Photos on the wall.

Ladies and Gents,

 

How many of you put your photos up in your house/flat for everyone (including yourself) to see. Do you

consider your work wall-worthy? Do you think "Why the hell not." or can you not bear to look at your work

on your own walls, or vice-versa.

 

Tell me what you think!

 

Oh, and I can't bear to look at my work.

 

Cheers!

Alex I.

I frequently print and frame images for my walls. It gives me that extra push to try to get more from my images, plus I have some from my Jr. High School days and get a kick out of reminising about equipment and techniques used back then. It is also how I come about building a collection for exhibition. If I look at an image and don't really like it as much over time, it comes down and another one goes up. Of course all my closet space has old framed photos, but I do rotate them ocassionally. It is better to see and critique your work in its finished form than to learn nothing of it as it sits in a box or portfolio case.

I do that all the time. I do it in themes, for example, I have one room dedicated to the US national park theme (e.g. Grand Canyon, Zion National park), one to floral theme. Another thing is as I get new "wall worthy" images, I replace the old ones. I also get requests from visitors for reprints.

I've done it from time to time, and framed a couple of my wife's shots which I find worthy, even if they're not something you'd submit to a juried exhibition or something. The images aren't necessarily permanent, but especially since we do mainly slides, it's fun to print some out from time to time and see what they look like on paper. A portion of our kitchen cabinets serves as a temporary rotating gallery for unframed prints that we think are at least of passing interest. One of our main hobbies is going out photographing together, and sticking up a few pictures extends the pleasure.

I live in a small cape, with minimal wall space. But I've still managed to get three photos up there! (A local shoe store has 40 photos decorating its walls!)

 

Dave

Why not? I like them. Other people like them. I'm often asked? Where is this? I travel to strange and faraway places for long term work, and short side trips (R&R) from work. No, I'm not military, but with similar assignment schedules, and MUCH better pay, LOL.

I have about 15 of my pictures, matted and framed, hung on my walls. I'm about to install some track lighting in a hallway so I can use that space to hang pictures also. The small size of the hallway makes it ideal for showing pictures that I can't blow up to "living room" size.

 

But that said, I do get tired of seeing some of the images, so they get "taken out of rotation" as I find better pictures to hang.

 

I enjoy the process of matting and framing my pictures, but don't sell very many, so they end up hanging on my walls.

 

<Chas>

We've started to leave a portable computer open on the dining room table with free http://Picasa.Google.com/ running all the time showing a screen save / slide show of our work. Three points:

 

1 - we are becoming familiar with and informed by more and more of our work than we ever imagine before

 

2 - we don;t "need' to print and frame as much as we thought we'd need to since "we see it all, all the time" now.

 

3 - we actually print MORE now that we know which pictures we have in our archives. Need 2 leaves on top of each other? I have at least 6 right away now. Need a shot of dad's car? I saw a few yesterday - they're in there!

 

Also (I know, a 4th point), using free http://www.IrfanView.com/ I quickly copied ALL color shots to black and white screen-size JPG and now our slide show includes color and black and white for each shot. When seen in order, you can see either the color come in or go out, and the revelation is fantastic. I now see more in my shots than ever before as I see the same shot as tone then chrome, and so on for hours.

 

Better than TV, even with 500 channels! ;-)

 

So, yes, by way of NOT seeing pictures on the wall, we ow have MORE pictures on the wall, and more pictures in our life ALL THE TIME!

 

Anyone else notice a difference compared to yesteryear?

 

Click!

 

Peter Blaise

Minolta Rokkor Alpha DiMage Photographer

Can't stand pictures on my wall.

 

And a retired NG photographer I know has only one photograph up in his whole house, and he didn't make it.

I have a few of mine I had submitted to show a while back hanging in the hallway. Since I had matted and framed them for the show - why NOT hang them? :-)

The first decent B&W print I ever made (from a negative on the first roll of film I ever developed) I have framed and it's been hanging on the wall for about 18 or so years now.

 

It's faded, and it wasn't that great of a print to begin with, but I felt a really huge sense of accomplishment as I watched the image appear on the paper in the tray in the darkroom. I felt like a real photographer... I still get a kick out of looking at it from time to time.

I have a few of my own photographs hanging on the walls of my home office, along with

an eclectic mix of vintage and antique photographs, paintings, vintage movie & exhibit

posters, etc. Most of the time I'm in here researching and writing, so they're pleasant

reminders that I work visually now and then.

My lounge has 3 of my photos framed and hung - surprise is 2 were B&W taken 45 years ago and I still admire them, they are very different to what I take now. And the third is a colour print (recent)of a misty scene which is almost B&W. The lounge has a light/dark decor, and maybe when that is changed some colour might be introduced.

Regards Myrddin Jones

The vast majority of the photos on my walls are of, or include, all the fine people I have met and photographed from all over the World. It reminds me of all the great times I've had and how money doesn't buy happiness.

I do it all the time. I can get wood 8.5x11 frames for a buck at the dollar tree so the stairs and upstairs hall have quite a few prints up. Themes run more a per-wall basis in my case.

I have 6 prints hanging on walls in my house. When I print a new one, I unframe one of the old and put the new one in. When friends come into my home, they never know if they'll see a new one (or two or three) or the six they saw last month. I only have six hanging so I don't have to matt and frame every print I like, I only have to replace an older one. If I'm trying to create a theme, I really don't care if the prints has been shown in my house before or not.

As a novice I've had this discussion with my best friend who is a skilled amateur photographer. He doesn't hang his own work in his home because, (a)thinks it is arrogant, (b)thinks his work isn't yet to the level of being "presentable". My perspective is this: I'm about to hang my own pics on the wall for the first time because (a)the whole reason i got into photography is i love looking at pics, so why not hang something that you've put your own time,work, and soul into? (b)it's a hell of a lot cheaper than having to buy the work of others (although I do occassionally buy a print when I can afford to). My friend and I did agree that if we were professionals it would at least "seem" arrogant to hang ones own works all over the walls, but that's not a prob I'll have to be dealing with anytime soon. The same reason I take photos is the same reason I won't hesitate to hang them. In a former life I was a landscape designer...should I allow someone else to landscape my home because it would be arrogant to do so myself?

I have pictures of the grandchildren everywhere now. The only exception is a series of whale tails I had matted and framed as a set. The others are in albums or on the computer screen.

I have some, mostly in my office, but they are significantly outnumbered by modern paintings and pastels which we've collected over the years. No-one - not even me-has suggested that we should take these down and replace them with my stuff, and indeed I think that paintings tend to enjoy a longer "interesting life" than photographs