I’ve been considering selling canvas prints of my Orcas Island photos for years now, and finally got down to business ordering some samples for myself.
In the past I’ve used Canvas Champ for little personal canvas prints here and there, but the most recent order I received was horrible. The wood structures stabilizing the canvases were all wonky and asymmetrical. The colors of the photos were washed out. The packaging was iffy and slip-slidey. The quality was so bad that I couldn’t even give them away as gifts for Christmas. They still sit on the floor of my closet, gathering dust. I should just throw them away because they would misrepresent me terribly.
So I sat down and watched a bunch of canvas print reviews of the different online companies out there.
This one was most helpful:
Thanks to this video (and if you want to cut to the chase to hear the ratings from worst to best, skip forward to the 5 minute and 50 second mark), I learned of Pictorem and ordered three large 36 x 27″ canvas prints of places I photographed in Italy for my office, for $120 each.
It took about three weeks for them to arrive, which felt like a long time, but I was so pleased when I opened the boxes. The colors are fantastic. The wooden support structures are beautiful. Nothing is warped (it only looks that way above because the iPhone photos I just took of them warp how they look, which is one of the issues I have with photos on a phone, especially of faces). The staples holding the canvases to the wood are close together. The hanging wires are coated in smooth plastic. They even sent wall hooks and a brand new level. What a difference from Canvas Champ, which is crazy cheap, but you definitely get what you pay for when comparing these two companies.
The biggest factor for me in deciding whether to sell prints of the island here on my website is the grain. When you look closely at the canvas photos, the grain is a bit blurry. That’s what I was wondering. I haven’t carried around my big, chunky Canon camera with its heavy lens for years now. The iPhone is just too handy and lightweight, and it captures photos quite beautifully. But blown up, the grain isn’t fine enough for large prints, in my opinion. It would be with my Canon photos, but I don’t even know if I’ll ever use my big camera much again for daily use. Only for special purposes like portraits.
So there you go, no canvas prints from me since most of the photos I’ve taken of the island in the past several years were captured with my iPhone, and I would only sell large prints if the level of grain was exceptionally fine and crisp. Or if someone buying them didn’t care whether the grain when viewed closely was as fine as possible.
