I recently purchased two copies of the above 8x10 from a seller on ebay. I don't consider myself a photo collector, however I've slowly amassed the beginnings of a "collection" over the last few years. This shot is obviously of Tim Raines and Tim Wallach taking infield at Wrigley Field. There were a lot of things for me to like about it, which ultimately is why I decided to purchase an 8x10 for the first time in my life on ebay.
However when the photos arrived I was pretty bummed out. Take a look at the screen grab below of the original ebay listing:
When the print was cropped to 8x10 size, it cut off the shoes. And the shoes were what made me pull the the trigger and buy the prints. Wallach appears to be wearing running shoes instead of cleats. I'm sure was pretty common back then, but I had never seen it before. As you can see in the scan up top of the 8x10's that arrived, the shoes were cropped out. I left positive feedback for the seller, but wrote a separate note expressing my disappointment. I let him know that I had left positive feedback because it was deserved, and that I understood that I was just a weirdo by being upset about it. I was hoping he would offer to email me a JPEG of the picture so I could crop and print it myself. The seller did one better. He mailed me an 12x8 of the print, check it out:
And in the 12x8, the shoes are clearly visible.
35 mm negatives have an aspect ratio of 1.5. A 12x18 (and 4x6) has an aspect ratio of 1.5, so there's no cropping. 8x10 has an aspect ratio of 1.25, so you lose part of the image off the long ends (in this case the top and bottom). When it was printed 8x10, at least it was moved down so Wallach's head wasn't cut off.
ReplyDeleteA) mad props to the seller for going above and beyond and getting you a better image
ReplyDeleteB) Better than the shoes is his warm up jacket.