While there may be benefits to printing canvas or framing a piece of fine art, it all depends on personal tastes and preferences, budget, interior design, and needs of the end user.
CANVAS ADVANTAGES-
• Does not exhibit any glare or reflections.
• Largest image size for a given wall space (no mats or borders)
• Weighs much less that framed prints.
• Canvas prints provide a frameless presentation which creates a window into the scene.
• Lack of frame blends well into any style decor in home or office.
• Creates the feel of a Statement Piece.
• Adds texture to a plain wall.
• Ready to hang, no added cost of matte and frame (keeps cost low).
CANVAS DISADVANTAGES-
• Photograph can not be changed (permanent).
• Canvas is a textured medium, depends on personal taste.
PRINT ADVANTAGES-
• Traditional look and appeal.
• Matte and frame selection to match room decor.
• Paper prints exhibit more detail than canvas.
• Print can be changed over time.
PRINT DISADVANTAGES-
• Glare and reflections from light.
• More delicate to moisture.
• Larger sizes are heavy and expensive.
• Not ready to hang, must choose mat and frame, adds to cost.
When you’re ready to hang your wall art, make sure you consider the pros and cons.
While I love my DSLR, I certainly don’t mind grabbing my iPhone to ‘get the shot’, especially when it’s the more convenient option!
These are the two main apps I use to edit and upload to Instagram:
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Facetune [approx $3- wait until you see what I do with this one!]
taken with iPhone 7plusedited with iPhone
While I do have VSCO in my edit playlist, as well as Filmborn (both Free) I seldom use these. Not that they’re not great, they just don’t jive with my style to keep things looking cohesive.
Plann is a new app I discovered for pre-planning and scheduling IG posts. It gives you a visual of what your grid will look like before actually posting.
Wordswag I use for my other business social media posts, and Poto is a new to me, so I’m still navigating the waters with this one. It is great for creating collages, but I’m sure there is so much more I have yet to use.
Enlight is my go-to. As it has lots of fine tuning options and masking capabilities. There are plenty of filters to choose from, or if you prefer to hand edit, like I do, there are many things to have fun with here!
I use Dropbox all the time! It’s the perfect little portal to get images back and forth from phone to Mac and vice versa.
Let’s dive in, shall we?
1. Enlight- I select my image. I will usually “favourite” the ones I want to edit to make it easier to find and save time.
2. Crop. I always use 2:3 ratio. This keeps my grid consistent.
3. “Heal and Patch” can be found in “Tools”. I usually don’t use this if I can help it, as it’s time consuming and tedious, and quite frankly, not near as amazing a photoshop would be. In this case, I didn’t want the flooring to be in the image and I was striving for a simple, white background with a goal of a minimalist feel. It’s best to get the outcome correct in camera, but it’s not always achievable, so this is a workaround.
4. Facetune- This step can be done first, if I didn’t need to do any “healing/patching” to the image. I use the ‘Whiten’ tool to do just that! Whiten. It’s the perfect little gem to make whites nice and bright! I also use “Glow” to beef up the whites as well.
I haven’t found a need for the other tools, but the whiten and glow feature were well worth the $3.
*** when I was writing this blog, I had already finalized my image, hence the logo in the ‘after’. To my knowledge, there is no ‘text’ option in Facetune.***
Enlight-
select ‘adjust’ pannel
use curves to add matte
adjust contrast, brightness, exposure
blacks, shadows and sharpening
colour temp, saturation, hue
5. Enlight- I go into the ‘Adjust’ panel and tweak brightness, contrast, shadows, blacks, WB and/or curves if I wish to add a matte, or play with the colour channels.
6. Adding a watermark. Even though it’s not my usual watermark (I’m going to look into a way to do this), I always add my name to my work, it’s not necessary, but I like it. For me, it’s the cherry on top.
The font list is not overly large, but I found one that is simple and works for me.
7. Because I’ve been asked dozens of times how I get that white border in my IG images. Here is the trick. In Enlight, I go to ‘Finalize’ and select ‘Instafit’. You can select a blurred border or customize your own colour that works with your brand. Because my style is simplistic, I love the white border.
Another Example with iPhone 7 and olloclip wide-angle [same process, no Facetune] lots of curves for the boost of warmth using blue, green and red channels separately to enhance the morning sky and deepen the tones of the sea.
before
curves + shadows + contrast + brightness
BW filter
And that’s it! Once you navigate Enlight, you’ll discover how it works best for you. There are so many amazing features and filters to get you started. I have yet to use it to it’s fullest capacity, I’m sure you will enjoy exercising your creative outlet as you explore it’s full potential!
Hope these tips will inspire you the next time you pick up your phone and snap away!
Coming up- My ‘must-have’ images when on vacation.
Since the evolution of the third arm is slow coming (how awesome would it be though, seriously!), I thought I would find out how some of my favourite instagrammers achieve this type of perspective without taping their iPhones to their foreheads… although I must admit, I might just give that a try one day, haha! Continue reading Look Ma, no hands!
Let me share with you my impressions of a 365 project so far.
Let’s face it, as I write this post, I realize that it’s only the beginning of May, so I’m not technically even half way there, and by NO means an expert on this subject, hence I’m sharing my experience and maybe you’ll find yourself nodding your head in agreement with this crazy little journey. Continue reading So… you’re doing a 365?
While I do have a great collection, it’s important to know that I have accumulated these babies over the last decade. I use each and everyone of these regularly. Continue reading In My Bag…
Oh boy, the choices out there on the market for lenses. It’s quite overwhelming really. While I will admit that I own a few myself, I must say that I researched the heck out of them before taking the financial plunge. Continue reading Zooms, Primes and Wide Angles oh my!
Portraits. Often a person’s worst nightmare. (Up there next to public speaking, in my opinion.) The idea of sitting in front of the camera, feeling uncomfortable, with that famously awkward ‘Chandler’ smile (for those of you who’ve seen Friends, you know where I’m going with this). Ya, it can make anyone one squirm. Continue reading Self-Portrait…can anyone say awkward?
Let’s assume by now you’ve got a handle on exposure (if not, refer to ‘EXPOSURE TRIANGLE‘). When you shoot in ‘M’ mode, the creativity starts in the camera. Now that you have an understanding of how to properly expose for light. (bravo!) let’s look at other ways to get creative with your images. (Yippee!)
Simple things you can do to take your image to another level are :
COMPOSITION
CROP
LIGHT (direction of)
ANGLES
DISTANCE BETWEEN YOU AND YOUR SUBJECT
APERTURE
SHUTTER SPEED
LENS CHOICE
These basics will be a one half of the equation when developing your personal style. The other half lies in your post-processing, but we’ll chat about that in a post of it’s own.
Practice, Practice, PRACTICE!!! I can’t stress this enough. Try working on the list above and you’ll be amazed at how subtle changes will have the biggest impact!
If you’re reading this, chances are you want to learn more about your camera, which nowadays, everyone has easy access to, be it your DSLR, or point-and-shoot (although I think that cell phones are the newest form of the grab and go camera, they certainly are uber convenient!)
It has never been easier to have information at the edge of your fingertips, with all kinds of incredible blogs, and youtube channels that will make your head whirl. Even our phones have infinite editing apps and filters for a speedy upload of our best selfie or sunset.
Now, if you have one of those fancy, big camera’s and your wanting to learn how to use it, I mean, really, really use it, then read on my friend and learn some simple steps to take your basic point-and-shoot methods into images that will evoke your inner artist!
Let’s begin!
6. Adding a watermark. Even though it’s not my usual watermark (I’m going to look into a way to do this), I always add my name to my work, it’s not necessary, but I like it. For me, it’s the cherry on top.
7. Because I’ve been asked dozens of times how I get that white border in my IG images. Here is the trick. In Enlight, I go to ‘Finalize’ and select ‘Instafit’. You can select a blurred border or customize your own colour that works with your brand. Because my style is simplistic, I love the white border.
dana walton photography 