Why doesn’t my image fit when printed?

More and more people are consuming art through a computer screen: monitor, laptop, iPad and TV. In one way, this frees you, the artist, to crop and compose an image to suite your aesthetic vision. But when you (or your client) discovers the richness and tangibility of a print, it can be a struggle to translate that vision into common print sizes. Why even bother? You’ve given a really nice 8×14 print to Aunt Selma for her birthday. Maybe of her wee Scottie dog. She goes to Walmart or Michaels to grab a nice frame off the shelf. Oops. No 8×14 frames. Now you’re not Aunt Selma’s favourite anymore. Aunt Selma does not want to be bothered with the complexity and ‘expense’ of custom matting and framing.

So. What is an aspect ratio and what does this have to do with my photography? Or, why can’t I print an 8×14 of this photo? And what do I do about it?

I’ll just jump to the essence of the problem (besides, there is this wonderful internet thingy I keep hearing about, so look it up yourself. Okay okay, I’ve provided links). Your camera sensor (assuming a digital cam), has the same dimensions of a 35mm, but different dimensions than that sheet film from the 1950s. Despite the long history of 35mm and digitals, photo paper and commercial frames are still heavily biased towards these sizes: 4×5, 5×7 and 8×10 (thanks to Harry Nowell for the info).

I’ve taken an 8×12 image printed and framed on 8×10: the first shows the image shrunk to fit, and the second cropped to fit. I’ve also marked up some other compositions with the aspect ratios of common print sizes to highlight the composition challenges you face in capturing your vision.

Last stop: canvas wraps. With a canvas wrap, you need to leave 3-4 inches of an image to wrap over the edge of the frame. You can also have a white or black border make up the 4 inches instead of image. The last photo above, highlights both: the portion outlined in red shows the amount of image that would wrap around the frame. The right side shows that you could show the whole image, with the black portion wrapped around the frame.

So what can you do? Take print size into consideration when creating your composition ‘in-camera’. What, more? I’m already busy enough trying to remember everything else I need to get right. Yes, true. I hate to say it; practice makes most of those automatic, but it’s true. You can do it afterwards, but there is a strong chance that you can’t. Then what will Aunt Selma say when you’ve chopped her beloved Scottie’s nose off?

But wait, there’s more: as digital continues it’s popularity, more and more off-the-shelf frames are coming in those sizes.