Why You Should Create a Photo Inspiration Corkboard

36x48 inch corkboard.

Like any project around the house, I thought about doing this almost a year ago and finally put it up in my office last month.  It turned out so well that I wanted to share it with you all.

This is a 36×48 inch natural corkboard, purchased at the Container Store with silver tacks.  It took some time to plan out the sizes and make the prints, but it was a fairly simple project.  To get a better sense of the size, the print on the top left is 8×12 inches.  I found that instead of planning out the entire thing, it was easier to fill up a third of it with 8×12 prints and then plan how to fill in the rest of the space.

The best thing is that friends love it, clients love it, and most importantly, my wife loves it.  It’s helped show off my work in an interesting way that engages people and it shows off the prints without any glass in front to show visitors the true quality of the prints and paper.

Also, framing can get expensive, and especially for areas like your office, your studio, or whenever you do your photo work, you will undoubtedly get the urge to change the photos on your walls constantly.  Framing makes that tough to do, as I have learned the hard way.  With a board like this, all you have to do is print and replace.

It is a fantastic way to work on a long term project of images that you can play with and change over time to see how the images work with each other.  I chose to organize mine around a specific set of my street photography and even after a month I plan on changing it and adding to it.  I am eventually going to add two more board and put painting lights above them all.

There are also many other ways to do this.  After I posted about the board on my blog, an Australian reader named Kristen sent me a photo of a version she had created.

Here’s what she said:

“I bought three, 40 inch by 20 inch canvases.  Then, I nailed the canvas frames together to make a single 40 inch by 60 inch canvas.  Over the top of that, I attached mat black material and put a hanging string along the back of the frame.

I used hot glue to stick 4 velcro bits for each photo on the black material, then I put the other side of the 4 velcros bits on the back of each photo.  Every 6 months or so I take down the 24 photos and I can put up new photos or re show old photos, because they all attach via velcro – so I can take down and put up photos to suit.”

There are so many ways to do something like this.  So get started!  And if you’ve done something similar, please share it with us in the comments!

By James Maher

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