How to organize a photo show on the cheap

Now the dust has settled from my opening in a local cafe, here are some details on how I sorted out the practicalities – in case they’re useful for other folks facing the somewhat daunting task of organizing your first show.

1) Find your location

I was very lucky in this regard. I go to Java Joe’s North pretty regularly (especially for a Friday morning latte and breakfast burrito), and have enjoyed looking a bunch of the artwork they have up, which changes every month.

I asked them how you get a slot, and it turns out all you do is ask. I showed Dave the owner some of my Moo Cards as I didn’t have my portfolio with me, and he said that was fine. I was signed up for the next free slot – a few months in the future.

Your experience will vary of course, but cafes, restaurants, public libraries and even supermarkets (Whole Foods do exhibitions, for example) are all places to try outside the full-on art gallery circuit (which is not an option anyway in lots of places).

2) Choose your work

I wanted the photos I showed to have some thematic link, so it wasn’t just a bunch of disparate shots (however good they might be individually). But I also wanted to do a bit of stealth marketing too – showing the sort of work that might get me the odd commission or two.

So I fixed on the geometric urban abstracts that I do, and (cheating a little) also included three black and white kids’ portraits. I showed the portraits on a different wall from the others to keep them separate.

It worked well, as people could see what I was about pretty easily. I know we don’t like to be pigeon-holed, but I also think it makes sense to tell a good story with the work rather than try to show every sort of photography you’ve ever done. (But this is my first show, of course, so you probably know better yourself)

3) Print away

I send my images out for printing – for the simple reason that I don’t have a good photo printer. I chose Mpix as I’ve used them before with success, and have heard really excellent things about their customer service. They offered 8″ x 12″ metallic prints for $4.99 a time. The metallic prints are borderline cheesy to be honest, and I wouldn’t recommend them for color pictures of people or landscapes (which rules out pretty much everything), but for my slightly abstract/geometric stuff, they worked really well.

Metallic paper is also a good option for black and white images, lending a silver look to the whites.

4) You’ve been framed

I showed twelve images, so that’s a bunch of frames – for me, the priciest part of the endeavour. I shopped around, and read reviews and American Frame – americanframe.com – were the folks I went with, because they were among the cheapest, offered a free mat, and other photogs had had good experience with them.

The best thing was everything was custom, so I could get the mat opening exactly where I wanted it, and there’s an online tool you can use to see what you’re going to get (including your own images). Less than $30 a frame for custom size, custom mat, back board and perspex – still a fair bit of money up front, but a lot cheaper than other places and I got exactly what I was after.

5) If you build it

Everything came from American Frame very well packed, and even though I was novice, I had no problem putting the frames together. On the advice of a certain person I live with, I first tried taping the photos to the back of the mat. This was partly to make adjustments easily, and partly to make the whole thing recyclable in the future.

It was a nice idea, but made it hard to stretch the photos tight enough so they were completely flat. Especially given the metallic paper and the large areas of pretty flat color in the pictures, any little bumps were really obvious.

So Plan B was to spray mount them to the foamcore back board – probably what I should have done in the first place. It was much easier and presented a tidy impression all round.

6) Guerilla marketing

I didn’t have a real ad budget but I put the word out in number of ways. The online stuff – Facebook, the Flickr Groups I hang out on, email shot to all my friends, announcements on my site and Twitter feed – was easily done and had a real impact.

I also got some postcards printed up from Moo.com. I put some of these up around the place – in the Library, in a couple of other cafes I frequent, at the gymnastics studio my daughter goes too. One of my former students saw one of these so I know it had something of an effect. I kept a bunch of the cards for leaving in the cafe where the show was – takeaways for people who liked the work and might want to contact me.

I also made sure to submit the opening to our local alternative paper – the Santa Fe Reporter. They don’t include every event listing they receive, but I was l lucky enough to get mine in. Not sure whether that will encourage anyone to go and check them out, but it definitely can’t hurt, and it also checked the box about being professional about it all.

Even though I was doing it all on a shoestring, I wanted it look like I knew what I was doing and was taking this seriously.

6) Hang and enjoy

I had help with the hanging, which was great. Firstly it’s a lot easier to have someone else tell you if the pictures are level or not. Secondly, I had a sense of a good order for the images, but the second opinion was very valuable, and improved the order of things.

I also put up an artists’ statement – which gave some background on me and the work, together with contact details and some information on custom prints.

Upshot

I sold one print on the day, and while I haven’t sold anything since (the pictures are still up for another couple of weeks), I’d definitely declare the whole experience a success.

I enjoyed the opening, and got a chance to ‘come out’ as a photographer to some of my friends who might not know how hard I’ve fallen for all this over the last couple of years.

It’s been great to hang out in the cafe and watch people take the time to walk their way down the line of photos as they’re waiting for their drink order. They’re most unlikely to buy anything but sales were only an incidental part of my objective. It’s great to have my work out there for random people to stumble upon, and I feel like part of doing the work is showing it in a number of ways.

And since my wife has her eyes on a few of the prints for home, we’ve also ended up with some art for the walls in our den.