Quantity, Quality, & Presentation

[markbarendt]

My wife had a great question.

We shoot all these pictures, how in the world do we display all the stuff we shoot?

The thought I had is that our standards are too low.

For me that was a much bigger question when I shot digital. Still, even with film, not every shot is a keeper.

Given certain limits we all have, like wall space, how does everybody deal with and display all the fun stuff we keep creating.

 

[John Koehrer]

No one does deal with it. Even or perhaps mainly pros can do this with their personal work.
I think it Friedlander or Frank that left literally thousand of rolls of undeveloped film when he died.

 

[winger]

Friedlander is still alive as far as I know.

We deal with it by buying more storage boxes to hold them all. Most of my shots never go anywhere (even some I consider pretty good). I do rotate what's on the walls every so often, though.

 

[Paul Jenkin]

It's an interesting question.

I've recently written a will but I couldn't get a handle on what I want to happen with my negatives, slides and even the digital files I have on my external hard drive.

It's not as it they have any intrinsic financial value - it just seems a shame, having travelled around the world and taken so many shots of the people and places to which we've travelled, to just bin it all when I 'pop my clogs'.

I post some of my digital stuff on my website and other photo forums / galleries and I've had a few prints made of some of my better work. However, much of my output sits gathering dust in my one-person image library, slide boxes and negative folders until I re-discover it and do something with it.

 

[Steve Roberts]

Yes to all the above! I suspect most of us display a fraction of even our good material. I ran out of wall space long ago, and even then I only have four of my own prints amongst other framable paintings, and items of interest. Getting work published is my answer. I consider that my efforts have not been in vain if they are published somewhere, so I like to get material in to print as often as possible even if it's not terribly rewarding financially.

Steve