Digital BW, The Print

Hi,
sometime ago I started a list called The Business of Art Photography, with the idea of sharing ideas about how to go about turning your passion for photographic print making into a business.

It's been totally unused in the last year.

If anyone wants to contribute and get the list functioning as I hoped it would when I started it, please join up and post some messages.

It would be interesting to hear what sorts of images are selling in galleries and what sorts of things can be done to find buyers for an art form that, at least in my country, there is little interest from the buying public.

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/business-of-art-photography/

thanks,
Richard

My last post to the list:

Hi,
gosh, we got a couple of pointless emails - which reminded me that I started this discussion group that never gets used.

Where I'm at ... I'm in a local gallery - since December I think it was. There is one wall of smaller BW framed prints of which seven are mine and three walls of garish colour prints on canvas. Guess which stuff's selling - not the BW!

It's a bit depressing that people want to buy garish, often post-card scenes that will be chucked in the rubbish when they get bored with them, but timless BW work of a high standard is ignored. Photography's been around a long time, but in New Zealand where I live, it's almost impossible to sell it. People want paintings.

I started a series on the backroads around where I live (in the country) - this is from my artist's statement:

Over the spring I became interested in photographing the backroads: in local galleries are an abundance of images (photographic or not) of the places that holiday makers flock to  but there are many places of visual interest and of future historic relevance that are often overlooked.

So I thought it would be interesting to investigate such places and to try to find interesting images in these often overlooked backroads which are in fact not only what the countryside is made of, but which are going to change with time. I look for scenes that are not always immediately familiar, but which are nevertheless very 'New Zealand'

This project, currently entitled \ufffdBackroads of Warkworth\ufffd is an effort to record the countryside that we all pass through on the way to the other places that are so often painted and photographed.

I'm stitching together four to six frames for high resolution images (mostly in colour this time), printed on rag paper.

My idea was to present to the public some different images from what is usually on offer, over the summer season. But the other gallery I've used in the past doesn't want to sell framed photography because it doesn't sell ... so they are exhibited unframed in the print rack behind mylar. 

I think that images have to be treated on their merits, regardless of how they are produced - with a brush or an inkjet nozzle. This backroads series is different from anything else I've seen locally - so I hope it starts to sell so I can put some framed work on the gallery's walls.

And I put some older framed BW work in a bookshop(!) today - it sells a lot of art books so hopefully some of the clientele will be interested.

So now the back of the sofa is empty instead of being full of pictures stacked against the wall.

I have some other ideas too about a future exhibition of the backroads stuff, but I've got to approach the venue first.

I popped in to a painter friend's place today with the pictures for the bookshop and got told a lesson in professionalism. My frame sealing was sloppy - unnecessary and unforgivable: if you're buying something you want it to be perfect and done as well as humanly possible. Anything else is sloppiness and doesn't deserve to be purchased.

That's my news - I'd be interested to hear what other people are doing to try and make a go of their art photography.

Happy new year to you all,
Richard 
--
http://smallfield.vze.com
http://photos.smallfield.vze.com (Photos web site)
http://warkworth.vze.com/ (Warkworth photo essay)
http://picasaweb.google.com/rsmallfield/ (Recent work) 

   "Genius is one percent inspiration and ninety nine percent perspiration."
   --Thomas Edison

>...
> sometime ago I started a list called The Business of Art Photography, ...
> 
> It's been totally unused in the last year.

Keep it as a thread here relating to B&W and it'll probably do better.  If
it's B&W photography that is at issue, it seems reasonably on topic.


> It would be interesting to hear what sorts of images are selling in
> galleries 

Lately my 22 x 28 prints have done best. 

On a per-hour return basis, I like my 11 x 14, matted to 16 x 20,
clearbags.com product.


> and what sorts of things can be done to find buyers ...

Good work is just a start.

With respect to the gallery I'm in, I relate to the real estate industry
saying that the most important three elements are location, location and
location.

Then again, there is the issue of visibility on the internet.  Google seems
to have the best system for reducing search costs, so being visible to that
search system is probably up near the top now.  Here, I think links,
activity and lots of other factors come into play.  I suspect the Google
formula is like the old Coca Cola formula (or IRS software to find tax
evaders).

Paul
www.PaulRoark.com 

(For Gallery Los Olivos, see
 http://www.wineriesofsantabarbara.com/ArtistsPage.htm

(For Golden Trout High Sierra B&W Workshop, see: 
 http://home1.gte.net/res0a2zt/GTthumbnails.html )