One of the greatest parts of being a photographer is decorating my surroundings with artwork. I must admit, I’ve been rather lax at putting much up on the barren walls of our new house. Since it’s been a year and a half, I decided it’s time I should do something about that. This weekend, I started with two walls and some existing pictures and started drilling and measuring.

I found a number of “empty” smaller picture frames that would be perfect for our stairway walls. I’m finding that printmaking and picture display are almost an art themselves. I’ve been using the traditional wood frame up on most of our walls, but I’m intrigued by new display ideas.

Garrett Dorsett of Maniacal Rage posted some flickr pics from an idea he had. He’s using a metal strip and some magnetic poetry words to tie in the words with his art. Very creative, indeed. I like this concept, but I think I want something a little more “finished looking”.

Lenswork Magazine publishes a great audioblog, and they had a post about using “display rails”. The blog is about ready to bump into their archive so collect it quickly! They use a rail/shelf system and then display matted pictures. This allows a more finished look and quickly and easily changeable.

I did a little searching and found some display rail alternatives. Some had a corkboard strip that you could tack into. I have tried to take all these ideas and come up with something on my own. My current thought is to use a metal strip similar to Garrett’s design and possibly matte prints and stick them to the back with magnetic strips.

Knowing me, I’ll probably wait some local art store to go out of business and stock up. How boring. How do you share your pictures (offline).