Framing...

The framing of an image can truly make it a better print. This is something I have had a few thoughts about throughout this project.

My first thought was to simply have an inch boarder round the whole image, that would mean cutting the paper down after printing. This would be easy enough done, however it could have meant that I had images that where slightly different sizes to each other. That I wouldn't have wanted.

I decided on having an inch boarder round 3 of the sides then the negative space at the bottom. I thought that this would work really well. I like the idea of negative space, the reason for this is because when I frame my images I want there to be a space, almost a mount, and I also wouldn't want the whole thing to look too busy and cluttered. I think this would have been the case if all the boarders where the same width. 

Above shows how I set my print board up ready for my images. The negative space would be at the bottom. This was easy enough to set up and really made my images look classy and added to the contrast (I personally think).  This was also helpful in case I needed to re set the frame in case someone changed it. Luckily that didn't happen. 

However that didn't mean that I didn't run into any problems. I did, below shows one of the main problems I had to do with framing. 

Often when framing my image I didn't want to enlarge it so it cropped any of the image out. This would mean that the edge wasn't as sharp and straight as I would have liked. This really looks unprofessional. I really didn't want this so in the end I had no choice other than to slightly enlarge the image, cutting off a tiny amount of the image. 

Exploring: 

Something that happened accidentally while printing the darkroom, I was tired and wasn’t really thinking about what I was doing. I forgot all about changing the framing and in my head at that moment I was still thinking I was cutting my prints down. Because I had this in my head I printed my image upside down. This meant that the negative space, and the large boarder was at the top of the image, with the inch boarder at the bottom. This was not at all what I wanted HOWEVER I then began to think, what if the pictures of the pigeons that are on the floor, or caged where to be framed like this and the ones where they are free where framed properly? This would distinguish the two groups of images, but still keeping them together.

This is just an idea that if I have time I will explore more.