[nathanm]

I finally completed my largest framed print; a 24x48" whopper of my "Rock Garden" shot.  (DVD case for scale)  Turned out pretty good considering I had to stitch together two separate mats to get it to work.  (Sure a 60" mat cutter would be nice, but what the hey)  The print is dry mounted to a sheet of 1/8" MDF so it's perfectly flat, no waviness here.  Sweet.  I'm going to add an inset frame to the back so when hung it will "float" against the wall.  I like this size, it really sucks you in.

[whubbard]

 

Very Nice, Very Nice.

-West

[jqp]

Excellent - let me into the picture!

I am going to get some shots of a friends cats printed at Wolf camera for Christmas - any recommendations of how to get 8x11's mounted for the wall?

[nathanm]

I'm not sure what you mean.

[jqp]

You did an amazing custom mounting job - I am looking for less skilled/expensive for 8x11 prints, if there is such a thing

[TONEPUB]

nice print!

I miss printing the big stuff!  Still have a 52" Roland Hifi Jet in mothballs
need to do some printing in spring...

[JohnR]

Awe. Some. Very cool 

[MAC - SteveH]

You're killin me!

WOW - makes me wanna get back into it. Fun, quiet - tranquil, relaxing.

I wish I had the time. I guess we all need to make time.

S.

[nathanm]

You did an amazing custom mounting job - I am looking for less skilled/expensive for 8x11 prints, if there is such a thing

Thanks, but expensive?  No, my framing production is ALL ABOUT going as cheap as humanly possible! (Well, with materials at least! )  If I bought ready-made frames, for the amount of stuff I want framed, I would be living on the streets in short order.  Years ago I got shell shock from my first professional framing job, an inexpensive Brughel poster which ended up costing me $114 to frame.  Ever since I have been pinching my pennies with a vice grip when it comes to picture framing!

The wood molding I got from the local hardware store which is about $3 for an 8' piece.  I cut these with my miter saw, glue them together and paint them by hand.  It's the only way I could actually get a strip of wood around a picture without losing my shirt.  Me not putting a price on my own labor is the only way to go.  Heh!  I tried rabbeting my own uncut stock with a router table before I found the cheap store molding, but that was trickier than I thought.  That's still probably the ticket for even stingier materials cost.

An 8x10 frame from a store won't set you back much, though.  That's what I would do if I just had one thing I wanted to frame.  Unless of course you're handy with wood and have the tools.

[TONEPUB]

If you have an IKEA nearby, they have some very nice frames
with glass and matte for incredibly low prices.  I got some great
wood frames for about 12-18 bucks each.

And you can get an order of Swedish meatballs in the cafeteria
for 4 bucks!

[TONEPUB]

Nathan:

Here's another tip for matting the big ones;
We had to do a number of images a few years back that were
50" x 10 feet.  Biggest matte board we could find was in 4x8 sheets.
We talked the client down to 48" x 10' and had all of the images mounted
to giant chunks of gatorfoam
(had to be spliced because gatorfoam only comes 4x8 too)

I used some simple moulding from our local frame outlet that
we mitred and painted flat white Krylon then framed around that.

Cost of the mattes was only about 10 bucks and looked great.

[nathanm]

Gatorfoam…$$$!  Hey, a mere $273 for a 60x120" sheet here! (but you have to buy boxes of 5 or 10! )

http://store.foamboardsource.com/gatorfoams--gatorfoam--3-16--gatorfoam.html

Nice stuff I'm sure, but I doubt I will make a lot of these.  I would be quite pleased and surprised if this thing sold at my show in January, hopefully the more imposing size will catch someone's eye.  I do feel slightly guilty about the spliced mat, but it's not too distracting I hope.  It wasn't originally supposed to have a mat at all, but I bodged the frame measurement a smidge and there is a white reveal of the print border otherwise. *doh*  Once upon a time I fantasized about doing a plaque mount with chamfered edge and all, but gave up on that idea.  This mount is similar, though.  Any bigger than this and the dang thing wouldn't fit in my car!

[Bob in St. Louis]

How about that 1" thick dense blue insulation stuff that hardware stores sell?
It's very stiff and should work pretty well and it's fairly cheap.....I would think it should work fine?

Nathan, Spectacular photograph man, truly.
Awesome!
By the way, I really HATE the word "awesome', so it's takes something pretty darn incredible for me to drag that word out, dust it off, and actually use it. THAT'S how much I like it.

Bob

[nathanm]

You could use any rigid material as a backing board, (archival issues of acid and such aside), but the problem with very large prints and traditional T-hinge mat mounting is keeping them from buckling with humidity changes.  After a certain size the paper doesn't lay flat so you either have to accept it or permanently mount the print to a substrate.  The wallboard foam stuff is essentially what foamcore and gatorfoam is, although more rigid with the paper than straight foam.  If you glued it straight to foam it would be susceptible to getting damaged as the surface would be quite soft and flexible.  The ultimate would be Dibond, which is aluminum sheet with a foam center.  Even more wicked expensive than Gatorfoam, though.  The MDF\formica sheet works well, it's very rigid but not too terribly heavy.  And inexpensive!

The restaurant where I've had my shows at have enormous prints displayed in one room and they are all wavy and buckled like mad.  Not a pretty sight.  I looks like they were printed on very thin paper, though.

[Bob in St. Louis]

Ahh, good points about archival, acids, warping, humidity etc.
I didn't think about all that.
That's why "you stick with what you do and I'll stick with what I do". 

Bob

[nathanm]

I got the backing frame glued on and can hang it up now.  That first shot was too magenta anyway.  Hmph.