Self-Appointed Artist Residencies for Photographers

Have a camera? Start a residency!

A camera and an idea is all you need

When I first wrote about being the unofficial artist in residence of a place (or thing, or idea), many of you wrote to me and said that you’d like to do that with photographs. It makes sense—we all have a camera on us these days, making it a very democratic medium.

Here is a fantastic example of something like an unofficial artist residency—although she did not call it that—courtesy of

Afternoon Delight

, which you can read right here. The story is that this photographer, Deanna Dikeman, started a project where she took a picture of her parents waving good-bye to her every time she left their house after a visit. (I KNOW! I’m not crying, you’re crying)

As you can imagine, these seemingly casual snapshots of two smiling elderly people waving good-bye in front of their modest Iowa house might not seem like much individually. But over the years—WOW. Do they ever pack an emotional punch.

Anyway, go look at those pictures and think about how ANYTHING—even a moment of leave-taking after an ordinary family visit—can become your own personal artist-in-residence.

But now what?

Is it enough to take the pictures, or should you show them to someone? Hold an exhibit? Make a book? In other words, should your artist residency culminate in some sort of event, or result in some finished project, beyond the files living on your phone?

Let’s say you decide to be the unofficial artist in residence of your neighborhood’s telephone pole flyers. As I look through my camera roll, it appears that I’ve been doing this for a while.

So what do you do with all those pictures? Here are some ideas.

A place like Shutterfly would be happy to make a photo book for you. Or a calendar. Imagine turning your artist residency into a super weird calendar and mailing one to all your friends at the holidays! I think people would be delighted and puzzled to get my telephone pole flyer calendar (and I am actually now seriously considering doing this)

Moo.com can put your photos onto stickers or cards and the great thing is that every sticker or card can be a different image. (I use these for business cards and have a different one of my book covers printed on every card, and I also have a set with different paintings on every card). What you do with those stickers or cards is up to you, but I’m sure you already have ideas.

Nations Photo Lab is a great place to have photos printed, just like the photos you used to pick up at the drugstore after your vacation. I’ve used them myself and they’re excellent. Why not have real photographs made and put on a show? They don’t necessarily have to be in fancy frames. String them up on clotheslines in your yard! Have a rotating exhibit on your fridge!

Or maybe hold a party and project your images on the wall throughout the evening? Just put them in a slide show and let them run.

Or just hold a neighborhood show in your driveway…

My parents used to have a neighbor, Chris, who was a borderline hoarder. On trash day, she’d go up and down the street, just taking a peek to see if anyone had thrown away anything good. This disturbed my mother so much that she would often deliberately put something “good” on top of the trash, carefully wrapped, for Chris to find, in the hopes that she’d be so delighted that she wouldn’t dig further.

Chris was not homeless and was not poorly looked-after. She had her own house down the street. But she was…you know…on the odder side of odd.

My dad was a photographer and did a lot of printing in his home darkroom. Printing your own photographs means throwing a lot of photographs away. Anything that’s slightly under or over-exposed goes in the trash.

I’m sure you can see where this is going. One day, Dad went for a walk and stopped short in front of Chris’ house. She’d dug all of his rejected photographs out of the trash and plastered them across the inoperable van that sat in her driveway.

It was AWESOME. It was a really stunning way to display a bunch of beautiful, if slightly imperfect, black-and-white photographs. The exhibit stayed up for several weeks. When I came into town, he walked me down there to show it to me, with great pride.

So I dunno…do a show in your yard? On your garage door? On the back of your van?

Are you a photographer? Do you have some ideas about this?

If you’re a photographer, and you’ve ever come up with a clever way to share your work or show off a project, please tell us about it!

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Hey, have you ever thought about writing a book?

Maybe you have an idea for a book but you don’t know how to take the first step? Maybe you made a start a while back and aren’t sure how to pick it up again? Maybe so many ideas are swirling around in your head and you don’t even know how to organize them?

It’s about to be January, when people tend to make a resolution to finally do that dream project they’ve been thinking about forever. In that spirit, I’m taking questions about how to get started writing! I’ve written fourteen books, and started several more that never made it across the finish line. Ask me anything!

You can post your questions in the comments, or just hit reply to this email and ask me. I’ll answer them in a week or two.

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Supporters are drawing in the park

I was supposed to be drawing winter scenes sent in by some of you, but then we had a rare sunny day in December and I raced outside to draw in the park instead. The winter scenes can wait—winter is long.

For just a few dollars a month, you can join a group of people who are practicing some basic drawing and painting skills, sometimes with a video of me drawing a scene like this, and sometimes with a step-by-step video in the studio. You also get access to over 60 tutorials in the archive. Whatever you want to learn is probably already here or coming soon!

And in January, we’ll be doing a live Zoom together and sharing what we’ve been working on in 2024 by flipping through our sketchbooks together.

It’s a fun group! Join us!

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The bit at the end

Order signed copies of my new book, The Tree Collectors, from Broadway Books here in Portland.

Come find me on Instagram, or see paintings for sale- Right here

Order signed copies of some of my books from my husband’s bookstore, or order my books and many books I love at Bookshop.org

Take one of my online writing or art classes here

Leave a comment! I love to hear from you!