The Photoboof

Above is a a very low resolution version of the mosaic I made from all the pictures The Photoboof took at Burning Man 2007. The full version (downloadable below) is 14,060 x 11,100 pixels and 42 megabytes, which at 250dpi is about 5 feet by 4 feet. Each individual picture in the mosaic is about 2 inches wide, meaning you can see everything nicely when it's printed. You can click the mosaic above to load a medium (5 meg) version.

I think it'd be fun to have these professionally printed to posters, but for now I made a handy dandy print-yer-own poster by chopping it into tiles that you can print to regular 8.5x11 paper. There's two versions: one that's 6x6 tiles and a smaller one that's 4x4 tiles. If you print to 8.5x11 paper, the 6x6 version is 5.5 feet wide, and the 4x4 version is 3.5 feet wide. It's super easy to print, I chopped everything up, all you need to do is download them and print using any printer.

A quick note about paper quality: doing this photobooth stuff has taught me that not all photo paper is created equal. I've found that cheap paper fades really quickly, like within a month or two if it's getting any sun, while good paper will hold an image for years. Interestingly I've found that the ink is much less of a factor, at least that's been the case with the good generic inks I like to use with my trusty old Canon IP3000s. My personal favorite paper for the price is the Epson high gloss stuff.

And note that these tiles will print with a 1/2" margin around the edges of the paper. You can of course cut that off with scissors, but a much easier way is to bring them to a Kinkos or whatever and use their paper cutter. Or just leave it there, it's kind of a cool effect.

I printed some instructions for printing these if you need help here.

Here's a preview version, 5.5 megs, suitable for printing small.

Here's the 36 tiles for the 6x6 version, which will be 5.5 feet wide if you print to 8.5x11 paper.

Here's the 4 2x2 tiles, which will be about 1.5 feet wide when printed on 8.5x11 paper.

Here's a full 43 meg version suitable for printing if you'd prefer to chop it into tiles yourself or print it to a large format printer. If you have a large format printer, I'd love a copy, 498 Natoma Street, San Francisco, CA 94103, hint hint...

And if you print these and mount them somewhere, please send me a picture, I'd love to post a collection of them. Here's the first in the collection, doing an impersonation of a rug in my living room. Note that in this picture I hadn't chopped the white margins off yet, hence the obvious tiling.

<-- BACK TO BURNING MAN 2007 PICS