gdanmitchell Offline Upload & Sell: Off
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15Bit wrote:
So, i bought a house a few weeks ago and i need to put something on the walls other than white paint. Looking around locally it's clear to me that "art" is expensive to buy, and even getting my own images printed isn't going to be cheap. So i'm thinking to use this as an opportunity to get into printing myself. My better half even seems to be ok with the whole idea too, and i apparently won't get into trouble for buying an epson 3880 or similar.
Obviously i won't be a great fine art printer to begin, but i'm only planning to hang stuff at home so that doesn't really matter. And i can learn as i go along. My bigger concern is mounting and displaying. I can buy acceptably priced (i.e. cheap) frames in standard sizes, but what about none-standard print sizes like panos? It is possible to get prints professionally mounted and framed here, but i don't want to think about the cost of that.
I was thinking to go down the route of canvas wraps as you can get stretcher bars in a whole variety of lengths, but with a 17 inch printer i suspect i will lose a lot of print to the sides of the wrap. What other options do i have? What do you guys do about printing, mounting and framing?
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You should know that this process is not inexpensive in time or in cost. I'm not saying you shouldn't do it, but I think that saving money may turn out to be a weak reason for going this route. Learning to print well, to control the quality of your prints for the best output might be. Simply put, unless you plan to make a whole lot of prints, the economics of buying a printer, paying for ink and paper, mounting and framing, etc. don't work out to your benefit. For relatively small numbers of prints, it can be less expensive (in money and time) to have someone else do it.
People often look at the prices of high quality fine art photographs and gasp. Those of us who make them often total up the costs and compare them to the potential sales prices... and gasp at how much it costs to produce the images and mount/frame them. Trust me, there isn't a whole lot of room left over for profit!
Printing can be a very rewarding thing even if the finances don't play out. You will have full control over the quality of your work and you can decide exactly what it should look like. If you have the time, persistence, and patience you can eventually acquire printing skills that will let you equal and eventually surpass what you'll get from print services.
Good luck.
Dan
I use an Epson 7900. A full set of the smallest ink cartridges costs close to $900. I print on high quality archival paper that often costs $100 and up per roll. I use paper hinges and corners to mount to archival foam core backing boards in most cases, and I use high quality archival mat boards. I use Nielsen metal frames. None of this is cheap.
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