Displaying Photography Like Christie

Christie from Calgary sent me the nicest email along with photos of my work hanging in her home and she’s agreed to let me share them with you. Thanks Christie!

The 8×10 beach photographs (shown above) are displayed in large square brushed silver frames from Crate and Barrel measuring 14.75 x 14.75 inches and are a nice 1.38 inches deep – don’t you just love deep frames? Plus they come with a pre-cut 8×10 off-white mat so all she needed to do was insert the landscape and hang. Easy as pie, huh?

Christie also has two winter tree photographs in her living room, don’t you just love the presentation? Symmetry makes my heart flutter… I’m totally digging the snowy pinecone, it works perfectly with the colour palette and I love the idea of bringing the outdoors in, especially in the winter months. As for the framing, Christie writes:

The bright white frames are from Chapters, while the mats are a more subdued neutral white and they both contrast nicely with the photo content. Working on a very clean, flat work surface – measure, measure, measure! I used acid free linen hanging tape just at the top of the photo to hang it within the frame. I used equal borders on the top and sides, and a slightly weighted border at the bottom. The print size allowed ample room to accomplish this within the mat window, and allowed comfortable spacing to display the signature.

The frames themselves are one inch wide, so the two are hung about 1 1/4 inches apart. As the two now make a grouping, I hung them on the wall so that the centre of the grouping (which includes the space between the frames) is 60″ off the floor. Although some art hanging guidelines offer 57″ as a rule of thumb, the 60″ measure (as suggested by Canadian House and Home) looks right in this context and it’s the one I most often use. It’s only a guideline though, and much depends on the wall height, any furniture beneath or beside the work which can make up a composition, and whether people will be sitting or standing when viewing it. Context is more important than numbers.

As for actually hanging them on the wall in the right place – math! Oh, the math! Or trial and error.

What have you hung on your walls recently? And where did you get your frames from? Are you doing it yourself or having a framer take care of it for you?