I have a show coming up in a couple of weeks. Or rather, I have a work that will be part of a juried show at the Middletown Art Center, opening August 2. The work I am exhibiting is one I really like. Except I had only ever seen it on a screen.
The image is mostly neon lights from the now infamous Terry’s Turf Club, which was a hole in the wall in Cincinnati that had a limited menu, amazing food, and an asshole owner in Terry, though this post is not about that.
I misread the submission instructions on the original entry and submit three photos and only paid for one submission. When I was informed of it all, I was rather pissy. At twenty dollars a submission, twenty dollars a print, and over forty per frame, that is not an insignificant investment if all were chosen. I went with my gut on choosing Terry’s Turf Club to be my submission choice, as I felt it was the most interesting in its way.
I ordered a print through Nations Photo Lab, as I wanted an archival print and I had been waiting for years to order a worthwhile print through them after using some of the other common photo sites in past. The interface was a major challenge for me and I ordered what I thought was the right size. When the package came I was so excited and opened it up and what a joke. The crop on the print was so awful, completely unusable. I immediately went to the site to see what I had done wrong and playing around with it, I realized, it was my impatience combined with a very poor user interface.
So, I went to Mpix, after researching who was the best choice for prints. Nations still ranked as the overall best, though Mpix was highly ranked. I had a much better time with their user interface, meaning as well a much better user experience. I learned that my print was best suited to an 11×17 to not have any crop and to match the iPhone 5s image that I was working from. I ordered the print and experimented with Nations, to see what I could see and did find that size to be what I had needed. This is not a bash on Nations, and I plan to use them in future, when I need a print again, now I just know how to do it much better.
When I got my print from Mpix, it was cropped right and just what I wanted. Except it wasn’t quite right. Something felt off with it. The lighting, I realized. The image is of fluorescent lights mostly, as that was part of the kitschy charm of Terry’s Turf. On screen, those lights are lit. On paper, they don’t have the same backlighting. When I realized that, it was depressing and caused me to question my submission choice. Maybe the leaf, which is a photo that is not about lights, would have been better. I had my submission, though, and I had my print and my frame, which I ordered from ArtToFrame.com and ended up very happy with.
Finally, after framing the piece and seeing it all done, I don’t feel so bad about it as a choice. It still holds up well enough and being in a frame with glass (plexi, technically) over it, it is alright. Still, it made me realize just how backlit photos show differently on a screen. Such as the below photo, will it still render as well when not seen on a backlit screen? I don’t know.