Photo by South_agency via iStock
Setting up a photography exhibit is a wonderful way to show off your best photography, market yourself as a photographer, or sell your prints.
You may be creating your photography exhibit in your own home, office, or studio, or you might have been to share in a local art gallery exhibit, or perhaps you have agreed to be part of an arts and crafts fair.
Our tips for preparing for your first photography exhibit will work with all of these scenarios. Plus, you can use them for future photography exhibits beyond your first one.
Table of Contents:
- Only Use Your Best Images for Photography Exhibits
- Make High-Quality Prints for Your Photography Exhibit
- Use Themes in Your Photography Exhibit
- How Big Should Your Photography Exhibit Be?
- How To Capitalize On Your Photography Exhibit
- Recommended Photography Gear
Only Use Your Best Images for Photography Exhibits
photo by Sakorn Sukkesemsakorn via iStock
When you’re just starting out making a photography exhibit, for profit or just for show, there is a tendency to try to include that which you have an emotional connection to, but that may not be your best imagery.
The reason is simple: we connect to photography that means something to us. This may cloud our judgment to the point where we overlook flaws in our images that detract from it.
Other people viewing the image won’t know the background story that makes it so special to us; all they see is the photo. So, the first step in preparing for your first photography exhibit is to ditch all sentimentality about your pictures.
Once you do that, you can look at your photography more critically. If it doesn’t meet the standards you apply to someone else’s photography when considering it as a purchase or for your continuing photography education and advancement, you can leave it out of the photography exhibit.
Only use your absolute best images when setting up any photography exhibit.
Make High-Quality Prints for Your Photography Exhibit
Since you’re only using your absolute best photography for your exhibit, you’ll want to use only the best prints.
Lumaprints makes the highest quality prints in several different styles, including styles that work fabulously for photography exhibits, Metal Prints, Canvas Prints, and Fine Art Paper Prints, both framed and unframed.
Metal prints and canvas prints have a quality that works quite well with photography exhibits; they can stand on their own without any extra matting or needing a frame of any kind. You can add a frame if you wish; they just don’t need one because the nature of those print styles allows the image to stand all on its own.
Lumaprints Metal Prints are made with the Giclee method on thin aluminum panels in sizes from 8x10 to 24x36 inches. Canvas Prints are printed with the Giclee method on high-quality canvas hand-stretched over wood frames in sizes from 5x5 up to 54x110 inches.
Their Fine Art Paper Prints are also printed with the Giclee method on luxurious, thick photo paper and are available in sizes from 5x5 up to 43x110 inches. All three of these print styles are archival in permanence and can be mounted in a special frame that makes the print appear floating within it, but they don’t need a frame if you wish to display them without one.
Use Themes in Your Photography Exhibit
Using themes works very well to make your photography exhibit stand out in a crowd of similar exhibits or simply to make it memorable if you’re displaying your exhibit all by itself.
Themes can be almost anything you can think of. A photography exhibit theme could be a consistent color throughout the images and a similar subject matter, such as all portraits, all landscapes, all architecture, and so forth. Or, all of one size, all canvas, all metal, or all fine art paper could also work as a theme.
How Big Should Your Photography Exhibit Be?
Photo by Rawpixel via iStock
When considering the size of your photography exhibit, you can consider the size of the prints, how many prints you have, in other words, the size of the exhibit, or both.
When you control the space being used, such as your home, studio, or office, you can simply decide based on what you want. With a photography exhibit hosted by someone else, such as an art fair or a gallery, you will need to fit into whatever space they allow or that you want to pay for.
There are two schools of thought about how many prints to use and how tightly to pack together the pics in your photography exhibit. Some will want to pack in as many prints as the space allows; others will use the school of thought that less is more. Both ideas work. You may want to research what other artists in the same exhibit are doing.
How To Capitalize On Your Photography Exhibit
How you capitalize on your photography exhibit also has a lot of variables that will impact the answer.
Thinking of using the photography exhibit for making sales is a great idea. You can sell the photographs you have on hand using a smartphone pay app or use the exhibited pics as a basis for online ordering.
Online ordering is a great method for selling from a photography exhibit. Using print-on-demand drop shipping is how an online professional printing company like Lumaprints can be a part of your business model.
They take care of everything: the payment, the tax, the making of the prints, and the shipping. They even handle issues such as refunds or replacement of prints damaged in shipping. It’s a great business model because your inventory never changes, the photography exhibit doesn’t lose any spaces, and several people can buy the same print!
So, go ahead and set up your first photography exhibit. Use it to show off your best photography, market yourself as a photographer, or sell your prints. Any way you do it, it will be an enjoyable experience.
Recommended Photography Gear
Heads up: Clicking on our affiliate links and exploring our sponsored content helps us at no extra cost to you, and we only recommend gear we're absolutely crazy about!
Learn More:
- 4 Ways to Boost Your Photography Income
- Three Inventive Ways to Create a Stunning Photo Display
- FAQs About Printing Photos Online