Australian_Photography_-_June_2016_

APS FOCUS

With Jenny
Davidson

I

’ve reached a stage where I
sometimes question why I’m
taking an image. I don’t mean
the usual family record shots,
although only a few of these get printed,
and I don’t mean holiday photos, as I
quite like to create photo books of these.
I’m talking about the images every keen
amateur photographer takes and brings
to camera club competitions, or uploads
to sites like Facebook and Instagram to
receive feedback.
Don’t get me wrong, I still like to enter
my large prints in my local camera club
monthly competition and I try to support
national print exhibitions. But somewhere
along the way I lost interest in uploading
images to every international exhibition.
I’ve found myself wondering what
incentive there is to grab the camera and
start shooting.
Recently a friend was given the
opportunity to hold an exhibition in
Goulburn and asked if I wanted to join
her. “You have lots of stuff already printed,
you can do it,” she said. I had to think
about it. An exhibition is quite a challenge
and I knew my old A3 prints wouldn’t do
the trick. In our initial enthusiasm we

thought about getting some big canvasses

printed and framed – we wanted the

exhibition to be something special.

But as our lottery ticket didn’t provide

any funds and we needed thirty images

framed, we started to rationalise. It’s

often said that many famous artists went

hungry on occasion and many weren’t

recognised until after they had passed

away. I love photography, but I don’t want

to go hungry. You won’t see me ‘dying for

my art!’

We decided there was a better option.

My home printer can print to A2 size,

and because we were hoping to sell

some prints, we managed to source some

archival paper – a real challenge with

shops closing over Christmas. Having

frames made especially is unbelievably

expensive so we found some pre made

ones – after all you don’t want the frame

to take precedence over the image.

Unfortunately with pre-made frames you

have to size the image to fit the frame and

for some unknown reason pre-made frames

don’t seem to come perfectly measured to

fit A2 images. We had to get creative, so we

started cropping the images - some could

be cropped, but for others we had to get

larger frames and cut new mounts.

Next on the list was preparing an

invitation and catalogue and writing some

interesting stuff about ourselves. We had

to find someone to open the exhibition

and we had to persuade our friends and

relatives to attend, and of course we had

to pay for the opening night drinks and

nibbles. I was lucky enough to sell two

images on the opening night and I hope

by the time this goes to press I will have

sold more, otherwise I might have lots

of A2 framed images stored with my A3

matted images!

So now with all these images at home

• what do I do with them? Do I need
  to take more? What it does give me is
  some great images to enter the Australian
  Photographer of the Year, and I have
  found that I’ve been finding places to
  enter some – I exhibited prints at the
  last two APSON’s run by the Australian
  Photographic Society.
  What this has shown me is without
  magazines and societies that offer
  opportunities to show our images, too
  many of our photos, cameras and printers
  would eventually just gather dust – it’s so
  great to have them! ❂

Image

overload

ABOVE

A full blue moon. A

new challenge may

be just what you

need to kickstart

the next phase in

your photography.

AUSTRALIAN PHOTOGRAPHY JUNE 2016 AUSTRALIANPHOTOGRAPHY.COM 71

An exhibition can be a great way to put your images to work,

writes the Australian Photographic Society’s Jenny Davidson.