A recap from last time.  I’ve been asked to show some of my Drabbles at SoHo Photo in September and I’m writing about navigating that process.

So last time I left you I was deciding about image size. Well I settled on 20×30″ landscape.  I’ve gotten a handful of them printed at the size and they look great.  I’m primo happy.  The next step is of course to figure out how I’m going to have them mounted.

If I were showing just a couple, the whole thing might be a bit easier, because if I had to spend $350/each getting them done the way I want, well that’s $500 I could stomach. However, when you’ve got 20 of them in the go the multiplication gets a little higher. $7000 out of pocket just for framing is above and beyond my comfort zone for work that I may or not may not sell any of.

As I mentioned before, I am not planning on matting them at all for a few reasons. Mostly, I don’t want to waste the wall space of losing 2-3″ on each side of the images. Also, I feel like these are more like paintings or even HDTV images than photographs in the traditional sense and I think a standard white border takes you out of that.

The other issue I’m trying to overcome is glare. I bought a frame to do some testing and because the images tend to be dark in subject matter (many taken at night in dimly lit surroundings) the glare from lights and white walls is going to make them very hard to see. And since they’re only going to be up there for a month, I think I’m going to show them without glass or plexiglass.  I know that there are anti-glare glasses and such, but the prices are insane, and we’re back to the issues of framing scale above. I’ve been told by people in the framing business that it’s acceptable to show without protection in these situations. Or at least it’s done.

In order to make this whole process easier, when I get the rest of the set printed, I’m going to have the printer mount them on foamcore or gatorboard for me so that the framing process will be easier and they won’t bow out with the glass.

I’m thinking of just ordering some custom lengths of Nielsen frame and putting together the whole thing myself.  They do however have like 30 different designs.  Anyone have suggestions on which to choose?