My first exhibit is almost over

Last Saturday night (18th October) I spent a few hours at the gallery where my work is showcased as part of the Nocturne event. Essentially, 28 galleries kept their doors open until midnight to showcase their art...all sorts of art from music to video to paintings and photography. Two city buses, which were ilustrated with photographs and also had music on board, moved people from venue to venue.  The Hydrostone Gallery where my work resides was part of this event. I had my camera and took a few pics inside and outside of the gallery. Images were also projected on to a screen and through the window.

The opening reception of the exhibit was great, with lots of people and the gallery offered wine and beer.  I found it all quite daunting though and was somewhat shy to discuss my work. It is an odd feeling like you are exposing a part of yourself for people to see and in some cases judge.

Preparing for the show was also stressful. The images were printed on Hahnemühle fine art paper with Epson UltraChrome pigment ink. It gives the photograph some texture and looks far better than standard photographic paper. It is far more expensive though. The framing was a little tricky. I thought metal would work but then opted for a rich brown (expresso) wood and kept the frame and mat (white) the same for all of the images. The next issue was the size of the print. Some images work best at particualr sizes. To solve this I printed photographs at different sizes starting at 12 by 18 and moved up to 20 by 30. Most of the images seemed better at 15 by 24 while one of them worked much better at 20 by 30. I had sevenphotographs in all, less than I originally planned. However, space was an issue since Nick also had seven and his were quite large, at 30 by 40. 

Nicks images were captured in a very different way to mine and make my images seem like child play. His images are sharp, with deep colour, a very precise composition and were captured through a long exposure.  So, there was a lot of thought and planning involved. At 30 by 40 they are quite impressive.  The presentation is also different; printed onto a fine aluminium sheet and laminated. 

In contrast, my images were captured through spontaniety.  When the frozen sand landscapes were created I wandered through looking and shooting at images that jumped out at me. I had no tripod, the images were captured in fractions of a second and the weather was windy with sand blowing around my face and camera. 

Nevertheless, there is a similarlity between Nicks' images and mine. There is a lot of space, a sense of nothingness and structures that, in the case of Nick's images, were consciously planned while in the case of mine were created through random movement of air. 

The exhibit ends a week Sunday. I have sold one piece of work, the largest actually, which makes it certainly worthwhile for me. I fully intend to do another exhibit next year and hope that they get better.

Damian