The Art of Framing - Before You Make the Print

In the children's story Charlotte's Web; Charlotte concludes that people believe what they see in print.  Likewise, people believe if something is framed it must be important.  Therefore framing demands respect for your work.  People tend to look longer and deeper at photographs that use the concept of framing.                When you graduate High School and you get your graduation diploma, what do you do?  You usually go home and frame it!  When you get your first award winning photograph, what do you do?  You Frame it!  Sure, sure you could just throw your photos into an album; or stick them in a drawer, but when something is important what do you do?  You Frame it!         Why do you frame the important stuff?  You've already done or accomplished whatever it is you're framing . . . so why bother?  When you go into a doctor or dentist office, often you find numerous certificates framed on the wall.  Why?  It draws your attention and says: "Hey, look what I've done!" and "These things are important to me."         Have you ever been in a photo or art gallery, where all the work was either thrown in a box sitting on a table or stuck in a drawer and you were expected to thumb through it?  I don't think so.  Why not?  Because they want you to see their work, they want to impress you.  Often the framed version of the same exact image may be four to five times the price of just the image alone.  There is a certain perception there on display.  This perception; be it right or wrong, implies, that this image must be of great worth or why else would we bother to frame it? Is it any wonder that you're 10 times more likely to buy a framed photo than just a print?         Knowing the information above, how can you make people take your work more seriously?  How do you let a total stranger know that what you have shot is important?  Well, there's only one thing that can possibly draw your attention better than a good frame.  That's two frames.   If your photo is naturally framed; and then you add a frame and hang it on your wall, it's no longer a photo, it's now a work of Art.  If you believe in your work enough to frame it, others will take notice too.  They may not admit it out loud, they may not even know why they will want to look at your work again and again, but they will.          In most cases, framing consist of something in the foreground (usually slightly out of focus) that helps set off something in the background.  One of the reasons this is such a powerful tool, is that this is exactly how the human eye sees things.  Think about it: A flower at the edge of a canyon, you can either focus on the flower or the canyon, but not both.  Your camera, can make both in focus at the same time (depth of field), but that's not really how you saw it.  One of the key goals of any good photographer is to make his or her viewer have an emotional response.  The art of framing helps to breathe new life into an ordinary shot.  It can make the difference between a good shot and a great shot!          Framing helps create a sense of depth by creating opposition.  It can, but doesn't always add strength by duplicating a similar shape already in the photograph, that’s known as repetition.  If you add a frame on a shot that already has framing being used it creates repetition in another way.  The bottom line is, if you don't think your photographs are worth a second glance, why should anyone else?  Using framing gives your pictures more depth and radiates a feeling of confidence.  Give your viewers a reason to want to look again.  Use framing.