From Planning to putting up a Photography Exhibition through MobileGIRI - Deciding on Theme, Working on strong story, Selecting/Making Photographs, Printing, Framing, Artwork sizing/layout and putting up on walls etc

 This exciting journey started in October when I committed for second Photography Exhibition in Delhi. And I was well prepared for the fact that it will need lot of planning and work at my end, definitely more than what I had put in my first show.

This was again a group exhibition and Ravi Dhingra grouped us together. We had few meetings, when we decided for the theme - FAITH. Our meetings were always full of enthusiasm. On very first meeting, everyone had brilliant ideas about defining FAITH and most of us wanted to work as per our own beliefs. Some of us wanted to question the religious FAITH, some related FAITH to our daily life - the way we mingle with people around us and how that changes over a period of time or with age. It was the first challenge to zero down on a strong sub-theme around FAITH.

 It took lot of time for me to define a theme for me. After consulting many friends and masters in the field, I decided on a sub-theme which was not around Religious Faith. Here I would want to knowledge folks who helped me to good decision - Vibha Malhotra, Poonam Ohri, Mohit Gupta, Shilpi Choudhuri, Ravi Dhingra, Dinesh Khanna & Sarika Dhandhona. I started shooting of my own theme and almost every weekend till january went into that. In parallel I had another theme - 'The Question of FAITH'. I worked on both the themes in parallel. 'The Question of FAITH' is something I always loved clicking and have been making this series for last four years. Since I couldn't complete my planned series, I decided to exhibit 'The Question of FAITH'.

Under 'The Question of FAITH' , I had a good collection of visual telling strong stories. Then next big challenege was to decide on final set of photographs which make a strong story around your theme. This was one of the most difficult part. It's a hard call to leave your favorite shots when they make the whole story weak. Most of the times we try to convince our mentors to include some of the favorite shots, but that's not the right way to go about it. I continuously took feedback from Dinesh Khanna, Ravi Dhingra and Anamitra. Many of other friends from Photography circles shared their opinions as well. It's not that feedback helps but at times, you get some amazing perspectives. Sometimes, too many opinions confuse you more.

It's difficult to express those experiences in words. It's fun to deal with all those challenges. Exhibiting a series of Photographs is altogether a different thing. At times, it becomes a major factor that the artworks should be sell-able which may dilute the quality of work. Gradually we learn to be focused and decide on path - Exhibition for sale or to showcase your work in best way. Both the approaches are fine unless we try mix them up while doing decision making.

 After freezing the photographs, it's time to decide on the way all of them would be shown in gallery. From that, we decide for kind of printing to be done, sizing etc. Print medium, paper/canvas quality, printer options etc. next thing is to get them framed, which is again a big call by looking at factors like kind of photographs being shown, other work all around etc.

It was a great experience to see photographs being printed on Fine-Art paper and coming out gracfully out of a huge printer. Bigger the print, more beautiful the photograph looks. But again, it's important to decide practical sizes to be showcased. After printing and Framing it's time to put up the work in gallery as per plan. 

Putting up artworks on walls and having appropriate lighting is again an important aspect which can't be explained in words.

It was fun to work with enthusiastic group of Photographers & Mentors. Ravi Dhingra and Rohit Kumar were always there to help & guide us through whole process. In fact, without them I couldn't have imagines such a great show.

Apart from preparing artworks, there are many things to be planned for an exhibition. Inauguration planning, Stationary, posters, invitations etc. We could get some sponsors for inauguration and space. Tamron sponsorship took care of gallery charges and Kingfisher sponsored beer for inauguration. Other things were managed by our group only.

Aakriti helped us in big way when it comes to PR of 'FAITHfully Yours?' and it was phenomenal. 

It's really difficult for me to share all experiences of the exhibition in one post. So in case you are interested in more details, feel free to drop an email at vj@travellingcamera.com so that we can fix-up time for phone-call.