It'd be just my luck that I'd finally convince a restauranteer to display
some of my images, and then something unrelated like an ecconomic slump
would cause buisness to drop and my images would be seen to blame for the
decline. ;-)
Sounds like it'd make the plot for a South American novella.
Regarding the real world issues of the cost of framing and matting, I'm
taking that into serious consideration and haven't really reached any good
conclusions. On the one hand I can get handrubbed imported wood frames that
actually look quite decent for $5-$10 a piece. Whether the various brown
woods are appropriate for B&W's seems to be a matter of taste. I don't
particularly like them but was struck by the overall quality in relation to
the price. They're not at all what one thinks of normally for frames in
this price range. In a similar price range I've found plain glass,
"frame-less" mounts with clips that look better to me, but require either
absolutely perfect borders, or borderless prints. 35mm format just doesn't
fare too well when enlarged to make borderless 8"x10" prints, or perhaps
I'm just getting really picky. I'm still working on getting consistant
borders for 35mm prints printed to 6"x9" on 8"x10" paper. Done right, with
a "frameless" mount they look pretty good.
If anybody has any tips for printing 6"x9" other than the usual filing of
the neg. carrier I'd love to hear them.
As far as matting prints into larger frames goes, the cost of a really
decent mat cutter that can do both 90* and 45* plunge and straight cuts
with appropriate guides and accessories is only about $100 or so. That
would rapidly pay for itself compared to the cost of paying somebody else
to do the matting, but matting is something that I really, really hate
doing. The mattes add to the time and frustration of each finished piece
and moreover they put one into a wholly more expensive frame. If time is
worth anything, then it's no wonder that matted prints in large frames go
for what they do.
I don't know how practical this is from a money-making standpoint given
that there's likely a comission to be paid the restaurants, etc. I'm still
looking into it. Even if it worked out to be a totally break even
proposition, that's not necessarily different from producing all this stuff
just for me and mine.
Mike Swaim
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