My Largest Ever Print

Bluebell Woods, Dockey Wood, England, April 2011

Until recently, the largest print I'd ever made was 40x60-inches, and I'd made several of these over the past few years. But a few weeks ago, I delivered the largest print I've ever made, a 40x90-inch metal print, to a firm located in Boston, Massachusetts. Doing the math, that's 3-1/2 by 7-1/2 feet! And all on luxurious, color-popping, lightweight, high gloss aluminum. And if that wasn't enough, the firm also purchased a 40x60-inch metal print to hang on one of their other walls at the same time.

It's not easy to make a print of this size. Normally, I don't recommend printing this large for certain images. Unless the image has been made on a high resolution camera with high quality lenses, an enlargement of this size will only show up the faults of an inferior image file. If a client chooses one of my older images made with a lower resolution camera to be enlarged, I'll always advise against it– quality is so important to me and I don't want anything but the highest quality print hanging on anyone's wall.

In this case though, the original image was made with a 21-megapixel camera using a high quality, $2500 lens. And even better, the image in question was a panorama consisting of five high resolution images stitched together, making it an ideal candidate to be enlarged to a high degree. I re-processed the digital files from the original raw images, using the latest software, and sent the file out to a lab that has the ability to print very large metal prints. It took about two weeks for the image to be printed, packaged in a large wooden crate and delivered to the east coast.

The client loves the image, I'm very satisfied and hopefully they'll enjoy the images gracing their walls for many years to come.