Changing the Mentality of the Art Print World

 Before I delve into the reasons MD Art Galleries is here to revolutionize the online print world, it is important that we understand why it needs a revolution. I believe our journey in the wrong direction can be blamed on two companies who have had a great influence on how we see images - Kodak and Apple. 

Before Kodak became a household name, the image quality of photographic prints in the 1940's and 50's was actually quite good for the technology we had. Professional photographers prided themselves on reproducing sharp, high quality images and the equipment they used to photograph and make prints was getting increasingly better. Large format film was the norm for pro's and even many medium format cameras were able to render beautiful sharp images. This was mostly due to the industry realizing high quality lenses were instrumental in creating clean, sharp images. When Kodak came along, the push to make photography more accessible to consumers began to change our perception of what photographs were for. Photography began to change from a formal medium, to capture historical images, to a tool to capture candid family moments by anyone who owned a camera. The Kodak Brownie camera was the first step in training our brains that blurry, low quality images are acceptable. 

Decades later, Apple would repeat this history with the introduction of the smart phone. The earliest iPhone cameras hurled us back to the dark ages of the Brownie camera image quality, only in digital form. Although I was an eager, early adopter of the digital world, I have always been horrified to see companies lull consumers into buying expensive phones and printers to create blurry, low quality images. Today, when you look at the images we see everywhere, quality is greatly ignored. It is not the printer that gives us good quality prints, it is the camera photographing the image. This fact put me on a life long journey to educate the art world that low quality images are not acceptable. We deserve better and we have the technology to create beautiful, sharp, clear images. Being in the printing industry for over 20 years I have seen that quality translates into better sales when my artist customers demand quality and larger size prints over quantity and small, cheap prints.

When I finally decided to create MDArtGalleries.com, image quality was the main focus. I want buyers to know any image they buy on our website will be of the highest quality, regardless of the the print size they choose. We do not accept images on our website unless we have an 80 to 100 megapixel file or better to create prints from. This means any print from 5x7 all the way to mural size will show all the details of the original art, giving the final product a "wow" factor that is rare in the printing industry today. 

We are confident when you receive your first print from MDArtGalleries.com, you will notice the quality of the image and the materials are second to none. It is my hope that our gallery will aid in ushering in a new era of image quality where consumers know the difference between a clean, sharp print that is worth something and a blurry, cheap print that isn't worth the paper it is printed on.