I've got an end of year exhibition coming up at the end of my Art course which gets examined. The vast majority of my work is photography so I'm looking at printing options with a few strange conditions which is making things tricky.
Canvas and paper cannot be displayed outside of frames (so poster prints don't actually wind up being that much cheaper as all of the frames that school has bar a few 20*29 inch frames which I'm looking to shotgun for 30*20 prints).
We have a fair few frames but nowhere near enough even in raw numbers for all my prints, even fewer when you consider that the majority are in very awkward sizes for photography (quick list in inches: 32*23, 8*11.5, 8.5*11, 11.5*15.5, 15.5*19.5, 20*29, 50*40 (called dibs on that), a3.
The spaces I have to exhibit amount to a load of quite strange sized panels, but less limiting than the frames. About 15 30*20 spaces though some are thinner than that and some are substantially biggger (my biggest spaces are 35*80 and 45*65).
Now this affects my grade, so I'm happy to sell off a few bits of pc equipment, camera gear etc. for the sake of getting a better print if it's worth it, but it is all looking very expensive considering I don't have much possibility of eventually selling on the prints given the nature of the pieces.
I'll be trying to do as many as possible on poster prints but for the main pieces firstly I don't want to compromise on the aspect ratio for the sake of fitting frames, and I'd also like a slightly better print than those.
I'm thinking along the lines of the various acrylic panels, aluminium backed prints and the like but obviously it's all incredibly expensive, so my main question (finally) is are there any alternatives to paper that provide decent prints without costing £100 per 30*20 pop?
Canvas and paper cannot be displayed outside of frames (so poster prints don't actually wind up being that much cheaper as all of the frames that school has bar a few 20*29 inch frames which I'm looking to shotgun for 30*20 prints).
We have a fair few frames but nowhere near enough even in raw numbers for all my prints, even fewer when you consider that the majority are in very awkward sizes for photography (quick list in inches: 32*23, 8*11.5, 8.5*11, 11.5*15.5, 15.5*19.5, 20*29, 50*40 (called dibs on that), a3.
The spaces I have to exhibit amount to a load of quite strange sized panels, but less limiting than the frames. About 15 30*20 spaces though some are thinner than that and some are substantially biggger (my biggest spaces are 35*80 and 45*65).
Now this affects my grade, so I'm happy to sell off a few bits of pc equipment, camera gear etc. for the sake of getting a better print if it's worth it, but it is all looking very expensive considering I don't have much possibility of eventually selling on the prints given the nature of the pieces.
I'll be trying to do as many as possible on poster prints but for the main pieces firstly I don't want to compromise on the aspect ratio for the sake of fitting frames, and I'd also like a slightly better print than those.
I'm thinking along the lines of the various acrylic panels, aluminium backed prints and the like but obviously it's all incredibly expensive, so my main question (finally) is are there any alternatives to paper that provide decent prints without costing £100 per 30*20 pop?