I have a huge amount of space on my walls right now. I went to a local art shop (a big one, "best" in Hartford county they say) yesterday and looked at a lot of frames and matting. I spoke to the owner about my plans. I am going to hang a variety of 8x10 and 11x14 photos. The frames will be 11x14 and 16x20. All standard stuff. I am yet to decide if I am going to buy pre-matted frames, for which there are some really nice options, buy frames and mat myself, or have the shop do the matting with unmated frames. Price wise, unless I do it myself I don't think there is going to be any savings, and even if I do it myself I don't know with what I am looking at that the savings will be great. Custom framing would be much more expensive, and unnecessary I think as I am going to keep to these standard sizes.
I am going to print a lot of images and from there pick what I like best. Editing down from my entire flickr to a few dozen prints, then to some number to hang will be fun. And since I have decided to make the prints for my favorites, I can always change my mind. The folks at the shop are going to sit down with me and will put together some method I can see the full size images with black or white matting to decide what will be best for each.
I have some old negatives though that I have to find to rescan. This is going to be a big test of my archival system. I have binders and binders of negatives, some what coded so hopefully I have a real chance to find everything I am looking for. Low hanging fruit tackled this morning, the scans I have on my computer currently. Next I will pull the few digital images off the CDs I burned as back ups (no recent digi snaps are making the cut). Finally I will be hitting the binders for the old negatives.
Thanks for your thoughts, keep them coming.