Documenting Life’s Most Special Moments Using Unique Bamboo Prints

Do you consider yourself the photo taker of your friends and family? There’s always one. The one who always makes sure to get the shot. The one who wants to document each and every special memory, to be preserved for years to come. From all your little one’s ‘firsts’, to birthdays, weddings, vacations and even those candid everyday moments, you capture them all. It’s an important role, and one that is very rewarding. Seeing someone’s face light up when they first lay eyes on a meaningful photo, captured and preserved, is well worth it. The ability of photos to bring back our most precious memories is incredibly special. Being able to share that memory with your loved ones, in the form of a print, is even more special.

Of course, for such special memories, you’ll want to choose a print surface that’s as unique as the images you’ve captured. That’s where bamboo prints come in. These fine art prints are one of the more unique offerings available from our Photolab, and can lend a really beautiful look and feel to your images.

Here, we’re sharing 3 reasons why bamboo prints are a great choice for your loved ones’ life moments:

Special and long lasting

There’s something special about bamboo prints. Hahnemühle Bamboo is the world’s first Fine Art inkjet paper made from 90% bamboo fibres. Bamboo is a fibrous material, giving the texture of the prints a unique look and feel. It is also known for being an all-natural ‘super material’, with long lasting and ultra-durable qualities. Bamboo prints experience little to no colour fading over time, in fact, they meet the most stringent age resistance requirements.

Environmentally friendly

Did you know that bamboo is a highly renewable resource? That, combined with the long lasting quality of bamboo prints, makes it an environmentally friendly option for your precious photos.

Warm and heartwarming

Bamboo paper offers more than just crisp and brilliant colour reproduction. It also gives a lovely natural warmth to your images. A perfect pairing for your most heartwarming photos! Warm-toned or monochrome images are best suited for this fine art paper.

Technical tip: Make the most of your bamboo prints

Like fibre paper once used in the darkroom, bamboo paper has a unique texture to it. Not nearly as defined as fibre paper is to the eye, but the bamboo print absorbs the image in a similar fashion. With this in mind, when shooting images you plan to print on bamboo, consider using a large aperture lens. A great example would be the 50mm F1.8 for any interchangeable lens system. There are very affordable options in the $200-$300 range from Canon, Nikon and Sony. These are a great step up from a kit lens, and allow you to open the aperture up far beyond a kit lens and experiment with bokeh (the effect when the background is blurred to an almost abstract level).

The bamboo paper finish resonates with the bokeh effect making the sharp image elements pop even more!  For more information on great lens upgrades for your camera set up, drop by any London Drugs location and talk to an LDExpert. They love talking cameras!

 

You can also read about photographer Matt Ferguson’s first impressions of bamboo prints here! If you’re intrigued about bamboo prints, feel free to pop in and visit our Photolab to see and feel the difference in person. Then use our in-store kiosk to order your photos right then and there. Or if you’re ready to start printing right now at home, simply hop on our Photolab website to order. If your images are on your phone, why not download our easy-to-use London Drugs Photolab App (available for iOS and Android) to order your prints? Then choose to have your prints shipped to your door, or conveniently pick them up in-store when they’re ready. It’s that easy! Beautiful bamboo prints of beautiful family photos. Your loved ones with thank you for preserving their most treasured memories.

 

How to ‘Green’ Your Photos This Earth Month

Reduce, Reuse, Recycle… Re-live.

This April, do more for Mother Earth than just turning off the lights. Earth Month is a great opportunity to start making greener choices that will last a lifetime. Display your wedding or vacation photos on sustainable surfaces, and they will survive years to come, look great, and give you peace of mind that you’re helping the planet.

Don’t forget about recycling your old photos, either. Diverting those from your trash will make you feel like a sustainability superstar!

Bamboo Prints

Being environmentally friendly never looked so good. Our bamboo prints are made with 90% bamboo, a highly renewable resource, making it a great option for ‘greening’ your photos. The fibrous texture of the bamboo gives your images an incredibly unique look, with vivid shades, a crisp matte finish and maximized resistance to aging. The next time you’re choosing a print surface, try this durable, nature-approved solution guaranteed to stand the test of time.

Recycling Your Old Photos

Digitally saving and restoring your photos is without a doubt the best way to ensure memory preservation. As technology grows and changes, converting to digital can free up space in an attic of old shoe boxes, and reduce the risk of harsh damage due to temperature, humidity and dust. But what do you do with your hard copies after your holiday, honeymoon, or first day of school is saved to a disk or USB? As long as they’re digitally printed copies, you can likely recycle your old photos with the rest of your mixed paper recycling.

Not sure if your photos are of the digital print variety? Do a simple tear test! By tearing a corner of your photograph you’ll notice that it either tears clean, or in layers. Consider a clean tear a green light to recycle the photo.

If you also have old metal film canisters kicking around, those can be recycled too. In addition to your small appliances, batteries, laser cartridges and old photos, we will accept metal film canisters through our What’s the Green Deal? Program.

Let us at London Drugs help you reduce your memory footprint!

World Photo Day 2017: Celebrating Moments in Time with Photofinishing

Even in today’s digital-centric world, printing has remained an incredibly important part of the photography process. Photography is meant to celebrate a special moment in time, and photo printing helps us to share that moment with the world. It’s worth reminding ourselves just how powerful a photo can be, especially while we celebrate World Photo Day.

Developing negatives has always been an exciting part of the process for any photographer, and for a long time it was the only way to share your captured images. It was the only way to tell your story. Henry Fox Talbot pioneered the process of chemically developing film negatives, patenting the process of ‘calotype’ in 1841. This calotype process made photography more practical than paintings and illustrations, with the new ability to make any number of prints from a single negative image. Suddenly, photography was accessible to the everyday person.

However while our options used to be limited to basic prints and enlargements, photographers now have all kinds of unique print surfaces at their fingertips. Thanks to digital technology, we can tell the story of each photo not just with the developed print, but through editing and the print surface itself. After all, a bright, vivid image won’t be conveyed the same way as a dark moody image on the same surface. You’ve chosen a moment in time that you want to celebrate, now you just have to find the perfect surface to share it. Here is a look at some of our favourite print surfaces.

Aluminum Metal Panels

These high-gloss aluminum metal panels have become a popular choice for photographers in recent years. We’ve had many professional photographers tell us these eye-catching prints have been popular with their clients as well. The coated aluminum sheets are infused with dyes that can make any image, especially detailed and rich landscape photos, come alive with vibrant colour.

The London Drugs Photolab has expanded the availability of metal printing technology from just one location to now several Photolab locations, which have the special presses necessary to create the aluminum prints on-site. The lightweight and durable surface makes these prints ideal for hanging on the walls of your home or gallery. They’re also an especially good choice for high traffic areas, thanks to their resistance to fading.

Local photographers Stacy William Head and Larry Hilderman have both printed their landscape images on aluminum metal panels. Stacy finds that the aluminum surface gives his rich, long exposures a very surreal feeling compared to paper or canvas. Larry appreciates the depth it gives his landscape images. You can read more about both Stacy and Larry’s experiences with aluminum metal panels on their respective blog posts here and here.

Canvas Gallery Wraps

Turning your most precious moments into a true work of art is easy with canvas gallery wraps. Using specially pigmented inks with archival qualities, the image is printed on a fine art canvas. The canvas is then stretched around the sides of a 1.75” wooden frame and secured on the back. This style gives the image added depth and dimension. Since the image is printed right to the very edge of the canvas (otherwise known as “full-bleed”), the print can be hung on a wall without an art frame. If you do want the look of a border, our LDExperts in the Photolab recommend a black or white frame, or a floating black frame.

Our LDExperts recommend keeping the canvas dry and avoiding water or liquid cleaning solutions. This will help to preserve the image’s colour and contrast, allowing it to last for many years without noticeable fading.

A new offering is the metallic canvas, which features a pearlescent finish and vibrant colour reproduction. If you’re looking for a unique surface texture, this is an excellent choice.

Bamboo Prints

The texture of bamboo prints really is unparalleled. Made of 90% bamboo fibres and 10% cotton, this ultra-matte, finely crafted white paper offers a unique look and feel to your image. The surface offers maximum aging resistance and an extremely large colour gamut. As an added bonus, bamboo prints are also environmentally-friendly, as bamboo is considered to be a highly renewable resource.

Local photographer Matt Ferguson was impressed after printing on bamboo for the first time. The “texture and physical feel to the print” made it stand out, and he felt as though he “could actually touch the trees and feel the coolness of the fog” featured in his image. If you’re curious to hear more about his experience you can, check out this blog post.

 

Hopefully World Photo Day will inspire you to experiment with your photofinishing options and try something new. Consider the image you have (portrait or landscape), the colours (vivid or dark), and the purpose (home décor or gallery display) and use those elements to help you decide which surface will best tell the story of your image. If you need a little extra help deciding which surface is the right choice, just speak with one of our LDExperts in the Photolab department in-store!