Having some pictures printed for some time now, I had the plan of framing them sooner or later. After a year of being busy with many other unrelated, time consuming activities, I found one day with a some time to spare and a lot of materials, to start this project.
The main picture was a 1.2m wide panorama from Danmark, from 2017, and some other pictures like the one from the Fiesta shoot.
As always I made the simulations and the design of the frames, in a 3D software to figure out what and how much materials I need. After figuring that out, going out, getting the rest of the materials, like the main frame body of the big panorama frame and some other things, but I'll tell you about that later.
So, first thing first, I made the main chassi of the frame, keeping in mind that it is going to be a heavy picture, this time having glass as well. The first issue I had was that it was really difficult finding some pin beams as straight as they were long.. some flexing and twisting resulted, but I tried working around it and massaging it in place.
As for the frame background, working as some sort of window mat, I used a big sheet of poplar wood. The pictures don't make it justice, as it is, the reflections of its seeds in the wood and different levels of mate and shine areas makes it really beautiful and nice to look at.
After it was cut to size and fitted, a decision was made to make the poplar wood texture more visible from distance. So I thought of staining the wood and making the texture pop, keeping in mind that most of it would be covered by the picture print.
Always having a bit of a panic attack when taking decisions that are ireversible and thinking that I might ruin it and so forth, but after the first brush I was overly excited about the result #bipolar much.
...crazy isn't it
After one consistent layer of stain, and waiting for it to dry of course, I realized the frame needs more support for the background, so I had to come up with some braces that were not in the main design. The main issue was finding a sturdy mounting solution, using only glue for this frame would have not been enough, some sharp steel was needed in this wood structure to keep it stiff and in one piece.
If it fits it sits
Looking all sturdy and getting the side frames done and test mounted for alignment ( these will hold the glass ) it was time to fit in and test the back panel. In the same time the other frames, in the top of the picture, were done and waiting to get painted. Those frames were done in the same style as the one from the Fiesta shoot, you can check it out here.
Like a glove :) not sure if i can say the same about the white frames..but whatcha gonna do
The next step was ordering and fitting in the glass ( told you I'm gonna tell you later). So the first step was measuring what size of glass i need, a few hundred times so i don't get some unusable size of glass. In this process it was taken in account a few millimeters all around so it could move a bit and not be snug and risk of cracking the glass in time, and also a personal design decision of putting a soft material between the frame and glass so it would rattle and or crack.
YEY! It fits!
As you may see the glass is in the house, literally :D. Other things you can see is that the other frames got mate black spray painted, and the pictures mounted on white adhesive foam board ( didn't thought it was going to be that hard to find an over 1.2m foam board..but hey ... i have to move :< ). In the frames, you might see the window lining. Yes, the glass will sit in an a covered slot in the frame, be cause, why the frame not?! All this attention was given to host and protect the anti-reflective, anti-UV, 2 mm photographic frame glass. It's not quite invisible glass ( museum glass ), but its a bit cheaper.
You can see the harsh direct light being all soften and the reflection of the environment being all blurred out.
This particular type of glass, differs from your normal glass, by being color neutral and not having production imperfections like some of the cheapest glass you can find for house hold use. The anti-reflective effect is the result of the glass being chemically treated, giving it a bit of texture, similarly to sandblasting only really really fine. The side effect of this treatment is that the glass has to stay right on the picture or 2 to 5 mm above it, going more then that will result in getting the image blurry, treating it as a reflection and softening it as farther away the picture goes from the glass.
...and here it is
The panorama picture frame got completed. It has some things that are the result of my learning process, and some mishaps and errors remain. This is not an issue, because this will remain on my wall, as an r&d project. Maybe I will fix it some day, but I don't know what the future holds. Overall it looks interesting and different, and the warm wood background gives the picture a placement in nature and accentuates the panorama.
One of the simple frame pictures I imagined and was seeing it on this wall just like that for some time now. All pictures are mounted on a floating foam board and this one in particular has a white paper window mat, two coat of mate paint on the frame and the anti reflective glass, and that's why you can't see it, but trust me, its on there.
Hope you found this interesting and some sort of entertaining, I wouldn't say educational with the little amount of detail shared, but if anyone has any questions or is interested in making or having one of these, leave your thoughts and questions in the comments bellow.
Until next time,
CheeRS and keep them shooting!