a question of scale?

i was clearign out my hard disk, found this image i took in paris last year
i obviously missed it when i was editing my set because i view thumbnails and edit from there
so i was under the impression that a strong photograph is one that can scale so the subject is pretty obvious even when the photo is seen small. I have always tried to take a photo with this in mind
in this case this image is quite abstract it has a lot of subtle detail and obscured by high contrast, when viewed small looks like nothing really
I printed this thing out and the overall look was like 10 times better than the one on screen. I don't normally print things out
so does scale affect the perception of an image?
of course this large example doesn't translate as well when compared to a printed version but it gives you an idea
http://www.zeduce.org/images/paris2005/parisScale2.jpg
.
i obviously missed it when i was editing my set because i view thumbnails and edit from there
so i was under the impression that a strong photograph is one that can scale so the subject is pretty obvious even when the photo is seen small. I have always tried to take a photo with this in mind

in this case this image is quite abstract it has a lot of subtle detail and obscured by high contrast, when viewed small looks like nothing really
I printed this thing out and the overall look was like 10 times better than the one on screen. I don't normally print things out
so does scale affect the perception of an image?
of course this large example doesn't translate as well when compared to a printed version but it gives you an idea
http://www.zeduce.org/images/paris2005/parisScale2.jpg
.