I need to get this out of my head.
My MIL has invited me to participate in a exhibit this August that is presented on the walls of the retirement area at Stonegates, a retirement/health center community where she lives. There’s another photographer invited too. (I’m feeling competitive!)
I immediately said yes, thinking I could easily do 15 shots of George, and since he use to work there, they’d easily sell, or at least be appreciated.
MIL has put the kibosh on that. Basically it would be over a year since he left and it might be old news.
Since then, I’m going back and forth in my head. Several things keep coming up. The cost. I’ve promised 15 images. There’s the actual print ($4-$20 each) and the frame ($20 – ???). If I need to matt the images, I’m comfortable cutting those but there’s the matt cost so really no other outside labor costs. But that still means spending probably $300 with hopes of return completely un predictable. (In marketing terms, ROI comes to mind.)
My artistic side has been bouncing around with this challenge. And my artistic integrity has been putting up challenges to the challenges. And let me put something out there at the beginning. I’m not a fan of photos on gallery walls. They make me snooze. I’ve somewhat ruled out photos of my dogs, cat, kids and wife. I don’t travel enough to do a travel collection.
Thoughts.
I’d like this to be a series of the same theme. Another thought. Since Beth, my MIL and I will probably know everyone that will see these, going over the top artistic will bomb big. The audience is older conservative Delawareans. If I went fox hunting I’d come back with 15 winners.
I could do it as a big project where I grab my macro lens and do 15 shots of bugs on flowers. All squarish formate, cheap photos, cheap frames.
I could do it as a collection of wide panoramas. Could double up on the prints (printing 1- 20 x 24 with 3 – 8×20 images each. This would lead to some somewhat custom frames though.
Thinking a collection of night time shots. Moon, stars and other sky based stuff. Maybe some sky clouds. An alternative to this would be nighttime activities type shots (streets of wilmington and or cars in motion with zoom lines).
Thinking a collection of random stranger faces. Ha! Since I’ve started with the 100 strangers group on flickr, I’ve done 3… Let’s not make this impossible.
What to do?
More later.