What do you hope to do with your photos?

[Ric Trexell]

While my mother was in a local nursing home, I noticed a lot of blank walls. As a photo-nut, this didn't cut it. So I donated over time about a dozen 16X20's shot with either a 35mm or MF camera. Now some of those have been removed after being up for years and also due to changes in decor. I'm always wondering how I can get my pictures shown and what I would hope to accomplish by doing it. (I'm not talking for profit photos, that is another matter.) So what do you do with your photos? Do you just show them to friends and family, or do you display them somewhere? Thanks for reading this. Ric.

 

[kuyman]

I'll bite.

I'm only eighteen, but I've bee pretty lucky with exposure with my photographs. As taboo as it is here on APUG, I do a lot of my work digitally... but mostly when I share it. I've found that my age has been both a hinderance and an advantage. I'm young, I'm fresh out of high school, and I know people in lots of places locally. Doing senior portraits has really helped me get the word out about myself, sometimes in some strange ways. As a senior I shot nine sets of senior portraits (five sets completely on film) and made some money off that. But providing free digital versions of their prints with my name on them lead to a lot of word of mouth traffic.

Getting the word out about my work has been a good thing for me. I've been carrying around sample prints in my car for months and I make sure to show them off as often as I can. I give out prints as gifts and make sure to only show people the best work, but my ultimate goal and what I hope to do with my photos isn't about money or popularity or anything...

I believe my photographs should evoke emotions, should make the viewers of them share a common feeling. I'd like that to happen with really large prints that I distribute cheaply or free whenever possible and getting paid to make those photographs. In a perfect world, anyway.