A pretty interesting thread, which I have tried to keep up with, both
listwise and in my own thinking about the year past and the year ahead.
For starters, I'm still a self-described semi-pro, in that
photography is not my principal vehicle to a living. I have an job
that doesn't pay a lot of money, but does provide health benefits.
Photography supplements that to greater and lesser degrees.
When I finally succumbed again to the need to click shutter, roughly
five years ago, my business plan, such as it was, amounted to: "Take
Pretty Pictures, Sell Them to Tourists." Toward that end I started
trading restored vintage fountain pens for OM equipment, as I already
had commandeered my son's OM-2n. A reasonable kit emerged, and I went
to work with lots of Velvia. I didn't make any money that first year,
but the horse trading meant I didn't actually squander any family
resources on the craft, either.
To make a long boring story shorter but still boring, after that
first year, income has roughly doubled each year. It now has grown to
the point where I'm going to have to declare a profit, regardless of
how creative my accounting gets. And this after buying an Epson 4800
this past spring. Now, a Mac Pro, though next year's revenues are
actually going to pay for that. (He said, hopefully.)
The business plan has not changed. I still strive to take pretty
pictures and sell them to tourists. Here, the term tourist actually
stands in for "people from away." That's my target audience. I have
managed to veer off the chosen path from time to time and sell
pictures to locals, too. And I've come up with a few commissions as
well.
The plan for this coming year is to expand the venues where people
from away can find my stuff. I also have a few emerging plans to try
to penetrate the art market, which I pretty much ignore because I
just can't talk to those people. <g> At one gallery where I sold
beaucoup images last year, a board member tried to sneak in a clause
in the bylaws recently that would require every print to be numbered
in a limited edition. This was aimed directly at me. I think they're
jealous because for whatever reason this year they couldn't keep my
stuff on the walls. The gallery director quashed the move by pointing
out that no one buys my prints thinking they're getting something
exclusive. I'm very honest. "I'll print as many as I can sell," I
say. But, that said, I'm not entirely sure I'll keep doing that with
all images for the rest of time. But more on that later. For the
moment. Nothing is numbered or limited. If that means a bunch of
elevated-nostril types will look down their noses at my stuff, well,
like we used to say in the Army, "F@&K 'em _and_ the white horses
they rode in on!"
I cannot speak for what draws people to certain images. Ken talked
about his best seller being an image he thought was rather ho-hum.
I've got a couple of those. It's not that I don't like them, or think
they're bad, they just don't get me buzzed. But they're buzzing more
than a few folks. One of them represents about 10 percent of my
income for the past three years. I've also got a few images that buzz
me righteously, but which don't sell. And then the best seller I had
this year was out on the walls and in the bins last year and I
couldn't give them away.
Go figure. I shoot 'em, I print 'em, I hang 'em on the walls and get
out of the way.
FWIW,
--Bob
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