Did you say "visit Chicago"?

Actually, the point here is not the photo, but to mention at the Art Institute of Chicago, one can take your camera inside and photograph all but a few items... nice to get some shots of folks looking at the art work.

I have been waiting for a thread such as this to respond to for several years now. Does any one on NRF live in, or have occasion to visit downtown Chicago at all ?

As my fiancee' was born and raised in Chicago, and her daughter and one of her sons live in the Chicago area, we go to Chicago every chance we get; quite often, when we go to visit, we take the Metra downtown to "sightsee", and just "poke around". On one such trip a few years ago, we made an amazing discovery.

I'm something of a "building nut"........I love looking through interesting buildings; and on one of our visits to downtown, we found the most interesting buildings in the entire world, and absolutely the most beautiful building I have ever been in. This fabulous building was built in the 1890's, originally to be the main Chicago Public Library; it served that purpose until the 1980's or 1990's, when the Library "outgrew" the building; it sat empty for almost 10 years, during which time there was talk of tearing it down to build yet another "skyscraper", but fortunately the late Mrs. Richard Daley, ( the wife of then Mayor Richard Daley ) managed to "save the day", and after a 10 year, ten million dollar renovation, it re-opened as......The Chicago Cultural Center.

The C.C.C. is bounded on one side by Michigan Avenue, one end by Washington Street, the other end by Randolf Street. It takes up half of a whole city block of some of the "priciest" real estate in Chicago. Here's why it's so "special"..........

First of all, the whole interior was designed by Louis Tiffany & Co. and it houses two of Louis Tiffany's greatest works of art......the Great Tiffany Dome, (which is the biggest art glass dome in the world), and hanging beneath the great dome, is the biggest Tiffany chandelier ever made.......(which is known fittingly enough, as The Great Tiffany Chandelier). But that's just "the beginning"......the great dome is the "centerpiece" of a "room" known as, "Preston Bradley Hall". It would require a whole book to describe "PBH".....suffice to say, it is a "destination" in and off it's self; (it's mind-bogglingly beautiful !) ( Possibly why my mind is always so boggled)

So far, we have a fabulous building; it is a venue for all manner of performing arts; ( they have free concerts and recitals in PBH one or two days each week. Then, there is an art gallery; and a photography gallery; and here's the very "best part".......unlike almost ALL big, fancy public buildings, the C.C.C. is completely "photography / photographer friendly !" They even ENCOURAGE you to take pictures ! With tripods ! With electronic flash ! ( you can even "do macro" on the beautiful mosaics);

On my first visit to the C.C.C. (which was almost accidental), I was mid-way between shooting Fuji Velvia with my Nikon F-5, and "playing around with" an inexpensive digital Fuji "mega-zoom" that I bought to see if I still had enough enthusiasm about photography, to justify buying a decent D-SLR; On that first visit, I had no tripod with me , so all my shots were hand held; the lighting (a dreary December day) indicated a tripod and flash; a few of the shots were fairly good, "considering".

Then two more things "increased my enthusiasm"; (one being hard to explain); the other "thing"......I happen to have a friend in the sign business; like most sign shops, he has a great big ink jet commercial printer; (cap[able of producing banners 48" wide, by 100 feet long. (more "experimenting") the thing also makes "pretty good" photo prints; (the software running the printer cost roughly what a new D 4 goes for)

So.....I made some "big prints"; 18" X 24", 24" X 36"......(all from my hand held, cheap camera, poor lighting photos from first visit to C.C.C.

On my next visit, I took a few "samples" with me; several people looked them over; their reaction was......."Wow ! You MUST "do a show" !

People from all over the world have exhibitions of their photography, their "art", (in all of the many forms you hear of, being "art"......and many I have NEVER heard of, (and will be delighted if I never hear of them again). Now that my "enthusiasm" has been "brought back to life", I have a decent D SLR, and other necessary equipment; I have learned quite a lot about digital photography, and at some point, (and this discussion about "what does everyone DO with their pictures"), prompted me to write this, I plan to re-take all of my photos of the interior of the C.C.C., print them, cut matts and frame them, and exhibit them in this lovely old building.
( If I ever find time to do it.)

Anyone having hands-on experience and / or knowledge of framing and exhibiting photography in a gallery setting, I'm ALL EARS !

In the meantime.........if you already have a lot of great pictures, and would like for "the world" to see them.......check out the C.C.C. on Google; the place is beautiful, the people are friendly, and an AWFUL LOT of people visit the C.C.C every day, every week, and every year !

Some of the photography I saw exhibited there was pretty good, some was great, and some was............."pedestrian"? But I sense that it's not "that" hard to "show" your work there.

I download pictures to HDD and upload selected ones to Picasa for sharing with family and friends. Few of them are published on Facebook.

I enjoy printing, and printing large. I find the whole process of profiling printers and monitors to be interesting and a satisfying extension of the photography process... I used to enjoy the darkroom as well, so this is (I suppose) the 21st century equivalent. I have a pair of high quality printers and print and stretch my own canvas. I also will print and frame, but frame costs add a bit.

I really enjoy participating in PAD.

In addition I participate in the flickr award groups and I find it very interesting to see how other photographers react to my images. Some that I like a lot are unpopular whereas some that I feel ho-hum about seem to be popular. ... A nice insight.

As with others, I have to force myself to cull those "B" level images that I will never use.

I encourage folks to print and hang their work. There is nothing quite like having photos on the wall to allow you to really feel the difference between them.

Let's see .... Boxes and boxes of slides, big storage box of negatives, hard drives with digital images. A few photos get put up on the wall. Some are sent to others (from my free event photography discussed in another thread). A few get printed up big on canvas and are hanging on people's walls.

msmoto said:
@ PB PM.... yes, lotsa junk on Flickr..... my junk! I use it as a distribution point for a lot of snapshots I take for others to be able to share. 500px is a much more art form photographic image site, but seems to have the Facebook quality of a popularity contest.

Both sites have their advantages.

And, some of my photos are not published until after they have been used for the client...

Yes, in terms of junk though. There is a lot of good stuff on flickr, don't get me wrong. The issue I had with flickr was that it took a lot of work to find good photos, rather than iPhone snap shots with Instagram filters.

I like 500px because it has a modern sleek interface, rather something that looks like it was made in the late 1990's. I'm not a big fan of the voting system, but it it's there.

msmoto said:

Both sites have their advantages.

Good point, msmoto. I don't think there's a one all site out there that covers everyones needs.

@ PB PM.... yes, lotsa junk on Flickr..... my junk! I use it as a distribution point for a lot of snapshots I take for others to be able to share. 500px is a much more art form photographic image site, but seems to have the Facebook quality of a popularity contest.

Both sites have their advantages.

And, some of my photos are not published until after they have been used for the client...

Since photography is mostly recreational for me, I think it is safe for me to post this here.

My photos go one of four places primarily:
1. Hard drive, only to be seen by myself (90% of images)
2. My website (10%)
3. 4-5% 500px (stopped using Flickr last year, too much junk there)
4. To clients. Generally a small subset of the 10% for my site, + other images specifically requested.

We sell them for BIG BUCKS! LOL

@ earthsea.... my photos are on Flickr...available by clicking on any of the PAD posts I put up. PM me for more info.

elvishefer said:
About a month ago I eased up on shooting in my spare time and focused on learning to frame. I do everything by hand, from scratch, without power tools. It's been a great learning experience and rekindled my interest in woodworking and cabinetry.

Having spent hours going through commercially available frames, and seeing the quality of work of local frames shops (except the museum quality ones) I have decided to do my own framing, matting, etc. I will probably start this winter when photography tends to be slower. In the meantime I am cranking out some beautiful prints on my Epson 7900.

@earthsea - I think it is great you have chosen to share your work and you have found an inexpensive tool to help you do that. Congratulations and Bravo!

About a month ago I eased up on shooting in my spare time and focused on learning to frame. I do everything by hand, from scratch, without power tools. It's been a great learning experience and rekindled my interest in woodworking and cabinetry.

The goal is to get some of my best memories up on my walls framed and looking exactly as I envision they should. Also, no-brainer Christmas presents for friends and family. ;)

I'm still waiting to find a decent priced thin bezel large screen LED TV to mount and play my 'keepers'.

I starting keeping photo notebooks in 1953. I won a National Science Award in teaching in 1967 much based on slide shows of ecology I was doing with my biology classes. I continued to print, make photo albums, and then supersized the slide shows into slide sound shows. I have had photos in Airports, Grand Central Station as huge Duratrans prints, and have had quite a few photos at the International Photographers shows. I do avoid Facebook, and use my photos in our farm business, and in our timber frame home building business. The highest level of my work, despite having some limited edition print books, is I believe the slide sound show. I prep them on a Mac Book Pro and run them on a Samsung LED HDTV. I have specialized in nature sound tracks recorded on the photo sites. I have used some fairly exotic sound recording systems. Some of my work is owned by Universities. I do several public slide sound shows each year. Some of them I receive an honorarium for. There I use a Canon fairly high end projector and the images are projecting on a big screen. I always bring my own sound system, etc.

I use flickr, I sometimes post of facebook, I have an 8x10 album I put pictures in at home and I have prints around our house and now my in laws houses as well.

If I ever got my lazy butt going I thought about making a page on shutterfly. I haven't looked around at all the services though. Shutterfly seems easy and for $200 a year you get unlimited storage, discounted print prices and there aren't any additional fees. You can set prices for the prints...I think it would compliment a physical (craft show, gallery, store) presence nicely because you wouldn't have to keep the inventory of all the prints in all the sizes and people could order them online. Or if I was really ambitious having online ordering wherever I was with internet and stuff setup that people could use to order on the spot (might keep people from second guessing whether to order or not when they get home).

I post them to Flickr for the players and familes to copy (i shoot mostly HS sports). I store them on an external drive. I plan to add a new external drive every year or so and make backups of the images.

I'm not certain how long I plan to keep all these sports shots on my drive(s) since they are posted on Flickr. I save them for now in case someone wanted a large print of something I shot and having the RAW file would allow me room to tweak the image for them, if needed.

As everyone else has mentioned; print and frame your favorites. Photo books are even better because they don't take up as much space. Not to mention if you get into the "buisness" you can showcase your ability to clients.

I'll agree with spraynpray on the delete key. I keep very, very few of what I consider snapshots now-a-days. If I have more than one portrait of a person and there's only 1 that stands out, that's the one I keep and backup on another drive. Landscape shots are the same. If there's no artistic flare or what I was expecting to capture, I get rid of it.

I'm also considering making photo books of all of the larger shoots like vacations and such.

I'll agree with spraynpray on the delete key. I keep very, very few of what I consider snapshots now-a-days. If I have more than one portrait of a person and there's only 1 that stands out, that's the one I keep and backup on another drive. Landscape shots are the same. If there's no artistic flare or what I was expecting to capture, I get rid of it.

I'm also considering making photo books of all of the larger shoots like vacations and such.

@ Postman: I am envious of you visiting NZ! With regard to your files - if it is a disk drive you are keeping them on, they aren't safe. At least put them on some flash drives and keep them in various locations. HDD's need to be run frequently or you risk losing them all when you do go to open them, and speaking as one who lost his world in a fire, PC's disappear completely in a fire so do't forget off-site locations too.

In answer to the OP: In spite of all the warnings here and from other places, I tend to be very ruthless with the delete key. Not sharp enough? Delete. Scene that didn't finish up as good as I thought it would? Delete. Portraits that don't flatter? Delete. I fact, all pictures that aren't in any way good enough or the best I could do at the time - delete.

Being a beginner I have all my RAW files from a recent 6 month stint in NZ stored on a drive so that come the day when my post skills exceed that they're currently at, I'll dig into them again.

I had so many shots from NZ I actually printed a book with my favourites in there, just over 100 shots, in addition to 6 I printed large for various walls around the house.

If it wasn't for NZ I probably still wouldn't have a camera better than that within my phone.

donaldejose,
One of the easiest and most simple ways to have your own web page in my opinion has to be with someone like http://www.smugmug.com
They will provide your domain name and templates for an annual fee and their team are there to help with any questions. They also provide a service where they take orders for your photos and it all works from 'Publish Services' in Lightroom if you have it. As I said above, I went with 'The Turning Gate' which I found not the most user friendly system to set up but does give me the freedom with its many options to design my own front page and have my say. I had to buy my own domain name separately which was a one off cost of $35 and I pay my service provider (where I store my website) $80/year for any amount of space I want.
It does provide another extension to my hobby and is the easiest way to show anyone anywhere what I do. Its also a lot of fun.
I endorse this great idea... @Admin, it would be nice for all us non-commercial folk if NR would let us list our personal web pages! I'm love to look through Msmoto's photos!

I very much like the idea of a personal domain name and a Gallery website.

Perhaps this thread can be expanded so some comments about how to register a domain name, what software you can purchase to set up a Gallery, what software allows orders through Paypal payments, etc. Is is possible for one of us to create our own website, post photos (of things - for example, school sports or performances so other parents can download photos of their kids, etc), sell photos, take orders for prints, etc.

About 4 years ago, with the encouragement of a friend who had seen my work, I started posting a "Picture of the Day" on my Facebook wall (this was long before I'd discovered NRF so I wasn't knocking our PAD off). It was my first foray into publicly displaying my shots, and I figured if anyone was going to be encouraging it was my 500 or so friends and family.

I'm now have a "gallery" of about 700 images. Every day I get 5-10 comments. Many facebook connections I run into after not having seen them in a while preface conversations by mentioning how much they enjoy seeing my pictures every morning. It's been a nice way to help stay in touch with people and it's a good gauge of what people like. Very often I find that something I was relatively ambivalent toward elicits a lot of responses. Granted, Facebook butchers images to a certain degree, but overall it's been fun. Very likely nothing will ever come of it but it's been fun.

My photo's end up on my wall, website and our photo club has a monthly competition. But soon some may even be published for free of course.

@Admin, it would be nice for all us non-commercial folk if NR would let us list our personal web pages! I'm love to look through Msmoto's photos!