Pictures

A year and a half ago, I bought a Canon Digital Rebel camera, my first digital SLR. For a variety of reasons, it takes much better photographs than a typical pocket digital camera. I figured that one benefit of this camera is that I could take digital pictures from which I could make good-quality enlargements. I've already got a number of pictures of mine from my film days framed and on the walls, but my digital camera didn't put out high enough quality images to make, say, 8x10s.

Fast forward to this past weekend. All of a sudden I realize it's been 18 months, I've taken thousands of pictures, and aside from a few panoramas, I haven't gotten one enlargement. In fact, the most recent pictures of mine that are hanging on my walls are from my trip to Europe. In 1997.

So it's off to ezprints and Shutterfly (date of last order from Shutterfly: 2002; sigh). Because Shutterfly was having a sale, I decided to be bold and order this in 11x14:


I also ordered some 8x12s from ezprints, just in case (Shutterfly does only 8x10s, but the images from my camera have 3/2 ratio, which fits better in 8x12s). ezprints also does panoramic photographs (6 or 12 inches tall, and as wide as you want), so I ordered a 6"x13.5" version of this:


It turns out I need not have bothered with the 8x12 backups; the 11x14 looks wonderful, as does the panorama. The next step was to order the framing supplies from PictureFrames.com. You upload your image, then choose your matte(s) and frame; you can see what the final product will look like every step of the way. It's really cool. I've tended to go for conservative options when I've done my own framing in the past, but they make it so easy to visualize that I felt comfortable creating something a bit more sophisticated.

The frames arrive next week. I'll post pictures once everything's assembled.