A Bit of Satisfaction and Pride

I got a bit of a return on my photography, one that is pretty meaningful to me! And I'm going to brag about it. One of the biggest paybacks I get from taking photographs is sharing them with others and getting their feedback. I have mostly had good feedback and I really enjoy hearing someone say "that's gorgeous" or "I want one of those to hang in my house". I like seeing the smiles. I like being asked "where is that?" or "how did you do that" (I don't have a lot of these.) I like it when someone says "you could sell those" or "that would be a good postcard".

I have had a good number of those reactions I'm happy to admit, in person as well as from online postings such as Facebook. They always make me feel like I'm figuring out how to take a good photograph. Over the holidays I've had two different instances that bolster my ego regarding photography...

Yaquina Bay Lighthouse

I attended a Christmas party for one of the units at work that I do software engineering for. The party included a "white elephant" gift exchange with a limit of $20. I immediately decided to give a framed photograph. I was able to use a discount at Walgreens to get an 11x14 print for about $5.00 and I found a decent, matted frame at Walmart for about $17.00. I cheated a bit but too bad.

I was torn between giving a photograph from Arizona, which would perhaps be more practical for more homes in the Phoenix area, perhaps more likely to fit in with an existing decor and therefore more likely to be hung up. On the other hand, I thought of one of my favorite lighthouse photographs from my Oregon trip in August 2015. I decided to go with the Yaquina Bay lighthouse with a flying seagull in it.

The photograph was a hit, and ended up being "stolen" by the final recipient. She had visited Oregon and just loved it. Almost everyone else said how beautiful it was too. That was very rewarding! My photograph was going to be hung on someone's wall who wasn't a relative!

I had also decided to get myself one of my prints for Christmas (okay, my wife gets to look at it too), in particular I wanted to try a metal print. I chose to print a large panorama from the north rim of the Grand Canyon that I titled "Angels Vista". It is a 4 exposure panorama processed in Adobe Lightroom, of the view near Angels Window.



Angels Vista

I uploaded the image to my account on Pixels.com (http://Randall-Morter.Pixels.com) and chose to print it at 48" x 20". Pixels is cool in that they actually print images at the source image ratios and don't force you to crop them to a standard print size.

I had been interested in a metal print for some time. I wanted to see if the vibrance is truly different. I wanted to see what it looked like hanging on the wall. I wanted a good size print.

The print arrived in about 2 weeks after ordering it. It was packaged well. Unfortunately there was an issue on the right side of the print - similar to a double exposure. It only affected about the right 1/4 of the print so I guessed that the metal slipped when going through the printer. I contacted Pixels.com ON A SUNDAY - their help desk is open 24x7. They created an issue ticket for me and I received a follow up email within 2 days.

I took some pictures of the issue and sent them to the help desk and was issued a replacement that arrived in about a week. It was perfect!

That left me with the somewhat flawed original print. I have to interject that my wife had not noticed the image "ghosts". I decided to see if I could donate it to my employer, the Arizona Department of Education. The director of Human Resources said it was beautiful and they'd look into hanging it somewhere. It was accepted and now hangs in the waiting room for the Teacher Certification unit on the main floor where thousands of teachers pass through each year.

What about the metal print?

I didn't notice or think that the print was truly more vibrant, but without a comparable paper print I can't really say that it was or wasn't better. I almost would like to try it again with the saturation / vibrance really boosted a lot more. On the other hand, it is of an overcast day so it may not be worthy of that sort of treatment.

Overall, however, even though the replacement version is fine, the metal prints look unfinished to me. I think I prefer a print with a matte and a frame. It might be possible to put some sort of frame around the metal print, similar to what I've had on a canvas print, like a 1" wide black wood frame that kind of "floats" around the metal print with a 1" gap or so. That might be better. Someone else suggested just adding other items around the metal print, for example, some metal cactus wall art. Other photographs might suffice too. Those suggestions might work but if it was a matted and framed print I think it would stand on its own.

On the other hand, my cost for the 4 foot wide print, finished and suitable for hanging, was about $180. A paper print in a matted frame would have been much more expensive if the frame was nice at all. The frame I got my son for a 30" x 20" photograph was about $250. So there is the trade off.

Because of the large image size, Pixels would even print the photograph larger, up to 5 feet wide. I didn't end up going to that extreme but in the end I wish I had. I would like to see it at that size! I may eventually do a paper print of it at that size.