23 OCTOBER 2026
By Gorka Di Capitan
A Poster Doesn't Scroll
Between 2022 and 2024 I shot and designed the posters for Flying Panda, a bubble tea shop in Edinburgh's New Town. One of them was strawberry soufflé pancakes, two drinks on a red background and an arrow: twenty seconds walk. It went up on a phone box around the corner from the shop.
Everyone walking between Princes Street and George Street passed it. Nobody had to follow the account. Nobody had to open an app. The photo did the work on its own, all day, for weeks.
Where the photo ends up
A post gets seen for a second, if the algorithm decides to show it. The same photo, printed, works in the places where people are already deciding what to eat: the window, the board outside, the menu in their hands, the wall inside, the phone box on the way.
For The Pear Tree I produced the large-format prints for the beer garden during their Coca-Cola partnership in 2023. For Tiles Bar, framed prints on the walls inside the venue. For Jackson The Tailor, the photos lead on Instagram first and then end up in the printed menu and in their advertising. When I plan a shoot now, I ask where it will be printed before I ask where it will be posted.
Not every photo survives printing
A photo that looks great on a phone can fall apart at two metres wide. On a screen you see a thousand pixels. On a phone box you see every edge, every shadow and all the noise. This is where the equipment and the way of shooting matter.
The camera needs the resolution. The light needs to be clean, which for me means studio flash, even in a bar: it gives a dish or a glass an edge sharp enough to cut out and place on a red background without looking stuck on. The composition has to leave room for the text that will sit on top. And the file has to leave in the format and colour space the printer needs, not as an export for Instagram.
None of this shows on a phone. It shows when the print arrives.
Shoot once, print everywhere
The trick is planning it. One session, shot with print in mind, covers the Instagram grid, the delivery app, the menu, the window and the poster. Shot only for social, it covers social.
So before you book someone, ask two things. Have you printed at this size before? Can I see it? A photographer who has done it will have a poster, a menu or a wall to show you. One who hasn't will send you a link to a feed.
A poster doesn't scroll. It stays on the corner, at the same size, for as long as you want, and every person who walks past sees it. If the photo can hold up at that size, it works for you every day without you posting a thing.
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