There’s no point spending time and money on gorgeous wedding photos if nobody ever sees them, especially those one or two truly memorable shots – your absolute favourites – that stand out from hundreds taken on your big day.
It’s this philosophy that underlies Sydney-based Ali Khalil’s entire business, Acrylic Mounting, which specialises in mounting your precious images on blocks or panels.
“It’s a really simple process,” says Ali who has mounted more than five thousand images during his five years in the mounting business.
” All a couple has to do is email us a hi-res image of their photos and we will turn them into masterpieces.
“It takes between five and seven days and your perfectly mounted image will appear on your doorstep in whatever size you’ve chosen and where ever in Australia you live. It’s a really stylish and modern way to remember your big day – and it has a bit of a wow factor, too.”
Ali, who left a job in the corporate world to run the business with his wife, prides himself on the fact that all work is done in-house at his Sydney studios and, as a result, he can customise every print. It also means he can offer mounted images as small as 10cmsX15cms or as big as 2 meters high.
“Because we do everything here [in the studios] we can customise images fully. We’ve done everything from pets to portraits, but my favourite wedding mounting was a massive life-size image of a bride overlooking Sydney Harbour. It was stunning and we created it to fit on a specific wall in the client’s living room. It looks so real, like a window that opens out to the Harbour!”
While Ali’s business mounts images of anything, he says he particularly loves mounting wedding images because “I love the look on the bride’s and groom’s faces when they first see their wedding photo blown up and mounted looking so beautiful, and I know that they’ll feel that exact way and remember that special day every time they look at it.”
Ali has just launched a new (and free) service on his website that allows couples to upload their images directly to his website and see how their image will look in a range of ready-made rooms against various colour schemes to help match the final product to their own walls.
In a few months, Acrylic Mounting will launch phase two, which will let customers upload not just their own image, but an image of the room in which it will hang. This means they can upload as many photos as they like using a wall in their own home until they find the perfect spot for it – and then the perfect image for that spot.
Ali says that though his customers love the final product, some get so excited about ordering, they don’t consider just how big some of his offerings really are – and whether they’ll even get into their homes.
“We have had customers order mountings that were too big to get into their homes. One customer nearly had to call a builder to create an opening in his wall to get his order inside.”
“We had another order for a giant mounting for someone who lived in a unit at the top of a six-story building. The panel was so large, we couldn’t get it into the elevator or up the fire stairs. We helped as much as we could, but it wasn’ physically possible.
“We got a call a few hours later for a slightly smaller version. Apparently, the customer got a little creative after we left and tied a rope around the painting and tried to hoist it up himself – via the balcony. Unfortunately, halfway through, the rope broke and the painting fell! So, be sure to check whether the panel you’re after can even get into your home before hitting the order button,” Ali advises.
“It turned out to be an anniversary present and his wife adored it, even though it had to be re-ordered and arrived a week after their anniversary.
