Sunday, February 02, 2014

Making Art out of Nothing At All

Shira and I are always a little stumped about what to put on our walls. Sure, we love putting up pictures of family, but shouldn't we expand our horizons? And then one day it hit me: what if we put up pictures from our past travels that didn't include us? You know, if we took all those pictures of clouds and birds and such, and picked out just a few great ones and put them on our walls. Sure, they might not be as nice as a professional photographer's work, but they'd be ours.

Shira went to work combing through hundreds of past photos. It didn't take long before my hopes began to waiver: while we had plenty of pictures to choose from, none seemed worthy of being hung as art. On a whim, we decided to call in a professional. We asked our friend Erin (of Gala picture fame) if she could help us out. She was glad to, and asked only that we send her our favorite pictures and a photo of the space they would be hung in.

By this point, I was pretty sure this was a fool's errand. After all, the pictures were OK, but not great.

A few days later we got back a couple of mockups that displayed the photo layouts on the wall in our dining room.

I was absolutely floored at the results. Erin had cropped, touched up and arranged the pictures in such a way that the sum of them was far greater than the individual parts. I began thinking this project may just work after all!

This weekend, Ryan, Erin's husband, came by to install the photos. I can't tell you how thankful I am for this, as I would have no doubt spent hours measuring and re-measuring, and generally driving myself crazy getting all the pictures in place.

Here's the finished product:

Impressive, no? It's hard for me to believe that I actually took all those photos, as they look so polished.

I'm sure Erin would love to work her magic for you. Just drop her an e-mail asking her about her design services. You can say that I sent you.

Here's what each of the photos are (starting at the top left, and going down, row by row):

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