SHARE
I get it now. I love it when I get emails from my clients saying ‘How am I ever going to decide?’ and ‘You’ve made my decisions too hard!’ I just took these as the the best compliments, not actually thinking of the mental angst I was putting my clients through. I now feel your pain. I’m sorry!
When I take pictures of my girls I am usually looking for one or two specific shots. Something to mark the start of school, or something for the holiday card. A few weeks ago I did a session where I thought I wanted one or two specific shots to use above my fireplace. What I got, though was about 25 great shots and I want to use all of them! What to do?
Recently I purchased an iPad app called Preveal to help my clients design wall displays for their homes. It is the neatest app! My clients simply need to take a picture of their wall (with their cell phone, let’s make this easy!) with an 8.5×11 sheet of paper taped to it. (The paper tells the app the scale of the wall.) They email me that picture and I can use Preveal to put together a custom wall display, with images from their recent photo session. I won’t even judge if waffles end up in your wall picture too. Promise!
Here is what my fireplace wall looked like before. (I wish I had a pulled back shot but I don’t. Sorry!) Tasteful, yes. Personal? Not so much. What I realized recently is that, while I have photos of my lovelies in a lot of different places in my house, I don’t have ANY visible in this room. This is the room we spend the most time in. What was I thinking?
Clearly I wasn’t and that is why I took my kids into that beautiful field. I thought about what they were wearing and coordinated their outfits with the decor in that room. (Oh yes I did!) I also knew I wanted to add in some vintage cameras for fun. I am thrilled with the results, but I did too well. I have too many images that I love and I don’t want them to languish on my computer with nobody seeing them on a regular basis. I had only intended to hang one larg-ish picture on the wall but now I want them all! Ugh!
So I fired up Preveal. My first instinct was to do a wall display with many medium sized pictures. Eight 11×14 pictures to be exact. Ooh! That’s a good way to put a lot of my favorites up! I decided that it was too linear and my kids decided they really wanted to still have a clock. Back to the drawing board.
This time I decided to take a picture of the wall with my clock (yes, I switched to a smaller clock) on it already in place. That worked well. This time I fit in seven 11×14 pictures (the white squares represent the metal stars I love) and my clock. This was good because I still got a lot of my favorites in, but it felt a little busy.
Finally I decided to try one large picture and a few smaller (smaller is relative) ones. This is one 20×30, three 12×18’s and one 16×16. Winner winner chicken dinner! I love it. I ordered it.
Here is how the final product looks on my wall. I am over the moon! (I even found some spots for my metal stars.) What am I going to do with the rest of the pictures? I am probably going to print some smaller and frame them for Allen’s desk and my night stand. I’m also going to make some smaller grandmother brag books and I am making sure they make it it into my annual blog book. Yup, they are going everywhere!
The best time to think about what you would like to use on your wall is actually BEFORE the photo session. That way I have a good idea what size and shape images we need to capture. If you are interested in working with me to design some art for your wall please let me know. An excuse to use my iPad? Yes please!