As I had blogged earlier, I printed a couple of images on 13×19 sheets of aluminum. Now I have mounted them on Masonite. It worked pretty well. One image I mounted and bent the aluminum edges around the Masonite ‘frame.’ That did not work too well, the thin aluminum sheet did not bend as easily as I had thought – it tended to fight back, and the edges did not turn out as neat as I had hoped. Things worked better with the second image. Here I simply took a utility knife and cut the aluminum, following the edge of the frame. The photos show what things look like. Of course, the image printed on aluminum is difficult to photograph because of the reflection from the metal. I did not try to get fancy and build a light tent, or otherwise correct the photo.
5 responses so far ↓
fotokew // November 27, 2007 at 12:24 am
that’s cool! it’s been a long long time since i’ve tried anything like that. i really love the look!
Wendy Clapp // November 22, 2008 at 12:47 pm
I have just returned from Maui & visited the Contemporary Gallery in Paia where Kenn Briner had a wonderful exhibit of his works done with photos on aluminum. Do you know any place in Canada that does this process. I want to try it.
christian harkness // November 22, 2008 at 7:35 pm
Hi Wendy – the short answer, no I don’t. I printed the ones I have myself, and if you are thinking of doing that, I would be glad to explain how I did it. Just e-mail me.
You might also want to contact Paul Turounet, I think he has done it. Here is his blog:
http://paulturounetforum.com/
David Nicklin // December 13, 2008 at 4:44 am
Hello, I would like to take you up on your offer of an explanation of how you printed on aluminum. I have seen a couple of spectacular exhibitions where several exhibitors had pieces using this technique: very large mat finish prints, no glass, total color fidelity and detail – magic! I very much want to experiment with this. Thanks,
David Nicklin
christian harkness // December 13, 2008 at 5:37 am
Hi David – well, what I did was simply print on a thin shhet of aluminum flashing. I fed it into my Epson 2400 just like a sheet of paper. It was coated with several coats of Inkaid.
I think what you saw, and I have seen them too, was a much more sophisticated aluminum material. Perhaps something like this:
http://www.rippedsheets.com/inkjet/alumi.html
As I mentioned to Wendy, I think Paul might be able to give you a better answer. Check out his blog, he has some posts about his images printed on aluminum, and I think they are much more professional done than mine. I just like to print on things like gold and silver leaf, acrylic paint, and aluminum to convey a certain ‘atmosphere’ in the image, but not necessarily achieve a ‘fine print’ quality.
http://paulturounetforum.com/
Hope this helps some – christian