If you offer portrait services in any way, be it weddings or family portraits, you will have sold a fair few stretched canvases in your time. Other wall products have come and gone over the years, but in this article, we explore why canvas is still that go-to product for photographers to showcase their work to portrait clients and suggest an elevated version to help you stand out from the rest.
An important aspect of portrait photography is keeping up with trends and styling in order to make sure you are offering your clients products that they actually want to buy. Products which will complement the design and color palette of their home are something to consider. As the years pass, light and dark wood frames come in and out of fashion, and colored frames outside of neutral tones are considered less likely to be displayed long-term. This is where the canvas print shines as a viable option for wall products to offer your client, as it is suitable for formal and informal spaces inside the home. Food Serving Trays
There are so many options on the market when it comes to canvas, and it can be a confusing landscape to navigate in terms of quality, because cost isn’t always a good indicator here. I have tried and tested many products and have found the best quality available to be the Canvas Gallery Wrap from Zno. If you haven’t ordered a canvas in a while, you will be pleased to know that the Canvas Gallery Wrap offers Giclée fine art printing to ensure museum standard archival quality, which is what should always be on offer for all family portraits. Your client’s image is printed with archival fine art Inkjet pigments onto a durable poly-cotton canvas. The gallery wraps are hand-stretched across high-quality solid wood stretch bars to achieve clean corner folds and a taut stretch. Unlike other print mediums, such as photo paper, canvas prints do not require protection behind glass, allowing the colours to remain vibrant and true for years to come. They can be dusted just like your other wall products.
The Zno Canvas Gallery Wrap is far superior than anything your client can find on the street, although they don’t always understand this. To many clients, a canvas is just a canvas. They have not researched and made comparisons in order to avoid bleeding colors and flimsy frames, resulting in loose stretch that is more comparable to a slowly deflating balloon. It’s important that you inform your clients that the products on which they have their precious family photographs displayed should last at least a lifetime. I would suggest printing and hanging a studio sample canvas with Zno and then printing the same image with your local vendor so you can show your clients the clear difference in detail, vibrancy, and sharpness side by side. Once they see the superiority of the Zno canvas, they will understand that they are getting a high-quality product with you.
The Canvas Gallery Wrap is easy to order in a few simple steps using the cloud-based Zno Designer™. Offering 12 different sizes and many options for border design and depth, there’s an option to cater to all tastes and budgets. You can design, order, and print all of Zno’s products conveniently through the Zno Designer™.
Perhaps one of the most significant advantages of offering canvas gallery wraps is the convenience that they provide for you as a photographer. They come ready to hang, eliminating the need for additional mounting or framing. That saved time is valuable, allowing you to get on with another task on the ever-expanding to-do list.
I have been fortunate enough to have clients who come back year after year to update their family portraits and joke about running out of space to put new framed products. A wall filled with a collage of frames can feel overwhelming visually. Breaking up the harshness of a display wall of framed images with some canvas prints makes for a more relaxed view as your eyes glance across the wall. Canvas prints can stand out in this scenario too, so encourage your clients to opt to print key family milestones on canvas.
Canvas prints are a studio classic and hold an elegance that never really goes out of style. The natural woven texture of canvas adds a layer of interest to your image with a nod to fine art paintings, giving it a timeless quality. The depth of a canvas frame can also elevate the visual impact, creating a piece of art that your clients can proudly display for generations to come.
There is something very appealing about displaying an image without being behind glass, allowing clients to closely inspect their images without that glazed barrier between them. This can deepen the connection to the image itself, encouraging your client to come back to you year after year for more of those images that they love and cherish.
When I operated a family photography studio, I used to invite families back one week after their photo session to view their images together. We would discuss their favorite images on first impression and what products would best suited for display in their homes. Selling wall products, like a Canvas, at this time is highly likely. Because at this time they are immediately emotionally attached to the work. After the initial order has been agreed and completed, you can provide a link to the Zno Gallery™, which is Zno's cloud-based client photo gallery. With this, they can share the gallery with others (upselling to grandparents for example, who almost always order as much, if not more, than the parents), and images can be downloaded from here if you enable this feature, which will allow sharing of images on social media. What's great is that with Zno Gallery paid plans, they offer a 25% off discount in all Wall Arts, including the canvases.
Collage Frame Kim Simpson is a photographer based in the West of Scotland. Her photographic practice is an exploration of the human experience, with a particular emphasis on themes of identity and belonging.