Frame-mount or ???

by Joseph T. Sinclair

You take your pho­to into a photofin­ish­er and have a nice 20” x 30” print made. You take it to a framer and have it mat­ted and framed. The mat and the frame will cost you about a dozen times what the print cost. Or you can buy a ready-made frame, and frame your­self. That will cost you about six or sev­en times what the print cost.

So there you are. You have a nice pho­to framed to hang on the wall. Boooriiing!

We’re liv­ing in a new gold­en age of pho­tog­ra­phy. Dig­i­tal tech­nol­o­gy has accel­er­at­ed the use of pho­tos in com­merce, art, edu­ca­tion, and every­day fun. Images are every­where, both print­ed and in dig­i­tal formats—and they light up our life.

Why not leave the old framed pho­to behind and try some­thing new? Pho­tos can now be print­ed on met­al, acrylic, fab­ric, can­vas, porce­lain, and oth­er mate­ri­als. An abun­dance of mate­ri­als leads to an abun­dance of new uses. Let’s take a look at one of these new tech­niques that I’ve tried, and I will leave you to inves­ti­gate the others.

I’ve found pho­to prints on met­al to be ter­rif­ic and inex­pen­sive dis­plays. They are typ­i­cal­ly print­ed on a sheet of rigid aluminum.

Met­al prints look ter­rif­ic on the wall. They should­n’t, but they do. Why do they?

1. They stand out due to the stand-off mount­ing in back. The 3D effect seems to give them a sub­tle and nat­ur­al visu­al bor­der (frame substitute).
2. The edges are straight and crisp. Mul­ti­ple shapes are avail­able. The met­al is absolute­ly flat. Met­al prints seem to be almost part of the wall.
3. The col­ors real­ly pop—better than on pho­to paper.
4. The images real­ly pop. You need to have a good sharp pho­to, of course.
5. They seem to be a nat­ur­al part of the room. Pho­tos with frames, how­ev­er, are real­ly for­eign objects.
6. There’s no such thing as a bad frame match-up (to the print) since there is no frame.
7. They don’t nec­es­sar­i­ly look out of place with any decor with the excep­tion of framed pho­tos. Framed and unframed pho­tos don’t mix well.
8. You can use soft­ware to put a frame around your pho­to, and such a frame will be print­ed on the met­al. I’ve seen this used in gal­leries, and it can be attrac­tive if you like frames.

Met­al prints: they look great and they’re rea­son­ably inex­pen­sive. What more could you ask for? Go online and arrange to have sev­er­al of your pho­tos print­ed on alu­minum. Look for coupons online that give you an intro­duc­to­ry price.

Below are two photofin­ish­ers you might try that pro­duce good alu­minum prints. They have com­peti­tors that may be as good or better.

Ado­ramaPix  http://www.adoramapix.com

BayPho­to  http://www.bayphoto.com/metalprints

Magnachrome http://magnachrome.com

I’ve found alu­minum with a white back­ground to be more nat­ur­al than a met­al back­ground, but you might want to experiment.

Set aside one room in your house that will show your new met­al prints. Hang them on the wall with­out frames. Give them some prop­er dif­fused light­ing. Assum­ing they are good sharp pho­tos, they will look like a mil­lion dollars.

Don’t mix met­al prints with framed prints. The framed prints come from a bygone tra­di­tion. The met­al prints are from a tra­di­tion of the future. They don’t mix well in the same room.

As a prac­ti­cal mat­ter, met­al prints are less trou­ble. Framed prints are heavy and clunky, and you have to wor­ry about the glass break­ing. Met­al (alu­minum) prints are lighter and less frag­ile. The only thing you have to wor­ry about is bend­ing them, and they don’t bend easily.

Let this be the start of your exper­i­men­ta­tion with new ways to dis­play your photos.