Our bucket list for a long time was to visit the incredible country that is iceland. We are definitely not warm weather people, so the prospect of cold and snow was right up out street. As photographers it was natural that we wanted to create a stunning gallery of images to adorn our walls at home, so when we were approached by Photowall, we were excited to get 3 huge prints on the wall.
Read on for our honest Photowall review
You can check out our Iceland Print Gallery if you fancy some art for your walls
Choosing Our Prints
We chose to go for the 50×70 poster prints and frames that just fitted snuggly in our blank wall space that was begging for pictures to be hung on. Being photographers who also print their own work, it was a big plus point to see that they were to be printed on age resistant and UV resistant papers to combat the yellowing and fading of the prints.
The images we chose were of the black sand beach in Southern Iceland. The waters and waves are something to behold. Its hard to capture the ferocity of the waves and intensity of the black sand, but with our nifty drone, we came away with a beautiful set of images that were going to be perfect as a composition, a progression of waves coming in to land. To compliment the black sand we went for the black frame as the images are near black and white with a hint of colour in them
Ordering Our Prints From Photowall
The online Photowall system is easy to use and navigate. Theres nothing worse than a clunky system that sends you round the bend trying to order the simplest of things. A few clicks, and upload of the images and our order was in. We were a bit concerned with them coming from abroad that we were going to be stung with a hefty import bill but Photowall informed us that we weren’t going to incur any extra charges and they weren’t wrong. They were delivered to our door with no nasty surprises or bills to pay.
Delivery Of Our Prints
Delivery was pretty quick, around a week for them to arrive. There were delivered all in one box so its was quite a size to wiggle in through the door, but in they came and we were excited to see our first pics printed from our holiday. Upon opening the packaging, we noticed that each image wasn’t placed in the frame, but upon checking the website it does explain that you insert them yourselves. The first issue however was that the prints were only placed on top of the frames with no protection and wrapped in cellophane. Unfortunately what this means is that the prints had shifted in transit and due to the lack of any protection in the packaging, all prints ended up getting creased and damaged to such a degree they were unusable.
Aside from the damage to the prints, and I appreciate that we are very picky as we print our own work, but the colours of the print weren’t accurate to the original images, and they were printed very crooked as we had chosen to order a white border. So had we placed them on the walls none of the prints would have been straight or in line with one another.
Round Two
When we contacted Photowall they were very apologetic and offered to rectify the issue with a new set of products and addressing the issue to prevent any damage. However, our second order arrived in exactly the same manner, a thin weighted cardboard box, prints on top of frames, damaged corners and creases and no additional protection, but they were atleast printed and cut straight.
Given my personal experience I wouldn’t be able to recommend using Photowall for poster prints. What would improve the overall experience massively is to actually insert the images into the frames in a dust free environment so when the customer has to peel that awful static film off the perspex, it doesn’t end up attracting dust and getting stuck between the print. Not only this though, it would protect the print too against damage. Secondly, beef up the packaging and pack the frames internally as one secure unit so they don’t move around. Thirdly, improve the quality control at the end of the production.