The date of this shoot, it was C-O-L-D!!!! However, it was also sunny, so we froze our booties off but it was SO worth it for these light-filled images. A little warming up in Photoshop, and don’t they look beautiful?
Check out the Pittsburgh skyline and… what is that cool yellow bridge called? I think it’s the one at Chestnut St. This portrait is currently sitting in a lovely midnight blue “Andie” Organic Bloom frame behind my desk! Kind of wish I didn’t have to hand it over to these guys. 🙂
This beautiful mama is so calm in the midst of raising a toddler and renovating a house–very impressive.
Aw, this cutie pie was such a trooper in the cold weather! Can’t wait to meet his new little brother or sister in about a month!
I did maternity and newborn portraits last summer when Ava was born, and now she is a big, smiley girl! We did this portrait just before the holidays at Peters Lake.
This sweet girl is one of my baby planners so I will be seeing her a couple more times before she turns one. Lucky me!! 🙂
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Are you looking for a maternity, newborn, family, or baby photographer in the Pittsburgh South Hills? Powder Blue Photography offers in-home and in-studio portraits of newborn babies and maternity we well as family portraits in and around the Pittsburgh South Hills, McMurray, Peters Township, Canonsburg, Bridgeville, Upper St. Clair, and Mt. Lebanon areas. Please contact Missy to schedule a maternity appointment and a tentative date for your newborn session. Maternity sessions take place around 33-36 weeks, and newborn sessions take place in the first 10 days of life. Family sessions take place anytime!
There are a lot of choices when it comes to products for my clients. I generally sell canvas or framed fine art wall portraits, as well as archival custom photo albums, and have shopped a number of products to find the very best in quality for my clients.
In a canvas printer I am looking for, above all, extremely high image quality–sharp image and accurate color tones. I am very actively involved in assuring my colors and tones are accurate by using the X-rite “Passport” color checker when I am shooting and editing and a Spyder to calibrate my monitor. I double-check compatibility with each of the vendors that I work with to make sure I will get consistent, accurate color in my products. For those of you unfamiliar with how this works, what I am talking about is making sure that the color and brightness settings on my monitor are set to look like what I will get from my print labs so that I don’t get skin tones that are too orange, green, dark, bright, etc.
Secondly I am looking for solid, archival construction. I want my canvas wrapped around wood with quality hanging hardware and bumpers. NO CARDBOARD. Just no.
I was using a canvas printer that I liked very much for a few years when I suddenly started having color issues back in October 2013. I had been hearing so much about Artsy Couture, and their prices were less than my printer at the time, so I tried them out. What I received from them was what appeared to be a well constructed, solid canvas, but the colors were way off–super orange. Their customer service was amazing–friendly & prompt–and they sent out a new canvas that was better but still not the color & sharpness I am seeing from the pro labs I usually work with. I ended up taking a loss on that order and paying to have my client’s order printed at another lab (the one I am currently using).
I went to the Artsy booth at Imaging USA earlier this week and was very impressed with the quality of their products, their cute booth, and their friendly staff. I was told that they were having short-lived color issues at the time of my order and that I should try again. I was also told that the canvases are stretched around wood, which really surprised me because I figured it was some sort of super rigid cardboard given they cost a small fraction of the pro lab canvas wraps. Upon returning home I decided to dig up that old canvas–the one I received with color issues, and deconstruct it! Here is what I found…
Yes, you could say these are the “tightest corners in the industry.” How do they accomplish this?
Sawtooth hanging hardware–not bad but I like a picture wire better.
These are some serious staples. They are not going anywhere. In fact during the deconstruction process I stabbed a finger with one of these so if you see smudges on the canvas that’s my blood!
I cut a large in the backing, which is very thick black card stock… and what I saw was….
Masonite! These are not wrapped around wood, but Masonite panels
You can see how solid the corners are, these are seriously not going anywhere and took some effort to get apart.
Here is my helper demonstrating how they get those tight corners–the canvas is actually pinched in between the Masonite that makes up the corners of the frame.
Again it took some serious effort to get the sides off. The interior is made up of beveled Masonite pieces that are very tightly stapled together.
After I got the staples out, it basically lays flat because the masonite is glued on, probably with some sort of spray adhesive.
I was able to peel off the canvas image from the Masonite panel but it was pretty well adhered, which means that these are not likely to warp over time.
Here you can see the canvas peeled off and the Masonite pieces I removed from the sides.
And here is the front of the canvas. The colors here are drastically different from the image I sent in (in their defense they did reprint this order for me), but otherwise I would give the image quality a B+.
My overall recommendation is that Artsy “Couture Canvas” is a good option for budget photographers or for consumers who are not willing to pay literally 3x the price at a pro lab. I do intend to give them another shot for some personal projects and studio samples, but I do not feel confident fulfilling client orders until I am seeing consistent color.
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Are you looking for a maternity, newborn, family, or baby photographer in Pittsburgh? Powder Blue Photography offers in-home and studio portraits of newborn babies and maternity and on location family portraits in and around Pittsburgh, including the South Hills, McMurray, Peters Township, Canonsburg, Bridgeville, Upper St. Clair, South Fayette, Mt. Lebanon, Cecil Township, Squirrel Hill, Regent Square, and Shadyside areas. Please contact Missy to schedule a maternity appointment and a tentative date for your newborn session. Maternity sessions take place around 33-36 weeks, and newborn sessions take place in the first 10 days of life. Family sessions take place anytime!
