Taped Triptych

A taped triptych? Just think of it as the distant cousin of the stitched panorama and you won't go far wrong. The Epson 1400 printer I have does quite well as far as printing out panoramas goes being capable of 13" by 44" but I had a triptych in mind for these photographs and no real pano paper to hand just A3 and A3+.

So I got a couple of sheets of Epson's A3 premium glossy photo paper and taped them together short end to short end to make a sheet 11.7" by about 33", still quite a big bit of paper albeit with a hinge in the middle. The images were 9" by 9" and laid out on a Photoshop "canvas" that was about 13" by 35".

The taped sheet was fed through the printer and completed its travel with no issues. Surprisingly, the join, which was right up the middle of the centre image, is not really noticeable at all and will largely disappear altogether when it's framed.

Three contenders, two of which were knocked out in the first round

As for the pics themselves, they were three of about eight abstract shots I took of white-washed glass at the greenhouse at Craigtoun Park just outside St Andrews. They're maybe a bit tricky to read without seeing them full size. The shapes in the foreground are mainly tables and plants and the lines at the top are roof supports. I felt like Ralph Gibson laying out a book as I shuffled the contenders - six of the original eight images - in and out of the layout to see which combination looked best. The idea was to find a pair that would work at each end and then add a central one that didn't unbalance things.

One of the nicer things about the printing set-up I have now is how comparatively cheap it is to knock out big prints. In the darkroom, the cost of materials was always a limiting factor but not so much with inkjet printing. The ink cost for the triptych was pennies and the two sheets of A3 about £1 each. Can't really complain about that.

I don't think Ilford MGV resin coated in 11"x14" would have been much dearer per sheet, to be honest, but if you're anything like me it usually takes a few sheets to arrive at the finished article and it soon mounts up. And I don't think I would have attempted something like a triptych on two sheets of taped paper anyway, even if I could figure out how to pull it off. I'd have probably just made three prints and cut individual windows in a suitably-shaped mat. 

With the inkjet printer, I usually do proofs on tiny A6 pieces - four from an A4 sheet - which cost about 15p each. So, with no appreciable costs to worry about, I loaded up another sheet of A3 and printed a panorama I shot on the iPhone on a night-time walk with Oscar, the dashing hound. As in previous walks, it was more or less dark although it might be hard to believe that looking at the print. Cath might put up an argument but if by some miracle we have a child in our 60s then I'm calling it Iphone.

It's difficult describing what the scene actually looked like. I know the harbour well so knew what I was looking at but everything was indistinct and barely visible. A passer-by unfamiliar with St Andrews might not even have noticed the harbour walls. But I had a feeling from previous night shots that the iPhone would be able to sprinkle its magic sauce on the file and capture something worthwhile. Even though, it still managed to leave me a bit gobsmacked.

I used some stacked lobster creels for support and shot the pic on the 4:3 format which was cropped in Photoshop to something akin to the Hasselblad Xpan format. The Epson paper is nothing to write home about in terms of its tactile qualities or texture but image quality is excellent and all the touchy-feely stuff disappears once a print is behind glass anyway and that's where this one will end up.