Good comments Marc C, and a somewhat different viewpoint from my own. I think the comparison to the formats used by professional photographers on their websites is somewhat “apples and oranges”. As I understand it, the goal of most professional photographer’s websites is to display images in a format for viewers that might be interested in purchasing actual prints, or at least browsing the artist’s work in an easily-accessible format. Web-based trip reports, blogs, etc. are rather different animals in my opinion and offer a lot more freedom. The online material needn’t be bound by the constraints of frames or even monitors, because unlike material prints the space can be virtually limitless. When 99% of the visual material out there on the web has been homogenized to fit nicely into the defined area of the typical monitor, it can be quite refreshing to look at images that haven’t. Clearly this could be frustrating though if the preference is to see only screen-sized images. Sometimes adding a large image works like crap, and simply ruins the view of the image, the readability of any associated text, and who knows what else on the page. But at other times the size adds a dimension of presentation that simply isn’t possible in physical media. For example, with regard to the large picture in the report I mentioned above, when I scrolled down to it the first time, I was immediately drawn to the skier, who on my monitor displaying at 1440 x 900 was near the right side of the image. My next impulse was to scroll to the right to see what remained, at which point I saw the background slope and trees. I still had no real sense of the cliffs behind in the background at that point. Then, I explored the rest of the picture and discovered what remained of the scene. This is no different than the type of presentations that one sees on the History Channel etc. in which a high-resolution image is panned on the low resolution television screen. A view of the entire image all at once is sacrificed to enable seeing part of it at a time in higher resolution. In this case however, one has the ability to control the rate and direction of the panning to suit their taste. I entirely agree that the ideal setup is to also have the option to see the whole image scaled down to fit on one's screen with a quick click, and I’d prefer it, but it’s certainly not necessary. I actually never felt that I even needed to see the entirety of the image I mentioned, although as I wrote this I opened it in a new window and looked at it in total. It certainly wasn’t as dramatic to me. I also didn’t like the overall composition as much relative to the way it had originally been viewed on my screen. In the days when bandwidth was much lower and image file sizes mattered, I would almost always produce web images that fit into the constraints of typical monitors. However, times are changing. Although I still typically size the bulk of my web photos to “mostly” fit on the typical monitors that people seem to have, I don’t always stick to this scheme. Sometimes I will size images so that only the focus of the image can probably fit on a typical monitor, and the fringes of the image are undefined, or loosely defined by the size and shape of the viewers monitor. Occasionally I’ll create images that are tall, and aren’t even meant to be viewed on one screenshot; they are meant to be scrolled or panned and absorbed in that format. It’s a different perspective that certainly isn’t the norm for physical gallery viewing, but it’s something that is possible with the technology we have and allows one to retain a high level of detail in web images. Obviously, removing size constraints from web pages can result in instances of complications, but I think the freedom it gives for presentation is a plus.
-J
