When framing your photos and artworks there are many simple yet important techniques to remember. One that I see done incorrectly often, and that can have a visually negative effect of your framed pieces, is mounting.
One incident that comes to mind is when a man purchased bulk matting and backing to sell his art (photography). To save costs he only wanted the framers to cut the components and he would mount them himself. Full instruction was given on the correct technique but there are always bits of information that are not remembered.
The first and most important rule of mounting is if the work is an original, limited edition or irreplaceable it should NEVER be permanently mounted. These works should be hinge mounted. This is where the work is mounted to the backing using a hinging method. Using ACID FREE ARCHIVAL hinging tape you place one piece of tape on the work (sticky side up) then another piece across that in a T shape.
When mounting you only ever tape your image from the top. Never tape the sides or bottom. This is where the man went wrong. In an everyday environment that is not climate controlled there are changes in temperature and humidity. Products like paper, fabric and paint are affected by environment changes, especially humidity. They expand and contract much like our fingers swell when it is humid and you find that your rings feel tight. When you only hinge from the top the paper has the ability to move slightly with these changes. When you hinge all four sides or even just the top and bottom the paper pulls and ripples. I am sure a science minded person could explain this better but here are some pictures that will illustrate.
As you can see it took one humid day to turn this photos into a roller coaster ride. The moral of the story is " Always hinge at the TOP ONLY".
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