Defying conventional wisdom, we printed a wall-sized picture of the Golden Gate Bridge.

When Boris contacted me 3 months ago, he sounded desperate.  He had a special request and not much hope of getting it met. Boris wanted to have a wall-sized print of one of my pictures. He wanted to print one of the pictures he found on this website at 128x100 inches. At first, I was puzzled and I asked him to confirm his request. I guessed that he was German, so I translated his request into metric units for confirmation.

After confirmation, I suggested some of my large-scale stitched images as an alternative solution, but Boris knew exactly what he wanted and stayed firm in his request. I therefore discussed the potential outcome of resizing the desired image with him. We quickly dismissed the possibility of re-taking the shot, due to the cost and the unknown outcome. Atmospheric conditions in San Francisco are not predictable.

We focused on the more predictable issue of upsizing the original image and on print quality. After explaining that even an 8.2MP file of the Canon 20D is several times larger than the highest HDTV resolution, we concluded that it has to look better at those giant dimensions too. You need to see a 72” HDTV at full resolution to know how good these look at 2 Megapixels (1080p).

A good-looking result was also our goal. Boris had already found a specialist in large-scale printing and left it to them and me to figure out the potential of success. I suggested working with CCS Digital on a test print, a slice of the upsized image at full resolution.

After experimenting a bit with different upsizing methods, we settled on a result that Boris ordered from CCS for review. One week later, I had the order filled. Gaining a better understanding of the limits of printing, satisfying a customer and my own curiosity made it a worthwhile effort.

I asked Boris for a picture of the result and permission to write this article.