Guide to Purchasing Prints
Purchasing a high-resolution panorama print represents a significant investment, so it’s important to make informed choices when you choose print options and which print(s) to buy. This section is intended to provide you with the information you need to choose the print and the print options that are right for you. The section is organized in a FAQ (frequently asked questions) format, which we hope will make it easy for you to find the information you’re looking for. If you’re unable to find the information you need, please contact us directly via phone, email or the web form on our contact page. Thanks for your interest in purchasing a high-resolution panorama print from bobcphotography.com.
Common Questions about Prints
What options do I have when purchasing a print from bobcphotography.com?
We offer two sets of options with each purchased print: borderless vs. a white border and three surface finish options, including Clear Gloss, P99 Matte and TruLife antiglare. Clear Gloss is our standard finish.
Which surface option should I choose?
This is really a question about how your print will be lit. If the print will be displayed in a place where the lighting can be completely controlled, i.e. where unwanted reflections can be fully eliminated, we recommend the Clear Gloss finish. The Clear Gloss finish offers stunning viewing clarity, yet it’s also our most affordable surface finish option. The only disadvantage of the Clear Gloss finish is that it does show reflections if lighting isn’t well-controlled.
If your print will be displayed in an environment where lighting isn’t well-controlled, we recommend the P99 Matte (non-glare) finish. The P99 finish still provides superb image clarity with acrylic prints - especially prints that are made with the Lumachrome process. (All of our prints are Lumachrome.)
If your lighting environment includes uncontrolled ambient light such as window light or room lighting that wasn’t designed to light your print, the P99 Matte option does a great job of controlling any reflections from ambient lighting sources. In uncontrolled lighting situations the non-glare properties of the P99 surface option bring out the subtleties of acrylic prints because there are no external reflections to interfere with the light that the image itself reflects.
Finally there’s our TruLife surface finish option. TruLife is the gold standard among surface finishes in acrylic printing; it provides exceptional image clarity while still controlling reflections extremely well. The biggest disadvantage of TruLife is that it will cost you some gold; it’s our most expensive finish option. There’s a lot of debate in the fine art printing community about TruLife vs. other surface finishes and whether TruLife represents the best value in acrylic finishing. But for those who insist on the very best, TruLife delivers; that’s why we offer it as an option.
Which type of lighting is best for viewing acrylic prints?
I believe that it’s quite important to light high-quality photography prints intentionally and properly. So I recommend creating a specific lighting installation for prints that you purchase from us. Given the wide aspect ratio of so many of our images I would recommend some form of track lighting if your room can accommodate it.
Traditionally halogen lighting has been the gold standard for museum and professional gallery environments because of its faithful reproduction of the visible light spectrum. Unfortunately halogen lighting consumes a lot of power and generates a significant amount of heat.
The upstart alternative to halogen lighting is LED lighting, which consumes much less power and generates much less heat than halogen. Originally LED lighting suffered from “spiky” coverage of the visible light spectrum - even though some of the “spiky” LED bulbs had seemingly high CRI (color rendering index) ratings. A high CRI index is important for LED lights but it isn’t the only consideration.
More recent versions of LED lighting are seemingly doing a much better job of recreating the full spectrum; this article at Waveform Lighting does a great job of illustrating how their LED bulbs cover the spectrum vs. other sources. At this point I would almost universally recommend LED lighting over halogen, whether the environment is a home, a business or a gallery.
A common question regarding gallery lighting is about color temperature, i.e. how orange, white or blue a light source is. Color temperature is measured in Kelvin (K). Lights that are yellow or golden have lower Kelvin numbers. Daylight is typically at 5000 Kelvin (5000K); light sources at 6500 K have a bluish tone. Most home table lamps simulate the color of tungsten light bulbs at 2700K. Most museums and art galleries light their works at 3,000K, others suggest 3700K and still others suggest that 5000K (daylight-balanced) is optimal. I’d put myself in the 3000K camp; I think it looks great, but I’m biased toward warm indoor lighting.
There are a number of excellent online articles about how to create great lighting for displaying art and photography. Here are links to several:
Art Lighting: Seeing Your Art in the Best Light (Alcon Lighting)
How to Light Different Types of Artwork - Murals & Large Pieces (Lutron)
How To Properly Light Artwork (Mike Wardinksi)
Why do you only offer acrylic prints? Are other materials or printing methods available?
We only offer acrylic prints because we want our images to be displayed at the highest possible level of quality. All of our prints are face-mounted Lumachrome acrylic because of the stunning clarity and detail that Lumachrome acrylic offers; other materials and processes can be quite good but they don’t quite match acrylic. Face-mounted acrylic prints are so stunning in terms of clarity and vibrancy that they almost appear to lit from behind. That’s the level of image quality we want all of our images to provide.
A lot of the prints you offer are quite large. Are smaller versions available?
Our prints are large because that’s the size they were intended to be when captured. A key objective of wide-format panorama photography is to capture and present an image that fully depicts the scene it represents, in terms of both size and detail. We don’t currently offer reduced sizes, but some of our images are natively smaller than others. Consider images like “Pink Puffs” or “Staccato Strata” if you’re looking for moderate image sizes.
Many of the bordered prints you offer only have borders on the top and bottom of the image. Why is this?
Many of our widest aspect ratio bordered prints don’t have borders on the ends simply because we believe that the print is so wide that it looks better without them. I like to think of the no-end-border look as an “infinity edge” - as if the scene continues indefinitely past the edges of the image. For images that are 120 inches wide, there’s also the practical consideration that the acrylic sheets that the print is mounted to are a maximum of 120 inches long.
All of your prints come standard with a rear-mounted floating frame. Are custom framing options available?
We’re willing to consider certain custom framing options at an additional cost. Contact us for a quote.
What comes with a purchased print?
Each print comes with the following:
A Super HD Roma floating frame
Two French cleats for wall-mounting
A signed Certificate of Authenticity (not attached to the print)
2 copies of a signed information sheet; one is attached to the back of the print; the other is separate
A Thankyou card
The Certificate of Authenticity, the separate information sheet and the Thank you card come in a separate envelope.
Do you sign your prints?
I don’t sign the viewing side of our prints because I don’t want anything to interfere with the integrity of the image. I do sign the information sheet that’s attached to the back of each print, so my signature is on each print that we make. I also sign the Certificate of Authenticity.
Do you offer limited edition prints? How can I be sure the print I purchase will hold its value?
All of our prints are open editions; we want to make each of our images accessible to as many folks as possible. However, buyers of our prints can maximize the value of their purchase by acquiring an early edition. We assign an edition number to each print of a given image, and that edition number is printed on the information sheet attached to the back side of the print. So the first print purchased would be edition no. 1; the second would be edition no. 2, and so on. One would expect that early editions, e.g. the first 10 or 20 would eventually become more valuable than later editions.
What is the typical delivery time for a purchased print?
Our standard lead time is 4-6 weeks from the time the order is placed.
Why does it take so long to deliver a print?
We apologize for the long lead time. Our printshop has a huge workload and a significant backlog. Also, their production processes are exacting, as are their quality assurance procedures. Shipping is via freight, which isn’t as fast as other package delivery services.
What are typical shipping costs of your prints? Can shipping be expedited?
We offer free shipping for all of our prints to destinations in the 48 contiguous U.S. states. Given the sizes of our prints, virtually all of our shipments are via freight. We can offer expedited shipping on certain prints at an additional cost. Please contact us for a custom quote.
Do you ship internationally?
Our current pricing is based on shipping to the 48 contiguous U.S. states. We hope to add offshore and international shipping to our standard offerings soon. We’re willing to consider custom offshore and international shipments but there would be an added cost. Please contact us for a custom quote.