Review: CanvasPop Family Photo Printing

Confession: I'm a major procrastinator. Despite having some gorgeous family photos taken three years ago with Bethany Schiedel, we still haven't printed any to put up on the wall. I decided to take another crack a family photo with Bethany again, since our family has grown another kid since the last set of photos. Fortuitously, I got an email from CanvasPop just before our recent family photo session, offering a large art print of any photo we'd like, so I could review it. Perfect! After we got to see our photos from the mini session with Bethany, I chose one & uploaded it to CanvasPop.

I didn't have long to wait. Ten days after sending the image, I got a tracking code for FedEx. Then four days after that, a large package arrived at the door. I couldn't wait to open it. It took me a while--our photo was wrapped in several layers of bubble wrap, then a couple of layers of cardboard.

Finally got that last bit of tape & bubble wrap off, et voila! Gorgeous! Simple black wood frame with glass over a white mat. The photo is huge--I was a little hesitant to have a picture of us so big--but it looks amazing. The file I uploaded was very high resolution (18MB, if I remember correctly) & it's crystal clear--really beautiful quality printing. The back has a wire hanger, so it's all ready to put up on the wall right out of the box.

Every time I see the photo on our wall in the living room, it makes me smile. I'm a big fan of DIY, but it is a bit nerve wracking to send off photos to a drug store print lab. I've screwed up the image format before & ended up with a photo that was cropped badly. Then a trip to the store to pick a frame & the fiddliness of trying to centre the photo in the mat & get it all back together without any bits of dust under the glass. Ordering from CanvasPop was really easy & the results look so professional.

CanvasPop, as you might guess from the name, specializes in printing images on canvas stretched over a frame. You can get anything from 8"x10" all the way up to 24"x72", with prices starting at $41. Turning Instagram images or Facebook photos into art for your walls is simple with a very streamlined, easy to use website.

By the way, CanvasPop has a contest on right now until December 12, 2015: Win Your Christmas. You could win a $500 gift card for your own canvas or framed prints, as well as a prize package worth thousands more too! Click on the image to enter:

Disclaimer: I received a framed art print from CanvasPop for free to facilitate this review, but was not otherwise compensated for this post. The words & opinions above are my own.

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Family Portraits with Images by Bethany

I'm so pleased with the results of our family portrait mini session with Bethany Schiedel. We got the images back last week & it took me a few days to decide which ones we wanted to print. Here are our favourite images:

Family Portrait

Every year that goes by, I mean to get a family portrait... but then we just don't get around to it. I'd love to have the images to look back on in the future, but it's a big investment for us to get a good photographer to do them. We don't have a decent photo of the four of us, just a hodgepodge of poorly lit cell phone pics where only two or three of us are even looking at the camera usually.

Our most recent family portrait: in 2012! Photographer: Bethany Schiedel

About three years ago--before I was even pregnant with Bronte--we had some beautiful photos taken by Bethany Schiedel. She's a fantastic photographer & gets amazing photos of children in particular. When she showed us the images from our shoot in 2012, we asked her how she captured all of us looking at the camera & smiling. The truth was, she hadn't... all in the same photo. She did some amazing & undetectable photoshop work to combine different images to produce the one you see here. She doesn't airbrush you like a Vanity Fair cover or anything, but she can do some truly magical things that produce the family photos you've always wanted.

About a week ago I noticed that she had a few spots available for her day of mini portrait sessions, so I jumped on it & booked us a session. This morning we got up, tried to straighten out everyone's hair & pick outfits that would look good without being matchy-matchy. Our dryer has been broken for a few days now & it's too cool & damp to hang dry any clothes at this time of year, so our clothing options were limited. We managed to have breakfast, I even got some makeup on--totally forgot mascara, however--& we arrived only a couple of minutes late. A record for us.

It was a quick in & out session in Bethany's bright studio, which was good for the kids, though Linnaeus wasn't terribly cooperative. He has had a bit of an aversion to having his photo taken lately. After Bethany got shots of all of us & various combinations of two or three of us, while L knocked over the reflector & B tried to get at the Sharpies, we headed back home again. It was lovely to work with Bethany again & I can't wait to see the results of our session this time around.

If you want more information about Bethany Schiedel & her photography, take a look at her gorgeous website: Images By Bethany.

Disclaimer: this is not a sponsored post, nor did anyone ask me to write about Images By Bethany. :)

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