I don’t print very often, but when I do, I always end up telling myself that I should print more. So I treated myself to some gratuitously huge 45×30″ prints. For an idea of scale, the photos pictured are on a double bed, and are a little taller (in their shortest dimension) than our doors are wide.

Three 30x45" Prints

Photobox have fairly regular sales for credits for their various services. This is great, because it means you can cash in on the time-limited sales without having to commit to which images you want there and then. I bought the credits for these prints 3 months ago, with only a vague idea what I wanted to print.

I ended up printing the following three images:

I say I don’t print very often, and yet I probably print more than most people. I hire out the darkrooms at uni to print every couple of weeks during term time (although this is probably just as much to do with tricking myself into feeling like I haven’t yet graduated, if I’m honest), and we bought a small A4 inkjet printer a couple of months ago with the intention of printing 6x4s on a semi-regular basis, alongside the odd invoice or job application or whatever.

Without meaning to go into a philosophical photography-snob monologue, the way in which photographs are presented definitely affects your relationship with the image in a significant way. Spending four hours in a blacked-out colour darkroom to produce a single 10×8″ chromogenic print certainly gives you time to bond with the image. AirPrinting a 6×4 from your iPhone creates a completely different relationship – something more throwaway (we usually have a selection of increasingly tired-looking 6x4s scattered over our coffee table), but still something tangible that exists in physical space, that you can pick up and pass around and rearrange, and which can’t be dismissed by closing a browser window. But a 45×30″ print is something completely different, something that you don’t typically encounter outside of a formal gallery space.

Photobox currently have 40×30″ prints on sale at £12.49, down from £24.99, but only until Monday. If you buy photo credits rather than prints, you have 3 months to decide what you want to print. If you don’t have a Photobox account then contact me with your email address and I’ll send you a link which also provides you with 50 completely free 6×4 inch prints.