Thursday, November 17, 2011

Photo Studio

Running a business requires me to wear many hats at the same time. I've been so busy with prep for the last two shows of the year that I almost forgot about another development thread that's about to become critical. I need matching, high quality photos of my work in order to move up to the next level of juried shows. And to get those photos, I can hire someone to shoot them or I can invest in a backdrop to shoot them myself. Of course, that's what I will choose. It saves money in the long run and gives me more flexibility to reshoot pieces as often as I need to meet new criteria.

Since I'm going to Portland this weekend, it's a perfect time to purchase the canvas for my new backdrop. I just need to know what size I'll need. So, I went into the portion of the basement that will house the photo studio and started mocking it up with a 12' chunk of canvas that I already had.

In the end I decided that an 8'x12' backdrop will be perfect. I can pull the walls in for better light bounce on tall subjects like ruanas and push them out for wide subjects like shawls.

Thankfully, Audrey just finished an MFA in painting so she can paint the photo studio gradient on the canvas once I get it here. There may not be time to paint it for my first set of applications so those may go out with an unpainted seamless backdrop. It's still way more professional than what I have now!

It seems strange to spend time on the day before I leave doing something other than organizing things for the show, but this is important stuff, too. It's so much easier to find things like a seamless 8x12 canvas backdrop in a city than it is out here in the middle of nowhere.

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