Framing 'Together'

Introduction

One image I took this last summer that I really like I ended up calling 'Together'. It was taken on a calm misty morning after a night of heavy rain. I was up at dawn and had the lake more or less to myself with the exception of one fisherman. The day was still and gray with a soft fog in the distance. I found these two Western Grebes swimming in the lightly rippled calm.

I was out with my Fuji GFX 50s ii with a 55-110mm f4 zoom lens. A nice portrait composition came to mind with the grebes in the lower right corner and distant island in the upper left corner. This gave a nice tension as the island helps anchor the scene to give a reference to the incoherent surface of the water. There is faint hint of the water's edge at the horizon and a show of the mountains at the edge of vision. The ripples and subtle shades of blue give lots for the eye to contemplate. 

I was walking the road that hugs the shore which places the perspective quite low on the water. I wanted some more separation between the birds and the island. Climbing the gradual slope behind the road wasn't feasible as I don't have any truly long lenses. My lens adapter, however, has a shift capability. I was able to use the shift up function to give the appearance of a much higher position on the shore and let the lake's surface stretch out and emphasize the distance. 

What I ended up with is an image of calm and solitude that seems to perfectly reflect the feeling on that late spring morning.  This one is worth framing! 

Together

Framing

I wanted to make another float frame as the last one was quite successful. A float frame places a borderless print in the middle of an almost box frame. The print stands above the backing board of the frame and hence has the sense it is floating in the frame. 

In my treatment of the subject, I tend to favor a wide gap between the print and the frame edge. Many of the ones I have seen seem to favor a very narrow gap. I like to keep in mind the purpose of the frame is to isolate the print from the display context (a wall in a room somewhere) so the mind can contemplate the image and imagine (or not) what is not shown.

For me this means a wider area around the print before the eye meets the frame itself. This also makes the floating effect even stronger; I think.

This time I wanted to try adding glazing to the frame to see if I would like or hate it. I like unglazed prints increasingly but there are some downsides regarding dust and dirt and some people will just want glass as it is traditional.

I had a print made by Mixam in an A3 size on 400 GSM paper with silk paper and soft touch laminate finish. (I discuss Mixam as a print source here...) This results in a velvety matte finish with almost no sheen. It really is a lovely paper. I trimmed the borders off the print. I then mounted the print to some Bristol board using 3M PMA. Normally I would use foam core but had run out of large enough sheets and so I set about experimenting. To the back of the mounted print, I glued a couple of rectangles of foam core board scraps as spacers set in about 36mm from each edge so they could not be seen even when looking at an angle.  

For the frame itself, I started with some 18m x 44mm pine strip and used a circular saw to cut two sets of grooves along the inside length to make a slot for the glazing and the backing board. The glazing is 2 mm acrylic which I had custom cut. (Acrylic has the drawback that it is easy to scratch but it is light, safe and optically clear. Ubiquitous float glass has a slight green color.) I measured and cut the beveled ends of the frame pieces. I sanded the four sides, then glued three of them. Since I had to slide the glazing and backing board in, I needed one end open until I was ready to assemble all the pieces.   

Since I was out of large pieces of foam core, I decided to try the Bristol board as the backing board as well. However, the 2mm Bristol board is not stiff and when I painted flat black on one side it took on a distinct curl that worried me about how flat it would become. I changed my plan and routed the backing board slot in the frame wider and set about gluing the Bristol board to some 1/8" plywood to make for a stiffer back. 

I then painted the frame pieces. While these dried and I waited for the glazing to arrive I had to decide if the single thickness of 1/4 foam core was enough to give an effective look. I decided it would be difficult to understand the full effect until I had the glazing in place as it may be the glazing will create different reflections depending on this height. There is the possibility I will opt to leave the glazing out. 

The glazing arrived and I test fitted it to the frame and immediately hated it. The reflections from the glass are distracting and really interfere with such a delicate low contrast image. I changed tack.

I took the frame back into the shop and sawed through the glazing slot around the entire frame making it less deep. I planed and sanded it flat and repainted the front of the rame flat black. I then add a total of 4 layers of 1/4" (6mm) foam between the print and the frame backing. This looked much better. Below is the result. I am very happy with it. next to find a place on the wall to hang it! 

Final framed print.