I'm sure that there are many commercial photographers here, some full time, some part time (myself included) who shoot for a client in one way or another. Given an assignment (be it wedding, journalism, portraiture, still life, aireal, scientific, etc), we have a clear objective as far as what our images are supposed to look like. In other words, we are hired to produce an image for a client, an image that is for the most part a vision that the client had in mind when he or she hired us. They liked what they saw when they decided to hire us and expected similar results with their projects.
Other than my ever-changing portfolio, I rarely print anything for myself. I have two photographs hanging on the walls of my home; they are of my two daughters. Recently I began to think about the negatives and images I have and realized that 95% are of clients, 4% pictures of my kids, 1% of subjects I found intriguing.
Shooting for clients is good, it pays the bills, but what about those creative visions that existed in our minds when we began photography many years ago? I asked myself when was the last time I printed any images (not just the family pics) to hang on one of my own walls in my home? Yes, I keep an archive of my images, but I rarely print anything for personal display.
So, this lead me to yet another one of my crazy ideas and decided to start a new project. In my personal office I only have one picture frame. It is a black 16"x20" matted frame that holds an 11"x14" image. I have decided to shoot a new image every week and replace the 11"x14" image every week. I want to do this to keep my personal visions alive. Not to mention I think it's also a great challenge to produce one frameable image per week in black and white. Instead of just having thousands of wedding pictures to look at, I would like for my kids to look at my images some day and have a glimpse of how I viewed the world.
Stairway to the second floor are portraits of my son and and the three of us. In the living room I have four bw 8x10 photographs taken in the late '70s that I just put up. Two are plants, cactus and agave and one is a church door and the other is a stucco wall with a window opening in it. These are from the Southwest. I like to show some older work that I haven't seen in a while.
I have two 24"x36" prints in my living room: the sun rising through the mist over one of the Finger Lakes with specular reflection of the sun; a reflection of a tree with ripples from an artisan well and raindrops with fall colored leaves spread over the surface.
In addition to oil paintings, in the rest of my place I have 11"x14"s and 12"x18s of my girls growing up, college graduation, available light photos of Washington DC, waterfalls and fall colors, Haleakala at sunrise, two row boats tied up under a tree, and many others. My problem is that I have to rotate the photos regularly because I want to save my wall space for more photos in the future.
Since I have not shown APUG any of my work [other than my avatar], I have included two photos.
Steve
Last edited by Sirius Glass; 12-12-2007 at 10:50 AM.
an ecclectic collection of personal work ( both abstract and documentary )
friends photographs, family photos,
"vintage" family photos (portraits from 40s, 30s, and pre ww1 )
an old framed maps of the 17th C pilgramage routes to san diego de compostela,
1950s tourist snapshots of paris,
and storebought chic
While I have some of my own prints, the ones I treasure the most are the ones given me by friends. On my wall, at the moment are prints from John Callow and John McCallum.
"A man who works with his hands is a laborer; a man who works with his hands and his brain is a craftsman; a man who works with his hands and his brain and his heart is an artist" -- Louis Nizer
Location: Near Tavistock, Devon, on the edge of Dartmoor.
Posts: 432
Four of my own shots hang on my walls and now I think about it they are as untypical of everything else I produce as you could get. Normally, my material is of industrial archaeology in some shape or form, but the framed wall photos are three of musicians (Acker Bilk, Katrina Leskanich and John Miller) and one of the view out of my bedroom window at 01.00 am late last year showing a flash of forked lightning over Roborough Down.
Perhaps it's because they're different to my usual output that I felt inclined to frame them.
What pictures hang on your wall? 
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