**Camera Store with Printing Facility: Adorama**

I've been meaning to talk about camera stores that offer printing facilities, but I haven't actually used one myself. However, Wade, who I do another podcast with, has had good experiences with Adorama, a camera store in New York. He's told me that they can produce high-quality prints and large blowups online, making it easy for photographers to showcase their work without having to invest in expensive equipment or software.

To learn more about Adorama, I recommend visiting their website, which offers a wide range of printing options and services. While I haven't personally used their facilities, Wade's positive experiences have given me confidence that they can deliver high-quality prints and large format photography. If you're interested in learning more about Adorama or would like to see their portfolio, be sure to check out their website.

**Service Bureau with a Rich History: BWC**

In contrast to the online services offered by Adorama, I've had personal experience with a service bureau that offers traditional film development and printing services. In Dallas, there's a company called BWC (B&W Camera Service) that has been serving photographers for many years. While they still offer digital prints, their expertise lies in film development, color correction, and large format photography.

What sets BWC apart is their historical significance as a service bureau for photographers. They've been around for a long time, and their experience and knowledge of traditional processes are unparalleled. As a photographer who's interested in working with film, I can attest to the quality of their services and the care they bring to each print. From contact sheets to custom framing, BWC offers a range of services that cater to photographers' needs.

One of the benefits of using BWC is their ability to provide high-quality prints without breaking the bank. While larger formats or custom framing can become expensive, their standard prints are reasonably priced and offer excellent archival quality. I've had the opportunity to see some of these prints up close, and while they may not be completely protected against dust and scratches (which can affect their longevity), they're still beautifully printed on high-quality paper.

**The Art of Printing: A Guide**

For those interested in learning more about printing services, BWC is a great resource. They offer custom framing options as well, which can add an extra layer of sophistication to your prints. However, it's essential to note that custom framing can become expensive quickly, so it's crucial to budget ahead and plan accordingly.

If you're not ready to invest in custom framing or prefer more affordable options, there are alternative services available at retailers like Walmart and Target. While these services may not offer the same level of quality as a dedicated service bureau like BWC, they can still provide an excellent starting point for photographers who want to explore printing without breaking the bank.

**The Importance of Printing**

For many photographers, printing is an essential part of their creative process. It allows them to showcase their work in a tangible way and share it with others. While technology has made it easier than ever to edit and print images online, there's still something special about holding a physical print in your hands.

As a photographer, I can attest that making prints is one of the greatest gifts you can give to someone else – it shows that you've taken the time to create something special just for them. Whether you're printing a few select images or creating a large batch for a client, the act of printing is an art form in itself.

So, this holiday season, consider making prints as a gift for your loved ones. Not only will you be sharing your work with others, but you'll also have the opportunity to create something beautiful and tangible that they can cherish long after the holiday season is over.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enhey everybody welcome back once again to another episode of The Art of Photography my name is Ted Forbes and today we're talking about Christmas and what does Christmas have to do with photography well I think it's what's really important to remember and this is going to be slightly opinionated of me but uh you know in this day and age where we're kind of consumed with the commercial aspects of this holiday and the beating and lashing that we get on television via commercials and uh Christmas specials and then particularly all the companies that want us to buy their products um you as a photographer you're watching ing this you've taken a bunch of photos you're trying to get better at it and what you need to remember is that you have a very unique talent and that you can make something for somebody and that's kind of what I want to talk about a little bit today about what you can give uh that's very photography related uh but something that you make that you would give to somebody um first of all the most obvious thing would be Christmas cards and I've done these uh quite a bit in the past and the most obvious things to think about um are companies like moo moo.com mo.com and moo is a great company they're based out of the UK and they basically specialize in anything that needs to be kind of customized short run print stuff so it's perfect for cards it's perfect for business cards it's perfect for all those things uh but they do cards as well and uh you know you could call back through the archive of stuff you've shot in the last year and just find a nice image that would work for something like that um moo is great sometimes uh I personally prefer something that's a little more handcrafted looking and less inkjet printer looking and uh but you could still use your inkjet printer one thing that's nice nice that you can do is if you go to any office supply store I've had really good luck finding um just basic blank cards that you can feed through your inkjet printer but I won't actually put them through the inkjet printer I'll just use those as card stock and I'll actually print my photos and actually glue those to the top and that makes a really nice more personalized gift um however it does take a little more time to make but that is kind of the point of this um I've also think seen crazy things like uh card paper that's actually Emulsion paper that you can print in a dark room so you might look into if you do dark room printing some of those options as well it's kind of fun it's something that you can really get your hands diry and make one-offs of um as far as Christmas gifts go for people um if you want to give prints I've done some episodes this year on Framing and uh you can go back and watch those I'm not going to regurg toate those today but it's a very uh inexpensive cool route to go for instance uh this is a photogram that I made and a photogram is basically if you don't haven't watched the podcast on that it's produced by by laying an object down onto a piece of dark room paper and hitting it with light really quickly there's no camera involved and it gives you a black and white image more or less this is one of a just a simple one of a cork SC that I've done that I framed and actually I used this in that podcast episode a while back um but this was nonexpensive image to make it took some time to go in the dark room and make this uh this would make a nice gift um and the frame basically you can watch the framing episode but I bought this Frame at Ikea and I really recommend Ikea I don't get kickbacks from these people I'm just sharing with you things that that have worked for me in the past um and Ikea is an excellent source for stuff like that and the reason I I really like the Ikea frames most framing shops you go in and they have these old school dingy uh drab black frames and I'm probably being a little dramatic about that but personally I don't want to put my work in Black frames there's something about it that's kind of dated looking to me and I really like these natural wood frames the other thing that's nice about these is the price in the US I probably paid I think $10 a frame for these and so these make very inexpensive um you know gifts that require a little bit of time to put together but again you're giving something that's from the heart and uh you're making something and I think that's important to to realize um also if you want to go bigger you can uh get the larger frames and they kind of go up incrementally I seem to remember in you know sets of 10 so an 8 by10 frame like this is probably was about $10 I think the next size upep goes to 20 and then 30 and so on uh but still you can do relatively big prints um you know with a fairly uh set budget which is good um another thing you can do is if you don't have a dark room and you want to do some prints and you want to do something nice for somebody there's some Services you can look into and with the holidays rapidly approaching uh it's important to check deadlines to make sure you get things in time and to check turnaround times uh adarama which is a camera store in New York who also has a printing facility um I haven't actually use them but uh Wade who I do the other podcast with has and I know a couple other people who have as well and have had really good results and you can do these online basically you upload your image make sure it's high enough resolution and they will basically do these large blowups and you can have them sent to you uh I can't talk much more about that about Adorama go to their website check out what they've got uh but I've not used them what I have used is a company in Dallas here called BWC and you can you don't have to be in Dallas to use them they uh will work online and their website is bwc.com they run mainly is historically they've been a Service Bureau for photographers so they used to back in the old days do film development which they still do uh contact sheets any kind of color correction they do large blowups and they they still are very film friendly so if you're a film photographer and you want to work with uh more traditional stuff but you don't have the means to do it yourself BWC is a big Plus in that area uh they also do digital prints in fact these prints that you see behind me and I pulled one of them down this is kind of a nice route you can go without spending a whole lot of money as well um these are some show prints that I had printed a while back and they're really simple um it's just basically I think this is what they call their Merit series of prints uh so this is a merit print uh and it it's just basically printed on a kind of matte finish paper and you can specify what you want with them and then I had them actually go a step further and mount these to foam core and these are pretty cool they make um nice presentation pieces these would make nice gifts for somebody one of the only complaints I have about something like this is the archival quality and the longevity you're going to get out of it it's completely unprotected when it's on foam core like this um so you know you could argue actually that the Ikea Ikea frames probably do not have UV glass on them so they probably are but I I think this is even less archival because this is prone to dust scratches in fact I don't know if you're hitting the glare at all in the video but you can actually see some of those uh things that have come with age on this already uh it has not faded but I do have some scratching going on here things like that uh but anyway but these do make nice uh nice gifts and they don't run too expensive I think I took my files over on a CD and I think for each one of these I want to say $40 to $50 range is what we're looking at for something like that and it is a nice print uh you have other options too other than mounting on foam core most places like BWC most service bureaus will do some kind of framing um when you get into Custom Framing however please note that this starts getting really expensive and you don't want a surprise of a large bill and I think it's important especially if you want to give a lot of gifts during the holiday season um you know you probably want to come up with your budget and kind of figure out how you're going to go about this straight away so you I mean if you're doing a oneoff it could be you know a little bit different but if you're doing these in any kind of number you need to make sure you have everything together for something like that um anyway but so you know Custom Framing will get rather expensive um if worse comes to worse and you really don't have anybody close and you don't feel comfortable ordering through the mail I can't even believe I'm saying this but I I know Walmart and Target and places like that have photo Services um I I think I would just assume you know stick myself in the eye with a fork than go to Walmart but that is an option that's available and if it's all you've got it's all you've got but I would really encourage everybody I know this is a little bit different of episode than what I normally do on the show um but I really want to encourage people to try to make things and I think that's it's easy to forget and it's probably your biggest gift as a photographer is that ability to make things for people and so you know maybe even at least for a couple people you can try that this holiday season so anyway this a a little bit rushed cuz I wanted to get this in with time left over before the holidays but uh anyway take that for what it's worth and Merry Christmas to you and once again this has been the Art of Photography and thank you for watchinghey everybody welcome back once again to another episode of The Art of Photography my name is Ted Forbes and today we're talking about Christmas and what does Christmas have to do with photography well I think it's what's really important to remember and this is going to be slightly opinionated of me but uh you know in this day and age where we're kind of consumed with the commercial aspects of this holiday and the beating and lashing that we get on television via commercials and uh Christmas specials and then particularly all the companies that want us to buy their products um you as a photographer you're watching ing this you've taken a bunch of photos you're trying to get better at it and what you need to remember is that you have a very unique talent and that you can make something for somebody and that's kind of what I want to talk about a little bit today about what you can give uh that's very photography related uh but something that you make that you would give to somebody um first of all the most obvious thing would be Christmas cards and I've done these uh quite a bit in the past and the most obvious things to think about um are companies like moo moo.com mo.com and moo is a great company they're based out of the UK and they basically specialize in anything that needs to be kind of customized short run print stuff so it's perfect for cards it's perfect for business cards it's perfect for all those things uh but they do cards as well and uh you know you could call back through the archive of stuff you've shot in the last year and just find a nice image that would work for something like that um moo is great sometimes uh I personally prefer something that's a little more handcrafted looking and less inkjet printer looking and uh but you could still use your inkjet printer one thing that's nice nice that you can do is if you go to any office supply store I've had really good luck finding um just basic blank cards that you can feed through your inkjet printer but I won't actually put them through the inkjet printer I'll just use those as card stock and I'll actually print my photos and actually glue those to the top and that makes a really nice more personalized gift um however it does take a little more time to make but that is kind of the point of this um I've also think seen crazy things like uh card paper that's actually Emulsion paper that you can print in a dark room so you might look into if you do dark room printing some of those options as well it's kind of fun it's something that you can really get your hands diry and make one-offs of um as far as Christmas gifts go for people um if you want to give prints I've done some episodes this year on Framing and uh you can go back and watch those I'm not going to regurg toate those today but it's a very uh inexpensive cool route to go for instance uh this is a photogram that I made and a photogram is basically if you don't haven't watched the podcast on that it's produced by by laying an object down onto a piece of dark room paper and hitting it with light really quickly there's no camera involved and it gives you a black and white image more or less this is one of a just a simple one of a cork SC that I've done that I framed and actually I used this in that podcast episode a while back um but this was nonexpensive image to make it took some time to go in the dark room and make this uh this would make a nice gift um and the frame basically you can watch the framing episode but I bought this Frame at Ikea and I really recommend Ikea I don't get kickbacks from these people I'm just sharing with you things that that have worked for me in the past um and Ikea is an excellent source for stuff like that and the reason I I really like the Ikea frames most framing shops you go in and they have these old school dingy uh drab black frames and I'm probably being a little dramatic about that but personally I don't want to put my work in Black frames there's something about it that's kind of dated looking to me and I really like these natural wood frames the other thing that's nice about these is the price in the US I probably paid I think $10 a frame for these and so these make very inexpensive um you know gifts that require a little bit of time to put together but again you're giving something that's from the heart and uh you're making something and I think that's important to to realize um also if you want to go bigger you can uh get the larger frames and they kind of go up incrementally I seem to remember in you know sets of 10 so an 8 by10 frame like this is probably was about $10 I think the next size upep goes to 20 and then 30 and so on uh but still you can do relatively big prints um you know with a fairly uh set budget which is good um another thing you can do is if you don't have a dark room and you want to do some prints and you want to do something nice for somebody there's some Services you can look into and with the holidays rapidly approaching uh it's important to check deadlines to make sure you get things in time and to check turnaround times uh adarama which is a camera store in New York who also has a printing facility um I haven't actually use them but uh Wade who I do the other podcast with has and I know a couple other people who have as well and have had really good results and you can do these online basically you upload your image make sure it's high enough resolution and they will basically do these large blowups and you can have them sent to you uh I can't talk much more about that about Adorama go to their website check out what they've got uh but I've not used them what I have used is a company in Dallas here called BWC and you can you don't have to be in Dallas to use them they uh will work online and their website is bwc.com they run mainly is historically they've been a Service Bureau for photographers so they used to back in the old days do film development which they still do uh contact sheets any kind of color correction they do large blowups and they they still are very film friendly so if you're a film photographer and you want to work with uh more traditional stuff but you don't have the means to do it yourself BWC is a big Plus in that area uh they also do digital prints in fact these prints that you see behind me and I pulled one of them down this is kind of a nice route you can go without spending a whole lot of money as well um these are some show prints that I had printed a while back and they're really simple um it's just basically I think this is what they call their Merit series of prints uh so this is a merit print uh and it it's just basically printed on a kind of matte finish paper and you can specify what you want with them and then I had them actually go a step further and mount these to foam core and these are pretty cool they make um nice presentation pieces these would make nice gifts for somebody one of the only complaints I have about something like this is the archival quality and the longevity you're going to get out of it it's completely unprotected when it's on foam core like this um so you know you could argue actually that the Ikea Ikea frames probably do not have UV glass on them so they probably are but I I think this is even less archival because this is prone to dust scratches in fact I don't know if you're hitting the glare at all in the video but you can actually see some of those uh things that have come with age on this already uh it has not faded but I do have some scratching going on here things like that uh but anyway but these do make nice uh nice gifts and they don't run too expensive I think I took my files over on a CD and I think for each one of these I want to say $40 to $50 range is what we're looking at for something like that and it is a nice print uh you have other options too other than mounting on foam core most places like BWC most service bureaus will do some kind of framing um when you get into Custom Framing however please note that this starts getting really expensive and you don't want a surprise of a large bill and I think it's important especially if you want to give a lot of gifts during the holiday season um you know you probably want to come up with your budget and kind of figure out how you're going to go about this straight away so you I mean if you're doing a oneoff it could be you know a little bit different but if you're doing these in any kind of number you need to make sure you have everything together for something like that um anyway but so you know Custom Framing will get rather expensive um if worse comes to worse and you really don't have anybody close and you don't feel comfortable ordering through the mail I can't even believe I'm saying this but I I know Walmart and Target and places like that have photo Services um I I think I would just assume you know stick myself in the eye with a fork than go to Walmart but that is an option that's available and if it's all you've got it's all you've got but I would really encourage everybody I know this is a little bit different of episode than what I normally do on the show um but I really want to encourage people to try to make things and I think that's it's easy to forget and it's probably your biggest gift as a photographer is that ability to make things for people and so you know maybe even at least for a couple people you can try that this holiday season so anyway this a a little bit rushed cuz I wanted to get this in with time left over before the holidays but uh anyway take that for what it's worth and Merry Christmas to you and once again this has been the Art of Photography and thank you for watching\n"