Those of you who read my blog regularly know that I do a lot of my own in-house prints (I have an Epson Stylus Pro 3800, 2400, and a 7880), but I also send out some work to different labs (mostly wedding albums, photo books, etc.), and for those I’ve been using a number of different vendors, but I think I have finally found “My lab.”
I just got my first order back from Mpix.com, and I was just blown away with the results. I had done a mother/baby portrait shoot for my in-house book editor Kim Doty (who is, by the way, the best book editor on the entire planet), and although I had already made some prints for her, I wanted to do something really special with my favorite image of her and her baby boy (shown above), so I ordered a 16″x20″ canvas mounted print, and a similar sized gallery wrap (the difference is; the Canvas Print looks like a traditional canvas, with staples on the side and all, where a Gallery wrap continues your photo onto the side edges of the frame).
I just can’t tell you how stunning they came out! I took them around the office yesterday and everybody was just having a fit (they had already seen the image, when I did the in-house prints—it was the treatment on canvas that wow’d everybody). I also ordered a metallic print of the Walt Disney Concert Hall in LA, and that metallic finish made the colors just pop, which was perfect for that kind of image. I had a few prints done for the office, and I’m working on uploading them another batch this weekend (this “they do all the work” thing can get pretty addicting. Matt and Dave have both switched to Mpix now, too, and now they’re already becoming metallic print junkies).
I have actually seen the MPIX lab in person (they’re up in Pittsburg, Kansas), and I was really impressed with not only their fanatical commitment to quality, but the people there were as friendly, genuine, and proud of their role in the digital community as they could be, and that was really refreshing to see firsthand.
Anyway, I’m passing this on because I get emails all the time asking me which lab I recommend, and because I was sending my stuff kind of “all over,” I didn’t have one in particular to recommend, and well….now I do. (Note: although Mpix is a pro lab, if you’re an advanced amateur, they will let you use their lab as well).
