Finding bamboo prints was such a huge discovery when deciding what to put on the studio walls.
I recently posted about setting up our Baltimore photography studio. The actual act of decorating was easy once I figured out how I wanted to use the space and the feeling I wanted it to evoke. After I got rolling, I knew exactly how I wanted it to look, but the last thing to go up were all of the prints from artists we loved. It was easy to find a place for a whale, some science charts, and a giant map. It all came together so easily when I was looking at others’ finished art.
This is when I realized I had no idea what prints of *mine* to hang on the walls. At all.
Selecting the photos came with it’s own anxiety, but it wasn’t just picking the photos themselves. I realized I needed to decide what *kind* of prints I would put on my walls. I didn’t want framed prints; they didn’t feel like something I would put in my own home. I tend to like wooden boxes, old postcards pinned to my walls, I like matte paper and a mix of modern furniture, raw wood. Gallery wraps failed to get me excited, too, when it came right down to it. Then I saw matte prints, mounted on wood and I knew in an instant. It was so eye opening to see what I would choose to decorate my own space because now I have these amazing bamboo prints to offer to clients.
Putting Print Size in Perspective
As soon as we laid out the space we wanted to cover and got the prints up, I realized an 11×14 didn’t belong on the wall as a centerpiece; that an 8×10 or 8×12 is better suited on a shelf (pictured below!) than on a wall, but it’s not something I had seen in a space so it hadn’t occurred to me. My absolute favorite size for these prints is the 20×30 as a centerpiece (or a 20×30 coupled with 16×24 11×14 and an 8×12 as a cluster, for decorating a more empty wall space). I’m so happy to find something I get to offer my clients that I also want to fill my own home with; I even have a 20×30 bamboo print of one of my travel photos hung above my dresser in our bedroom and it fills the small sliver of wall perfectly with the same blues and greens I use in a lot of my decorating.
Photos belong in print, on walls, shelves and printed in books and these wood mounted prints are one more way to get photos off a computer and back into your life.
