Frames and borders are difficult.
The examples above are painful to behold. All borders and frames have associations.
Which of the above have associations with St Patrick's day, an American kitchen in the 1970s, a funeral and something that was produced by the Blue Peter team on a bad day?
A word sums them up.
That word is naff.
The associations you must attempt to evoke with your borders and your frames are sophistication, photographic galleries and high Art.
Anything that excessively draws attention to itself, and away from your photographic image, either by inappropriate colour or shape or scale immediately suggests the work of some one who is unsophisticated and unaware of the conventions which surround the bordering and framing of photographic art.
The world of art photography tends to privilege the black and white print over photographs
which display the full range of natural colour. This is in part to do with the history
of photography which in its early years was confined to a black-
The early photographic greats worked almost invariably in black and white.
Galleries which house photographic collections and exhibitions are generally Modernist in design.
Presentation of photographic prints in this minimalist environment leads to a concentration of simple black and white frames with occasionally the use of shades of grey.
Colour is nearly universally absent both as a background and frame.
Examiners and moderators have grown up with these conventions so that presenting your work in ways outside of these conventions for the most part produces the risk of associating yourself with childlike family albums and the worst excesses of grunge cut and paste.
In some anti-
It is unlikely that sloppy inappropriate presentation will impress our examiners however.
So, less is invariably more, simple clean lines are to be preferred over the ornate or the fussy.
However, colour may well be used in your borders if it successfully draws attention to other vital colours in your photographic print.
Black and white prints should rarely if ever be bordered or framed by strongly coloured borders or frames.
Think My Space graphic mess and avoid it!
An excellent example of a gallery which has clean uncluttered display
Click on cushion to see more
While not a colour free gallery, notice the restraint and lack of clutter.
Click on sheep to visit.
A Japanese gallery, very zen and crisp, they may have had a Feng Shui man in...
Click on beastie’s tusk to visit.
A model of its kind, the name says it all.
This gallery have some superb links to other fine sites.
Stay a while.
Click on stool to visit
Some on line galleries to give you a notion of ideal presentation of your work.
Two possible ways of presenting a sour faced portrait.
Drop shadow on the left works quite well
But fine grey line on the right is better as it sits more authoritively on the white background.
It feels more graphically anchored.
Note liquid in glass is Chateau Valencienne 1907 mmmmm.....
Both these frames/borders are NAFF and damage the portrait.
How do the frames do the damage?
Note glass in right frame is now filled with Stella “Wifebeater.”
Which of the pictures below is most successfully framed?
Not an easy one to be definitive about but I would suggest that number 1 is the least successful as it does not have a commanding position on the page and so rather flops about. You might say that number 2 succeeds in echoing the black frames in the image itself and the drop shadow is universally helpful in the others in stopping the image from bleeding into the background white
