ePHOTOzine member, Chris Shepherd, recently organised his first photographic exhibition. Here he shares a few lessons he learnt in the process of setting up and creating this event.
I decided to set myself a photographic project in order to improve my photographic skills. The project was a year long study of a local nature reserve and in order to ensure I actually completed the project I booked the gallery space so there was no going back, the project just had to be completed. So the exhibition just had to happen and here is what I discovered in the process.
Location, Location, Location
The first thing you need to do is to establish is a location for your exhibition, this could be a gallery, local library, a visitors centre etc. Take a look at the space. Talk to the people who look after it. You need to get a feel for the number of pictures you need to produce to fill the space and the sort of audience that will be viewing the location.
My exhibition was in a local library and they said around 40 pictures would be needed to fill the space. I visited the space often when other exhibits were being displayed to et a feel for what did & didn’t look good.
Booking the space leads to your first real decision, a subject and title for your exhibition. Mine was self selecting but if you intend to show a selection of shots on different themes its best to go with a title that doesn’t tie you down too much “illusions”, ”reflections”, “A world of colour” etc. are the sort of thing you are looking for.
At the same time you will need to select a date for the exhibition. Give yourself plenty of time to create your first exhibition as there can be quite a lot of work involved, but remember dark wet days are your friends. People hate being indoors on hot sunny days so the winter will get you a lot more viewings. Unfortunately I chose August for my exhibition so visitor numbers were really quite low, the day was only saved by it being the wettest August for many years. Apart from umbrella salesmen I think I was the only one who was pleased about this.
|
Frames I felt my pictures needed the boost that framing them would give them so I decided to frame them all. You can purchase frames from sites on the web though I decided to buy all mine from Ikea, they produce some fine looking frames for very reasonable money. Some even come with a ready cut mount. Cutting mounts seems incredibly wasteful as you end up with a lot of waste board left over, but the centre cutouts can be used for smaller pictures or for providing a way to mount information & posters at the exhibition. You can buy mountboard for between ￡2 to ￡3 from art shops or from the web in bulk; few places will ship small amounts of board by mail order as it is easily damaged in transit. Some of the board I received had taken minor knocks on the edges and in addition I managed to add a few knocks of my own. Don’t worry about this too much, as luckily mountboard seems to come in a size that seems unrelated to picture frames, so nothing fits exactly and you always end up trimming some board off anyway. Once you have mounted/framed your pictures store them in a safe place until about a week before the exhibition. Then it is time to get out all your pictures and check how various pictures look next to each other, look for any mounts that might need replacing and give all the glass, frames and mounts a thorough clean. Transportation |
|
|
|
|
| Publicity & Pricing Now you have created your exhibition you will want people to come and see it so take the time to get in contact with your local newspapers before the opening day and inform them about the exhibition. Create some eye-catching posters and take them to the local supermarkets, they will be happy to allow you to put a poster up, but don’t go any bigger than A4 size as you are fighting for space with every other good cause in the area. You will need some of these to dot about the location of your exhibition to encourage people towards your display. Create a large introduction poster for your actual exhibition – what its about & who took the photos. This is easily forgotten yet provides a context for your display. Pricing is really tricky, too high and people won’t buy it, too low and you won’t cover your costs or give an impression of a high-class product. In addition don’t forget to allow for the percentage the gallery charges. |
I priced my pictures between ￡75 for a large 40cmx50cm framed print down to ￡20 for an unmounted A4 shot in a certificate frame. Both ends of the spectrum sold and it seemed to me that people who liked my work in the large sizes, but couldn’t afford to pay lots for a picture, went for the smaller pics.
I had originally intended to sell copies of prints but the library were not geared up for this at all and were only really happy selling each picture as an individual work of art.
I created a website and advertised it at the exhibition but it only generated one sale (and not even for an item in the exhibition) so I would suggest not bothering with that as an outlet.
The Exhibition
Setting up an exhibition can take an awful lot of time as you have to decide how best the pictures fit into the space, which pictures work well next to each other, deal with strange and elaborate hanging systems and try to get it all looking neat. It took 2 of us most of a day to setup my exhibition. Don’t forget to take some repair and cleaning equipment as it’s a fair bet you will discover an unmentionable mark on the glass of one picture and another just won’t hang right. I took a stapler, sticky tape, screwdriver, tin of spray mount and picture wire and ended up using them all.
I felt my pictures needed some descriptions with them to help people understand what they were viewing and why I had taken that particular shot. I found the best way of doing this was to create a document in word that was then printed out on a laser printer and spray mounted to some off-cuts of mountboard. The effect is quite professional and I received a lot of comments from people saying how much they appreciated the commentary on each picture.
Its well worth leaving a visitors book for comments, as people can be very generous with the comments they make on your pictures. It was interesting to see how important subject is, one of my pictures which has little technical merit and went down badly on ePHOTOzine was very well received in the exhibition as it reminded many people of time spent during their own childhoods in the same location.
Final Thoughts
If you are thinking of putting on an exhibition then go for it, you won’t regret it. It was really enjoyable talking to the people who were viewing the exhibition and experience the delight my pictures brought to young and old alike.
