Ken Knoll Photography

For some strange reason, it must have slipped my attention that I never really wrote my own post about that photo wall which hangs in my place. Actually, there is a german post on supermagnete.de, the magnificent online shop that provides me with the strong magnets needed for my wall, which describes the project quite accurately. However, since I received some comments (and quite a significant share of traffic based on that article), I felt I should elaborate on the topic for the international audience, as well.

Why I did it
Well, as it is the case for many photographers, most of my pictures eventually tended to land somewhere on my harddisk, only to view them occasionally – which really is not what they deserved. Being on a budget, my idea was to come up with something that can be easily removed, replaced, redesigned, whenever I would feel the need to. So buying a frame and putting a nail into the wall for every single picture was not an option.

How did I do it?
The idea is quite simple: I glued the pictures on nice, white cardboard (at first, I used spray glue, which, unless used absolutely perfectly and carefully, comes off sooner than you can say “Wow, that looks nice”). Also, the white cardboard gives a great passepartout look and it contrasts the dark background – but more on that later. On the backside, I applied one of the aforementioned magnets (which are really, really strong) with some super glue and put a little piece of adhesive band over them to increase friction. I also put some cardboard spacers on the back side to have the pictures stand off the wall about half a centimeter. It adds a nice, three-dimensional look to it.

The wall
The wall itself is the part where the being-on-a-budget really comes into play. Since the magnets best stick to metal, but I was not going to buy huge amounts of sheet metal, magnet paint seemed to be the only option. Basically, it’s just paint, with iron powder in it. Darn expensive stuff. So I just mixed my own, in an about 1:1 mixture of primer and iron powder, which I found at MG Powders. After about 3 layers of paint, the magnets held onto the wall really well. One final layer of dark grey to create some contrast (after all, most photo websites are dark for a reason), and it was done. And I have to say: I love it – I just added my neon series to the “exhibit” – easy as pie.