Luminous Landscape Forum
The Art of Photography => Discussing Photographic Styles => Topic started by: amolitor on June 07, 2015, 12:30:42 pm
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I've written an little essay which concludes with "prints should be small" roughly. It's over on my blog, but I thought I'd chuck it in here to see what happens.
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The primary philosophical thrust against "pictorialism" was this notion that photographs should look like photographs, and not like paintings. What a photograph should look like was left as an exercise to the reader.
Edward Weston wrote on this subject, on the properties of the photograph as opposed to the painting:
... the physical quality of things can be rendered with utmost exactness:
stone is hard, bark is rough, flesh is alive, or they can be made harder, rougher,
or more alive if desired. In a word, let us have photographic beauty!
His thesis is, as I understand it, that the whole point of the camera is an exactness, a geometric truth, a fullness of detail. This is a theme that, in truth, was belabored by many a pictorialist.
Lots of people have spent a lot of words on how eyes work, and how that is relevant to photographs and photography. Ming Thein has a recent piece, for instance, with the usual rot about rods and cones and how peripheral vision is low-res.
All pointless drivel. Vision is a construct of the brain. You'd think that the eye would be relevant at least as the source of raw material for the visual cortex, right? No. Your brain will cheerfully paint in made-up detail and information. Studying the eye is not pointless, but it invariably misses the point.
What is true is that when you're looking at the real world, what you're actually seeing is a very very small area where your attention happens to be focused. This is usually, but not always, in the center of the field of vision. When you look at a landscape you see the peak of the mountain now, and a moment later you see the curve of the river, and still later the color of the wooded slope. You don't see them all at once and, in fact, if the mountain were to vanish while you were looking at the river you would not notice. It's possible your visual cortex would edit your memory to give you the illusion that you'd noticed (see cronostasis illusion) but you would not notice. You don't see it.
Most of what you "see" when you're looking at the world is invented material, painted in rather roughly by your visual cortex, based on memories of what was there a moment ago when your attention was there rather than here. Emerson, interestingly, was fully aware of this and advocated emulating it with the use of selective focus, to isolate the single important thing in the frame in much the same way your brain isolates whatever it is that your attention is focused on. He had the science wrong, but the idea was solid.
But he missed what is arguably the point of photography (or at any rate, a point of photography).
What photography does is two things:
First, it folds up a bunch of the world into a much smaller portion of the visual field. Now you can and do see the mountain, the river, and the wooded slope all at once. This, I think, is what Weston is talking about. You can actually see the textures, the details, all the little facets of the scene, all at once. You're not relying on your visual cortex to "paint in" a bunch of stuff, you're not relying on your unreliable memory to "fill in" the stuff around the edges that you're not actually seeing at this instant. It's all right there.
Second, it encapsulates the folded up part of the world into a single object, a photograph, that you can look at and appreciate as a single thing. No longer do you have a mountain, and a river, and a wooded slope, all separate objects, all at different distances, in different places, with different light. You have a single object which you can apprehend all at once.
This adds up to presenting a slice of the world in a way that allows us, in a sense, a far more direct experience of it. Of course we're removed from the world, because it's a picture and not the thing itself. Simultaneously, though, we're closer to the world because so much has been compressed into a single visual unit, digestibly proportioned. We see the mountain, the wooded slope, the river, all at once.
A small painting is also capable of being seen all at once in the same way, but not being a packaged up slice of reality, it is not at all the same thing.
This, I think, argues for small print sizes. In order to fully realize the power of the photograph, we should print small. We should not attempt to create prints dimensioned to appear as a window, so that from the expected viewing distance the things in the print appear proportioned as they did in reality. Instead we should print small, to pull that view in tighter, to allow the seeing of the scene, the subject, whatever it is, to proceed in this different way.
If you're not going to do that, might as well paint!
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The primary philosophical thrust against "pictorialism" was this notion that photographs should look like photographs, and not like paintings. What a photograph should look like was left as an exercise to the reader.
Edward Weston wrote on this subject, on the properties of the photograph as opposed to the painting:
... the physical quality of things can be rendered with utmost exactness:
stone is hard, bark is rough, flesh is alive, or they can be made harder, rougher,
or more alive if desired. In a word, let us have photographic beauty!
His thesis is, as I understand it, that the whole point of the camera is an exactness, a geometric truth, a fullness of detail. This is a theme that, in truth, was belabored by many a pictorialist.
I think you misunderstand what Weston said. He did not say the physical quality of things ARE rendered with utmost exactness, he said they CAN BE, and then gave some examples, and then went on to say "they can [also] be made harder, rougher, more alive if desired". Not exactly a definition of exactness.
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What is true is that when you're looking at the real world, what you're actually seeing is a very very small area where your attention happens to be focused.
1) When you're looking at a photograph: you're still looking at the real world, you're likely still looking at a very very small area (of the photograph) where your attention happens to be focused.
What photography does is two things: First, it folds up a bunch of the world into a much smaller portion of the visual field. … This, I think, argues for small print sizes.
2) Your conclusion "small print sizes" seems to be assumed in your premise (https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/begging-the-question) "a much smaller portion of the visual field".
What photography does is two things: First, it folds up a bunch of the world into a much smaller portion of the visual field.
3) Photography can stretch a spot into a much larger portion of the visual field, but your argument ignores that inconvenient fact.
Edward Weston wrote on this subject, on the properties of the photograph as opposed to the painting:
... the physical quality of things can be rendered with utmost exactness:
stone is hard, bark is rough, flesh is alive, or they can be made harder, rougher,
or more alive if desired. In a word, let us have photographic beauty!
His thesis is, as I understand it, that the whole point of the camera is an exactness, a geometric truth, a fullness of detail.
4) In a letter to Ansel Adams dated January 28, 1933, the photographer Edward Weston said, “photography as a creative expression — or what you will — must be ‘seeing’ plus: seeing alone would mean factual recording — the illustrator of catalogues does that. The ‘plus’ is the basis of all arguments on ‘what is art.' ”
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Now you can and do see the mountain, the river, and the wooded slope all at once.
Except you can't. The eye scans the printed landscape in the same way that it scans the actual landscape, darting around, building up a picture.
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1) When you're looking at a photograph: you're still looking at the real world, you're likely still looking at a very very small area (of the photograph) where your attention happens to be focused.
2) Your conclusion "small print sizes" seems to be assumed in your premise (https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/begging-the-question) "a much smaller portion of the visual field".
These appear to simply be restatements of my argument. The fact that a conclusion follows from assumptions is not the same as petitio principii, rather, it is the basis of deductive reasoning.
3) Photography can stretch a spot into a much larger portion of the visual field, but your argument ignores that inconvenient fact.
It can, but it is an easy corollary that I think perhaps it ought not. Or at any rate that if you do photography this way, then the photography you are doing is up to something else entirely. Forgive me for not writing a 500 page book working out every conceivably consequence.
4) In a letter to Ansel Adams dated January 28, 1933, the photographer Edward Weston said, “photography as a creative expression — or what you will — must be ‘seeing’ plus: seeing alone would mean factual recording — the illustrator of catalogues does that. The ‘plus’ is the basis of all arguments on ‘what is art.' ”
So what?
As for quibbling about what Weston and I might, respectively, mean, I don't think it's worth pursuing. You can nitpick a word or a point here, but Weston was, ultimately, a "modernist photographer" (n.b. this isn't the same as modernism), this is not really subject to debate, and that's where I am starting from.
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Except you can't. The eye scans the printed landscape in the same way that it scans the actual landscape, darting around, building up a picture.
It's as if you haven't read what I wrote. You do not look at a small print of a landscape in the same way you look at a landscape. I honestly don't know how to reply except to "no, you are incorrect". Depending on the size of the print and so on, there is some eye motion, depending on various factors your focus may well be on one bit of the print or another, sure. But it's not at all the same thing.
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... You do not look at a small print of a landscape in the same way you look at a landscape...
Correct, but only for a small print. A small landscape print emphasizes shape and form, not detail (e.g., Michael Kenna, who makes 8"x8" prints from Hasselblad negatives - oh, blasphemy ;)). We look at the large print the same way we look at a landscape though.
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Yup! With the usual caveats about "well it's not the size, it's the viewing angle" of course, but I think we're all on the same page there.
Now, of course, you can throw modernist photography and anti-pictorialism out the window, and print or shoot however you like. Ansel Adams certainly did. Loads of people do.
Weston, as far as I know, mainly printed around 8x10, and to my eye he did a lot more of "photos that look like photos and not paintings" than Adams ever did. He'd probably have punched me all this naval gazing nonsense, too.
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we should print small. We should not attempt to create prints dimensioned to appear as a window, so that from the expected viewing distance the things in the print appear proportioned as they did in reality. Instead we should print small, to pull that view in tighter, to allow the seeing of the scene, the subject, whatever it is, to proceed in this different way.
If you're not going to do that, might as well paint!
It is always entertaining being told what we "should" or "should not do" concerning our art. ;)
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Nicely done, deleting the qualifier to make it appear that I am issuing a stern mandate. Tsk.
This, I think, argues for small print sizes. In order to fully realize the power of the photograph, ...
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Most photos look better to me when printed larger. Trying to explain why they shouldn't is just silly.
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Most photos look better to me when printed larger. Trying to explain why they shouldn't is just silly.
Thank goodness I wasn't talking about "looking better" or "looking worse", even a little bit, then.
Everyone likes Big Red Photographs, right?
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It's as if you haven't read what I wrote. … I honestly don't know how to reply except to "no, you are incorrect".
You might reply with consideration. You might reply after considering that your words did not convey your understanding. You might reply after considering that there could be something wrong with your understanding.
You do not look at a small print of a landscape in the same way you look at a landscape.
True - a small photograph is a 2 dimensional representation of a 3 dimensional scene - we mis-read shadows in photographs but not in the landscape.
But your claim is more specific -- "You have a single object which you can apprehend all at once."
Depending on the size of the print and so on, there is some eye motion, depending on various factors your focus may well be on one bit of the print or another, sure. But it's not at all the same thing.
What evidence can you provide to support your specific claim? (Eye tracking study?)
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... Weston, as far as I know, mainly printed around 8x10, and to my eye he did a lot more of "photos that look like photos and not paintings" than Adams ever did...
You can then imagine my utter and bitter disappointment the first time I saw Adams' prints live, in a London exhibition. Waiting in line, paying a lot of Pounds to get in, only to see... postage-stamp sized prints!?!?!? That would be 4x5 and 8x10 contact copies. mind you. Give me a break! What's the point of shooting large format cameras if you are not printing floor-to-ceiling size? The first time I ever saw larger AA prints was in Kodak's museum in Rochester, as well as posters in the Yosemite gallery.
Forget about "creaminess" and detail in those contact copies, when I need a loupe to see it. ;)
On the other hand, I do not mind Michael Kenna's 8"x8" (that would be inches, not feet).
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Thank goodness I wasn't talking about "looking better" or "looking worse", even a little bit, then.
Everyone likes Big Red Photographs, right?
If it looks better, most probably it will look more accurate as well.
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Andrew,
Your essay is undermined by the fact that the brain will "paint in made-up detail and information" outside of the photograph frame, independent of photograph size.
Slobodan,
What's the point of shooting large format cameras if you are not printing floor-to-ceiling size?
Enjoyment.
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All else being equal I think printing large or small should depend on what one wants to accomplish with the print.
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It's as if you haven't read what I wrote. You do not look at a small print of a landscape in the same way you look at a landscape. I honestly don't know how to reply except to "no, you are incorrect". Depending on the size of the print and so on, there is some eye motion, depending on various factors your focus may well be on one bit of the print or another, sure. But it's not at all the same thing.
I read what you wrote carefully. I am disagreeing with you.
Unless you're talking about prints the size of a postage stamp, you have misunderstood how the eyes (and mind) read a photograph. Even with a small photograph, say an 8"x10", the eyes don't take it in all in one go. The eyes dart around, building up a picture. Eye-tracking systems can prove this, but are not necessary as you only have to look at a small picture to be aware of what's going on.
Beside me I have a book whose cover is a detail of Caravaggio's 'The Sacrifice of Isaac'. It's a tight crop of Abraham's hand, the knife, and Isaac's head, printed about 6"x6". If you look at the knife, you don't see Isaac's face - and vice versa.
There are plenty of good arguments for small prints, but the claim that a small print allows you to take in everything 'all at once' does not reflect the way people actually look at photographs.
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So if I present you with a 4x5 print, an 8x10, and a 16x20 print, all viewed from, let's say, the same viewing distance of 5 feet, is your assertion that you will apprehend them in essentially the same way?
That there will be no fundamental difference in the way you grasp these things visually?
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elliot_n,
The Sacrifice of Isaac...the knife, and Isaac's head...
The mind boggles.
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So if I present you with a 4x5 print, an 8x10, and a 16x20 print, all viewed from, let's say, the same viewing distance of 5 feet, is your assertion that you will apprehend them in essentially the same way?
That there will be no fundamental difference in the way you grasp these things visually?
In that scenario, I will enjoy the 16x20 print, and I will feel frustrated that you're not letting me get any closer to the smaller prints.
People view smaller prints at a closer distance.
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I'm sorry - I only realised after posting. It's the cover of the Penguin Classics edition of Kierkegaard's Fear and Trembling.
http://www.penguin.com.au/jpg-large/9780140444490.jpg
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Regardless of the phenomenology of print viewing, the trend in the art world is towards smaller prints. The huge prints of the likes of Jeff Wall, Thomas Struth and Andreas Gursky are starting to look dated.
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You don't have to take my word for it. Hold your hand out, palm away from you, fingers spread, at arm's length. Make a note of how much of the visual field that covers.
- Find a print, a painting, any kind of picture that appears about that big. Look away from it, then turn briskly back and fix your view on it.
- Find a similar picture about 4 handspans across, it could be the same one viewed at 1/4 the distance. Look away from it, then turn briskly back and fix your view on it.
Observe what happens in these two cases in terms of eye movement and attention. I find the two cases to be quite different.
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Related: what do YOU think it means for a photograph to look like a photograph? Not in some facile sense, but in the sense that the modernists were talking about when they were rejecting pictorialism.
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If all galleries were skinny corridors (i.e. arm's length) your demand for small prints would make sense. An 8x10 print is comfortably viewed at that distance. A 30x40 needs more space, say 4ft.
Given the appropriate viewing distance, I don't believe the process of looking is fundamentally different. The eyes scan, according to the whims of the mind, and a picture is constructed.
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Related: what do YOU think it means for a photograph to look like a photograph? Not in some facile sense, but in the sense that the modernists were talking about when they were rejecting pictorialism.
I'm not sure. But rejecting pictorialism was a mistake.
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Observe what happens in these two cases in terms of eye movement and attention.
Read a page of text and observe what happens in terms of eye movement.
Sorry, what you think you observe won't actually correspond to the movements your eye makes.
"The first principle is that you must not fool yourself — and you are the easiest person to fool."
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What photography does is two things:
First, it folds up a bunch of the world into a much smaller portion of the visual field. ...
Only for some combination of wide-angle scenes and/or prints "viewed small", meaning from a distance significantly larger than the diagonal size of the print.
Even ignoring the issue of "print viewing size", an image shot with roughly "normal" field of view [focal length matching format diagonal size] and then viewed about "normally" [vewing distance equal to print diagonal] is viewed at the _same_ apparent size as the original scene, and this is hardly an unusual situation. And part of the charm of telephoto and macro photography is seeing the scene "larger than life size"!
All in all, you seem to be taking a feature of _some_ combinations of scenes and print viewing condition -- one that is often an undesired or unintended side effect of print size/cost limits -- and arguing that it is a virtue, or even an imperative given the phrasing of your title and opening sentence.
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Precisely, BJL. I am so pleased to see that someone has actually read and grasped the point!
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Precisely, BJL. I am so pleased to see that someone has actually read and grasped the point!
There you go again, not accepting that what you wrote was read, and what was grasped had a great deal to do with what you wrote.
What if you'd titled your comment here -- Seeing "Photographically" ?
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Whatever the arguments presented here, I've long preferred smaller prints—in the 6x8/9" to 12x16/18" range—to larger ones. This goes for other people's photos as well as my own. IMO larger prints are necessary in an environment where your ability to get up close is restricted. Otherwise not.
-Dave-
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"Print small" is arguably poor phrasing on my part, really. I'm talking about small viewing angles, I think fairly obviously?
Anyways.
That's how photos are actually viewed, in the real world. Sure, there are a few 20x24 prints lying around out there, but most photos are 4x6 or 3x5 or on a phone or on a computer screen or in a book or a magazine, and simply not that big.
I'm constantly frustrated by people who seem to think the internet is a debate society, where the job is to knock the other guy's argument over as efficiently as possible. So, don't bother to try to get what's being said, go nitpick an interpretation of a quote, nitpick a word choice, argue about a minor side detail, whatever you do don't even address the central thesis.
And I am occasionally gratified when someone clearly does grasp the central thesis, and takes a moment to address it. Even if to say "No, I don't think that's right" and sometimes even ".. and here's why".
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Related: what do YOU think it means for a photograph to look like a photograph? Not in some facile sense, but in the sense that the modernists were talking about when they were rejecting pictorialism.
I always thought the modernists (Weston, Strand etc) were appealing for deep focus / clarity (i.e. no blur effects, whether from wide open apertures, specialist lenses, filters, darkroom manipulations, or working-up of the print). Did they have anything to say about the size of prints or the way the eye/mind reads a print? (I'm not well-read on the subject.)
These days the question 'what do does it mean for a photograph to look like a photograph?' is much more complicated. Many of the things that look like photographs are not photographs. They are CGI renders that bear no indexical relation to reality. They would however pass all the modernist tests.
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I always thought the modernists (Weston, Strand etc) were appealing for deep focus / clarity (i.e. no blur effects, whether from wide open apertures, specialist lenses, filters, darkroom manipulations, or working-up of the print). Did they have anything to say about the size of prints or the way the eye/mind reads a print? (I'm not well-read on the subject.)
I'm not aware of any of them, particularly, advocating small prints, or of calling out small prints as being especially "photographic". As far as I know most of them weren't especially interested in "well, what makes a photograph look like a photograph" either. The earliest remark I'm aware of was from a critic. The photographers, for the most part, seem to have been mainly just doing their own thing, which was certainly based on lots of sharpness throughout.
Some of them did print small, however, and they were certainly doing something different, which didn't look like painting.
As far as I know, my thesis that some essential portion of "looking like a photograph" is bound up in, or at any rate enhanced by, small viewing-angle, is new with me.
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If you redefine 'small print' as 'small viewing angle' you then get the strange situation where a large print, say a Jeff Wall, looks like a photograph when you enter the gallery, but looks less like a photograph as you walk towards it. That's not my experience. But I can accept that it might be yours. Generally big prints are shown in big galleries, and if you have an aversion to wide viewing angles it's not difficult to keep a safe distance from the artwork.
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Print size should be based on image content and the dynamics of the exhibition space.
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Consider your giant print in the gallery:
"The viewing experience from close up is quite different from the viewing experience from a distance" - this is surely not a controversial statement? Dunderheadedly obvious seems more like it.
"One can get more of a sense of the print in a single glance from far away than one can close up" - I don't feel like this refinement is particularly problematic.
"The viewing experience from a distance can be seen as a kind of distillation, one gets less detail, but can grasp more of the gestalt, in an instant, than one can from close up" - starting to bump in to controversy here, perhaps? I think it's a reasonable statement, but not really unarguable. I happen to think it's correct, obviously.
"This distillation, when applied to a photograph of a real thing, can viewed as presenting perhaps a large scene as a single distilled digestible visual object, a distillation of the reality, in a sense" - now I think we're getting to the meat of my thesis, and arguments are likely to arise.
"this distillation is an essential photographic thing, and it represents an important way in which 'a photograph may look like a photograph'"
And thus we have arrived, by relatively easy steps, at the conclusion that indeed a large print may "look more like a photograph from farther away"
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And if the large print looks less like a photograph as we approach it, what does it instead become? A painting? Reality?
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How would I know? If I tell you a bird has feathers, and you reply 'this thing has no feathers' then you are on your own in terms of identifying the thing.
Obviously it continues to be literally identifiable as a photograph. But I think I have made a reasonable argument that it loses something essentially photographic as you approach it. Presumably it gains some things as well.
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All else being equal I think printing large or small should depend on what one wants to accomplish with the print.
"For example, an image that I feel requires extreme sharpness may appear sufficiently sharp at one of the smaller sizes, but is unsharp at 16x20 or larger. Another consideration would be the size of an area with low tonal variation. It may be quite acceptable in a 5x7 image, but it becomes boring or oppressive in a larger size. Sometimes the image may hold up technically in every way, but I simply don't want a large image because it negates the delicacy (https://books.google.com/books?id=G2MpBQAAQBAJ&lpg=PA1&dq=the%20essence%20of%20photography&pg=PT105#v=onepage&q=%22negates%20the%20delicacy%22&f=false) of the feeling I want to convey."
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Some pictures, especially wide panoramic scenes containing a number of elements, when printed in large size, tell a rich story when viewed from one end to another.
When the same picture is reduced in size, the story aspect is lost (unless viewed with a loupe).
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I settled on 11 x 14 prints myself.
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I think the problem here with Andrew's hypothesis about the benefits of small prints, is an issue of degree.
It's true that one can usually grasp the totality of a large scene, as depicted on a small print, with less eye movement than would be needed when viewing the original scene, but not with no eye movement at all. When viewing the original scene, one might need to move one's head as well as one's eyeballs, if the scene is vast. One would probably never need to do that when viewing a small print, although one might need to move one's head if the print were large, and especially if it were a panorama stretching the length of a wall.
I also see another problem in relation to Andrew's comment, 'You can actually see the textures, the details, all the little facets of the scene, all at once.' This just doesn't seem true to me.
It's really surprising how narrow the focussed view of our eyes is. We tend to think that a so-called standard lens, 45 or 50mm on full-frame 35mm format, represents the field of view of normal human vision. This seems way off to me, and at best is a very rough approximation. If one includes peripheral vision and the general awareness that 'something' is there, including the perception that something has moved, then the field-of-view of human vision is wider than any rectilinear wide-angle lens, probably as wide as a fish-eye lens.
Most of the detail, even coarse detail within that wide angle of view, cannot be discerned. At the extreme edges of the view, only movement can be detected. At narrower angles of view, broad shapes and a hint of colour begin to be discerned.
However, in order to clearly see details such as texture, the focussed angle of view of our eyes becomes very narrow indeed; more like that of a telephoto lens with a low magnification in the camera's viewfinder, or alternatively like an image with a very shallow DoF at each point on the print that the eye focusses.
No way can one see 'the textures, the details, all the little facets of the scene, all at once', even on a very small print. Sorry, Andrew! ;)
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Details, details.
The point is it's folded up into a smaller packet which allows, creates, a different and in some ways more intense viewing experience. With some consequences, etc.
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The point is it's folded up into a smaller packet which allows, creates, a different and in some ways more intense viewing experience. With some consequences, etc.
It's as-if you haven't noticed the photograph provides repeated viewing of a past view.
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Details, details.
The point is it's folded up into a smaller packet which allows, creates, a different and in some ways more intense viewing experience. With some consequences, etc.
The smaller the package the more limited the experience, in my opinion. It's a matter of the potential variety of viewing perspectives. With a large print from a high-resolution image, one can step back just a few metres to get a more comprehensive view of the entire composition, equivalent to viewing a small print from a close distance.
If one finds additional interest in certain parts of the composition, such as fine texture or any detail that attracts closer inspection, one can usually get closer, which is equivalent to viewing the original scene through a longer telephoto lens than the one used to take the shot.
A large, high-resolution print is in effect a combination of subsets or small crops. From a close distance, one can take in all, or most of the detail in a single small crop, with one fixed and focussed gaze. From a greater distance, one can take in most of the detail in a group of 4, adjacent small crops, then a group of 16 small crops from a yet further distance, and so on.
Regarding the attractions of the small print, I'm reminded here of that comment attributed to Picasso when his paintings were criticised by someone who claimed they were not realistic. When Picasso asked his critic for an example of a realistic image, the guy pulled out of his wallet a photo of his wife. Picasso's response was, 'Surely your wife is not that small and flat?' (or something to that effect) ;D
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So we're in agreement! Excellent.
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It's interesting to think about such issues and do a few 'conscious-aware' experiments. My main issue is with your comment, "'You can actually see the textures, the details, all the little facets of the scene, all at once."
This is patently untrue. Take any postage stamp and try to scrutinise from close-up, wearing your best reading glasses, any specific part of the stamp, such as the Queen of England's right eyebrow. You will find, or at least I have found, that our focussed angle of view is so narrow that the rest of the stamp is a blur, devoid of detail.
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I could go over it all again, but it would be redundant and silly. I've said all I have to say.
I cannot imagine where you got this notion of peering at a stamp from close up, looking at the Queen's eyebrow. That it's pretty much the exact opposite of what I suggest.
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I can only repeat what you wrote, "You can actually see the textures, the details, all the little facets of the scene, all at once."
You can't. That's my point. Whatever the scene, a vast landscape in the real, a large photographic representation of that landscape, an 8"x11" print, a 24"x36" print, or even a postage-stamp size print, one cannot see the textures and details 'all at once', in any circumstances other than a small crop of less than postage-stamp size.
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Not going over it again. Either you get it or you do not. Sorry.
See replies #25 and #38.
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Sorry, Andrew. I don't believe in this outdated, dualistic paradigm of either/or. ;)