The idea of making lightboxes out of window frames struck me when I first moved to downtown Toronto. It sparked an impulse to make something with a rustic aesthetic (an impulse I affectionately refer to as “hipster” when it occurs in anyone else), and the original idea was to construct a large, backlit window frame that would “look out” onto a downtown skyline, with a single image split up among the various panes. When I started out, I believed that I could accomplish this with a colour printer, some paper, and a few strings of battery-operated LEDs over the course of a weekend.
It was not nearly so simple as I imagined. The entire project ultimately ran on for months. The first finished product (which I then gifted away) was battery operated and used a button, but the second two used rolls of 12V LEDs, power supplies and remote controls. The pictures had to be printed on expensive duratrans material. Windows had to be re-glazed, painted, drilled and carved in the right places. Pictures had to be carefully sized and cut exactly to fit each pane. Glazing had to be extended to cover the light bleed. LED strips (which are already in parallel) had to be soldered together in further parallels to circumvent voltage drop, and spaced exactly correctly to avoid banding and irregularities in the diffusion. The look of the final product was highly sensitive to error, but with great effort I was able to get things right.
In the end, a single frame displaying a single image didn’t convey the proper look. The window’s muntins, darkened relative to the picture, would be a jarring interruption to any contiguous scene. I opted for a showcase of the best landscape and travel photos I’d managed to take over the years, printing several different themed sets. For the small window on the left, I printed 4 pictures for each season, and went on to change it each season. Although I started out taping the pictures in with scotch tape, I later managed to hold them in with felties that didn’t have to be replaced, and finally with removable acrylic backings that I cut and hand-shaped with a lighter. The latter solution is still not perfect though, and I’m sure I’ll improve it again.
The project got a bit of traction in r/DIY.
