What do you do with your images?

[littlemike]

A few weeks ago I visited California's northern coastline. I took some very nice

pictures -- I'm quite pleased with a few of the images. I just don't know what

to do with them. I'm not a professional photographer, and the images aren't good

enough for a show or anything, but they are plenty nice enough to look good on

my walls. But the darn house already has enough of my photos hung up. Any more

and it would just start looking silly. But I don't want to just print them out

and file them. So . . . what do you do with your images?

[d_gillespie]

Online photo album, coffee table photo album, mail to relatives as gifts. Or select a frame in a favorite spot and exchange the photos in the frame every so often and create your own picture of the month.

[kolaczan]

Give them as gifts. Fill up other people's walls.

Then you can still view them on a wall when you visit.

[phule]

I cycle through the framed prints on my walls during the year. As the mood strikes, different photos go up and existing ones come down for a while.

[geoffs1]

I tack inkjet or Shutterfly/Wallgreens prints of recent stuff all around my cube at work. It has three purposes: 1) I can decide which shots "hold up" best when I look at them over and over 2) I can compare different printing technologies, and 3) they're good conversation starters with folks around the office (I'll often give a print to someone who shows an interest in it as part of the turn-over process).

 

Cheers,

 

Geoff S.

[leicaglow]

I started printing my B&W in small sizes, like 4x5", 5x5", and 8x8". I have a long wall I was browsing this morning and really enjoying them. It's not something you look at all the time. But I have a whole closet of much larger prints: 11x14" to 20x30" all framed. I don't display them because they take up too much room, but I can do a lot more with smaller, more intimate prints.

[matthew_newton]

My images with one or two exceptions are not good enough to sell. I am still quite an amateur when it comes to photography...though I have learned a lot in the last year. Of the probably 1000 images I have shot in that time I have maybe one or two that would be publishable in a coffee table book or salable as a print...though certainly nothing commanding large money. I actually have a really great picture of a snake charmer from Merrakech when I was there on my honeymoon, but I haven't gotten around to scanning the negative or getting a large blowup (the 5x7 though is wonderful though) and one or two other pictures like that.

 

Eventually I plan on doing some enlargements, probably 8x12", of a few of my pictures and framing them and slapping them on my walls. Other then that I have some 4x6" sitting in my office at work and I will probably also get around to a few enlargements there. Otherwise I have 2 photo collections I keep around. One collection comprises my and my wife's pictures we have taken on trips in photo albums (we just keep the best shots and no repeats or about 300 photos out of 600-1000 per trip). The other collection are my photos that I have taken and I really like, but they don't fall into a 'trip' catagory. They are generally more artsy types of photos and I keep those in a really large photo album to peruse when I feel like it.

 

An option for you is to rotate pictures on your walls. Sya you have 30 pictures up on walls, maybe change some out every few months or say once a year during a spring cleaning. I don't really have the 'extra' framed pictures laying around right now, but I know a few people who have dozens of extra picture, paintings, and such forth that they rotate out on their walls every few months or year or two when they get bored with the old ones.

[m_barbu1]

I use <a href="http://gallery.menalto.com/">Gallery</a> [menalto.com] and highly recommend it. I file all my RAW files separately, and upload the JPEGs I create from them, onto my web site.

[lee_shively]

I also rotate framed photos on the walls of my home and office. If someone tells me they really like one of my photos, I'll give them a copy of it.

 

The main thing is to let others see your good photos. Just don't show them the bad ones.

[beeman458]

Extra prints, I give away and those that are no longer current in my portfolio, go into an archived portfolio, on the shelf, never to be looked at again.

 

If you're cranking out ten to twenty, high quality images a year, the house fills up fast. So the reality of the issue, wall space is limited and a portfolio can hold more images then a wall and a shelf load of portfolios can hold even more.

 

Although unromantic as to being a solution, I hope my above helps.

[timcorridan]

make a calender, for yourself, or a present.

[eric merrill]

Put them on a website to share with friends and family.

 

Make a book. Lots of different micropublishers have been springing up lately. It's now affordable to make a book and print just one copy.

 

 

Eric