Digital Prints of Aerial Lake Superior Photography | Canvas Champ Review

Handy Hubby and I really enjoy taking aerial Lake Superior photography and whenever I share the photos here or on Instagram, I’m asked if we’d consider selling prints or digital downloads.  I love that idea and it makes me so happy to know that people enjoy seeing our photos, but I wasn’t sure how well our photos would print and I didn’t want to start selling them until I could know for sure that they would look good.  Our drone definitely felt like a splurge to us but you can spend a lot more on them, so I was worried the quality wouldn’t be good enough.  When CanvasChamp reached out about collaborating, I was grateful for the opportunity to finally have one of our aerial lake photos blown up and printed as an experiment.

Choosing from our vast collection of aerial Lake Superior photography wasn’t easy!  It turns out we’re pretty obsessed with getting a bird’s eye view of our lake.  I really love our winter ice series:

But I wasn’t sure that I wanted this icy view on our walls when it’s our reality for what feels like 99% of the year.  Here’s a zoomed out aerial photo to see the scale of the crazing on the ice:

This summer I took some aerial Lake Superior photography at my favorite place, affectionately known as Driftwood Beach, which seemed like a better contender for hanging on our walls so I can remember what summer feels like.  We’ve had snow for so long, I already forget.

Seeing these photos, I can almost feel the warmth of the sun on my skin.  We also take lots of aerial photos from our backyard.  Here’s a photo of our view, from the vantage point of that annoying squirrel who sits on our roof:

As much as I love the surrounding greenery of our aerial Lake Superior photograhy, I actually love the idea of framing just an aerial photo of waves – nothing else, just the water.  I’ve seen two beautiful, very modern coastal homes with that kind of ethereal, beachy art and I’m captivated by the simplicity (left: Black Band Design, right: via My Domaine):

Kind of like this (although I took these from the shore):

I’ve been trying to take more photos of just the water but I haven’t been able to get the exact photo I’d like.  I’d love to capture the water on more grey days because when the sun shines it’s so intensely teal.

I finally decided to use a photo that I thought might be the least sharp photo because I figured that if this photo turned out, then all of the others would look even better.  I took the one below, edited it very slightly, and then uploaded to the CanvasChamp website and enlarged it to 20″ x 30″.  The process was simple and only took a few minutes.

I was super excited for my canvas print to arrive in the mail and I was not disappointed – it looks GREAT!  Especially considering that the little drone buzzes and moves, the photo is sharp and crisp.

The stretched canvas from CanvasChamp is really nice quality and it shipped so quickly, even though it’s handmade in India.  The photo was printed 100% true to the photo I sent, in terms of color and quality, and it came ready to hang, which is really convenient.  There are many options for custom canvas prints on the CanvasChamp website, such as whether the photo wraps around the edge or the kind of finish.  You can even print photos on wood!  I’m very happy with the quality and very excited to know that our aerial drone photography can be enlarged and turned into beautiful art!  And now if I offer digital downloads, I can recommend a company with confidence.

My plan is to open a shop in 2019, probably one on Etsy (separate from my vintage shop) in addition to one right here on Dans le Lakehouse.  I’m thinking of offering digital downloads of our aerial Lake Superior photography for a really small fee, but also selling products with our aerial photos on them (I found adorable metal camp style mugs which would look so cute with a little circular image of icy Lake Superior on them).  I’d also like to start offering some limited-run, handmade Lake Superior-inspired products – like maybe packs of 10 of my alcohol ink note cards?  I’m still thinking about the logistics and what kind of products I’d like to sell – I’m brimming with cute ideas – but I’d love to hear from you, so let me know in the comments if there’s anything you would/wouldn’t like to see.

This post was sponsored by CanvasChamp, but all thoughts and opinions are my own!