Social Media Cannot and Will Not Do Your Work Justice

Ask yourself a pretty simple question: how hard do you work? If your honest answer is that you work pretty darn hard then it's important to come to grips with the idea that social media will never be able to showcase that hard work; you need to be printing your images. 

Now I'm not saying that social media doesn't have a place and this isn't another article that's here to knock down Instagram and Facebook. With that said, I firmly believe that regardless of what you shoot (be it portraits, landscapes, documentary, still life, food, commercial work, or anything else you can think of) you owe it to yourself to be printing your work in some form or another. The good news is that you get to decide the medium that you you feel best represents your work in the tangible form. Be it magazines, wall prints, coffee table books, or folio collections, the choice is yours.

You're an artist and that means that the physical presentation of your work is always up to you. Explore different mediums and formats, try and test different types of prints. There isn't a right or wrong answer, there is only the format that you feel best speaks to your vision for your work. Furthermore, the exploration of different print mediums can help you to better understand your own work. The feeling that comes from taking our work from screen to print is an incredible one. Sharing an image on social media can't hold a candle to the feeling of seeing work in print. I remind myself constantly that we work harder than our phone screens or computer monitors will ever be able to convey.

Over the coming weeks and months, I'd like to explore and document various mediums and options with an emphasis on paper selection and how this seemingly simple choice can so drastically impact the presentation of our work. Matte or glossy, textured or smooth? These are only the most basic questions and deeper than these though I'd like to further explore how I view my own work and why I feel so strongly about the importance of bringing work off of the screen. I hope that you'll join me in this journey into the world of print and presentation.