Digital BW, The Print

One gallery owner I talked to surprised me.  I had thought that  
galleries were impressed with large sizes only.  He asked me "well,  
how big are your prints?", and I thought he wanted to hear me name a  
large size.  Before I could answer, though, he said "because I take  
shows all around the country, and the big prints cost me so much more  
to ship".  :   )    So sometimes size does indeed matter, but not in  
the way you might think.

In my experience, when I first went up from letter size to 11x14 in  
the wet darkroom, it was a revelation to me how much more striking  
the prints were to my eye- for essentially hand-holding.  For  
display, even larger sizes seem more appropriate, although I also  
have seen some enormous sized prints that I thought somewhat lost the  
image, as has been mentioned here.  I also have an image that I took  
in available light, hand-held up against a door jamb with an exposure  
time that really needed a tripod.  It looks quite effective as a  
small print, not much bigger than 5x7, probably.  Any larger than  
that, though, and the softness of the focus becomes distracting.

When I went to school, one of my teachers, David Wing, had a whole  
series of miniature prints- no more than an inch or two on either  
side.  I thought at the time that he'd done it as kind of a goof, but  
he maintained that the images were just as effective at that size as  
at any other.  Eye of the beholder.

James