Pictures at an Exhibition

Caught Feather, 2011

I will have a small selection of my photographs on display as part of the Arena Photographers exhibition held in the Gallery at Salisbury Library. The show runs from October 6^th through to 27^th, with a private view held on Friday 5^th 18:00 – 20:00. Please come along if you can.

Sunset Dandelion, 2010

We have enjoyed a good relationship with the library who have regularly give us the opportunity to display our work every couple of years. Hopefully we continue to deliver a good range of images that are of interest to the general public as well as other photographers.

Floating Leaf, 2009

This year I have put together a set of six images shown here on the theme of ‘ephemera’, using feathers and leaves as motifs for impermanence and fragility. I guess I have been thinking about these ideas a fair bit over the last couple of years.

Fallen from the Sky, 2010

As I’ve mentioned before, I think a picture does not really exist until it has been printed. All the pictures on display have been printed on Fujicolor Crystal Archive Digital Pearl paper. By using a metal oxide coating on microscopic pearl mica pigments, these prints really sparkle and look very nice indeed, giving the image a lovely depth. Well worth the extra expense I think. All but one of the prints were taken on my Panasonic LX3 compact. Yes, we all know that large sensor cameras give the best quality, but it is still impressive to see just how good a print you can get from the LX3 if you stick to ISO100 and shoot in RAW. Each print image is 292mm square, and at that size the resolution is just fine, with pretty good dynamic range.

Wet Leaf, 2012

One of the final things I had to decide upon was the pricing of the pictures. Pricing! How do you decide? The sales and marketing answer of course, is the maximum you can get away with, whatever the purchaser is prepared to pay. In this country, and in non-metropolitan areas in particular, that price might be very low indeed. Especially if you are not a well-known name. Especially if you are a digital worker and don’t use some arcane process to make your images. Especially if the viewing public have decent cameras themselves and would rather have one of their own creations put up on their wall. So I price my pictures to cover my costs, and I’m very gratified if someone should want to have picture of mine to place on their wall.

Winter Seed Heads, 2010

I have always believed that if you are making pictures that are of any value at all, then the work needs to shown publicly. That is why I still take part in exhibitions, as well as give talks, have a website and write this blog. Putting on exhibitions can be expensive and time consuming, but it is a good discipline. It forces you to produce top-quality work, to pay attention to the printing and finishing, and importantly, make sure that you have a body of work that works well together when hung on the wall. And you might just find that there is someone out there who likes what you have made.