my best work and displaying it either in an album of some sort or, for those really special images, on a wall somewhere.  I bought a “prosumer” printer to do the job.  A Canon Pro 10-S.  It’s lovely and produces A3 stunning prints.  Mind, for the money it cost me it should!

Earlier this year though, I took an image I was so proud of, that printing it to just A3 was not good enough.  It needed to be on a much grander scale.  About 4 feet by 3 feet grander actually.  So, I sent the file off to an online company to do the job and I couldn’t be happier with the result.  I am, as they say in Canada I believe, “stoked”.

now that's an enlargement!

The image, of Dunraven Bay on the Vale of Glamorgan coast, is now proudly mounted on our bedroom wall.  A reminder, given its scale, of actually being there taking the shot at that freezing January pre-dawn moment.  And it serves as inspiration to get out of bed early to make more images I can print.