In our little bubble of the photography world, we photographers work hard. We work really hard. And we wear our hearts on our sleeves when we share our images, whether they be of our own family or of our most recent clients. And because we work so hard to produce images that you will fall in love with, we often fall in love with them ourselves.
From that love comes the idea that bigger is better. Bigger is clearly more dramatic, and if you’re looking for a statement piece, a 20×30 print (especially with mat and frame!) will achieve that look in no time flat! Don’t believe me? Let me show you.
As photographers, we love these dramatic comparisons. I could have put up an 8×10 to make the difference seem even more stark, but even the 11×14 looks a little silly hanging by itself behind a standard sized couch.
That said, I have clients who truly value the photography I produce for them, and yet still don’t want a 20×30 canvas hanging in their living room. Some just don’t care for such a statement piece. But as much as we as photographers might cringe at the thought of printing 8x10s (this is our art!), everything — and every size — has its place. Perhaps you have a small space on your office desk just waiting for that updated 8×10 of your children. Or perhaps, you just want to put together a collection of many images.
I am personally a huge fan of a collection of images like this. It’s more flexible if you ever want to move pieces around, allows you to display more of your favorite images, but is just as dramatic in its own way. Here’s an example of what I mean. (And yes, I know, a 20×24 is still on the larger side, but it’s just so pretty!).
This, by the way, is modeled with a king-sized bed (and doesn’t your bedroom just look exactly like this?
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Collections offer storytelling possibilities that a single image just doesn’t offer. Does that make a collection a better choice? No. Each of my clients has a different lifestyle, different tastes, different needs, and I don’t consider our session complete until those needs are met.
(My one word of caution — collections do not just mean a grouping of random images. Here, the images are from the same session, and carefully edited to ensure the color is consistent in each of them, so they naturally work well together. Further, images were chosen so that leading lines draw the viewer back to the center.)
If you’re looking for family portraits or an engagement session, I would love to work with you to create wall displays that will work in your home!
- Danie
by Danie
What a wonderful post Danie – and absolutely so true about our hearts on our sleeves with our images AND that bigger is better! I, myself, have such a hard time deciding on my favorite images that wall collages seem to be the way I go, but would love just one giant print…if I could just choose which one.