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Introduction

This is the third and final segment of the St. Louis Art Fair Image workshop and mock jury. The first post covered the basics of setting up the monitor and camera, and the second post covered the jury slides. This last section covers the booth image, what to look for in it, and how to best photograph it.

I’m going to repeat myself from the last post, “You can’t sell work at the fair if you can’t get in the fair, so invest time and effort in getting the jury images to look their best.” The same thing applies for the booth shot J

The Booth Image

The key issues are simple; make it look as professional as possible, keep it as simple as possible, keep it clean, make it look elegant, keep out the frou-frou like potted plants and lamp stands, and use high quality photography. In the current environment of judging, the booth slide is frequently used as a tie-breaker. Don’t discount the booth slide as an afterthought; it is a significant piece of the equation to being accepted.

What and how you display at a show is one thing, the booth image is another. Understand that it is a sort of beauty contest that proves you know how to organize a reasonably polished display and that it clues the organizer to what else you have. Having said that, you don’t need to show everything you have ever made or have on hand. Keep it spare and clean. Nothing above the sight lines of the tops of your display panels, no art work cropped at the front of the booth, and all three walls should be visible in the image.

In effect you are staging your booth the same as a house for sale, except you’re selling your booth to the jurors. You don’t want the booth cluttered like a flea market stall, so take out the excess inventory. Don’t have a crowded booth, do have room to move and breathe. You want each piece to be visible without it being eclipsed by another piece of work. Visually, this diminishes the value of the semi-hidden piece.

 If you have an artist statement, that can come out for the booth image and some of the text will go into the application anyway. Otherwise the artist statement sticks out like a sore thumb with the bright whiteness of it and is a visual distraction. Keep out any studio signage or names, and no people should be in the booth.

While you can and should have more work than your jury images, keep the work unified by a commonality of strong style or content. Extraneous work different from the juried body of work will dilute the impact of your jury images and send up a warning flag. Keep it similar, keep it unified, keep it strong. A weak filler piece will just pull down the impact of the booth image.

Use an appropriate booth shot for the show. If they have only 10 feet spaces, don’t show a 15 foot wide booth. Better to use the right tent, but there are always moments where you have to improvise.

Physical arrangement of the booth is important, and use of space is an issue. The jurors expect to see a booth space that is comfortable and safe to move about in. One of the women present said she didn’t like to go into a booth where things in there were touching her butt. Leave the booth as open as possible with nothing sticking out that could get snagged on a patron, child, or a small furry animal and come falling down.

Photographing the booth

Place your camera on a tripod with the lens set to the midway point between the ground and the top of the display panels; typically about 42 inches. This well help avoid keystoning of the sides of the booth. As you place or hang your work, check to see what it looks like to the camera, which should be set to about a 28mm focal length equivalent (18mm on most dSLRs). If the frames or pieces look awkward through the lens, they’ll look awkward to the judges. Reposition things until there is space around everything with no pedestals overlapping each other. Rugs are nice, but don’t use a patterned rug as that is too distracting. Keep it a single color, and something that matches or is a complementary color to your panels. For those using rubber mats for flooring, I’ve noticed artists flipping them upside down and using the gray side instead of the multicolored top sides

Apply your knowledge of interior decoration, graphic design, or whatever to arrange work. As an example two large prints of dissimilar tone, one bright and the other dark, are not a good choice for hanging adjacent to each other. Your eye naturally goes to the brightest area and the darker image suffers by comparison, and is diminished in perceived quality and value.

No matter how desperate you get, don’t use a precanned computer generated booth shape. They don’t look natural and no one is fooled by it. It looks cheesy and amateurish. Borrow someone’s tent if you have to, but use a real one and not a CGI hope and a prayer.

Fill the interior walls with display panels of some sort, just don’t use plastic or wood lattice panels. Metal grid panels will do in a pinch, although they are good for fabric artists if they take the time to use them properly and make their booth look like a retail boutique. The best choices for 2D artists are carpeted panels.

Hide any doorway leading out of your booth on the side or rear. Preferably just fill the back wall with panels and hang work across all the panels. If you choose to have a rear door during a show, that’s fine also, but for the sake of staging the booth, close it off and make it look much better.

You can do the booth shot at a show but it’s not recommended as it’s seldom an optimal arrangement and usually too cluttered with chairs, coolers, and too much work. Do it in your driveway or back yard. The best of all possibilities is to shoot it at night with a bunch of trouble lamps clamped up in the ceiling out of sight. This eliminates sun streaks and hot spots, and a screaming white-hot blown out canopy that blinds the juror’s eyes. It really is painful to look at these things, so don’t tick off the judges with bad exposures.

The other way is to shoot the booth during the day. Set the booth up so the sun is directly overhead or behind the booth. Use an extra tarp to block the rear panel or the top of the booth if the sun is too strong. If there is a strong light coming in that is creating shadows, use the camera flash to fill in the shadows.

The final step is to crop the booth slide and straighten the legs if they are bowed or bent. This is done in Photoshop using the Perspective Crop tool. Crop the image at the front edge of the legs side to side, and from the bottom of the valance of the top to just below the bottom of your display panels. Just remember crop close and tight, but don’t crop any artwork. Back out further if that happens, but the art work should not be sticking out of the booth anyway.

There are more things that an artist should know, but this is more than long enough already. Don’t be afraid to ask questions in the forums, as that’s what they’re there for.

Good luck and start working on those jury and booth shots. Keep in mind that the perfect set of jury and booth images are a moving target that changes trajectory all the time.

If someone wants to copy these three posts for printing as a single Word document, the article is in a slightly longer and unedited version with more details and explanations here.

Once again thanks go out to Larry Berman and Cultural Festivals of  St. Louis for putting on the workshops.