I know some of you have taken some amazing shots. Have you ever though about selling prints? Personally, I think some of the shots I have taken are decent...but friends of mine have been telling me I should try and sell prints and what not. 1st of all, how would you go about doing that. and 2nd I don't even know if anyone would even consider purchasing any of my photos....opinions?

 

I have considered it. But I think at this point there is only one specific venue where I have a chance: covering amateur racing events. It could be SCCA, open track sessions, SOLO I/II, whatever. The fact is, there are drivers out there, and they want to see themselves racing at the track. The pictures don't even have to be stellar - they just want to see themselves, driving their car. A friend of mine already got into this and has a site up on one of the popular photo-selling sites... the name escapes me. And she has had sales, covering amateur events. There's my

 

We have a yearly Art show in my city and anyone can buy a booth rather cheaply. Other than that I've seen prints for sale in restaurants and in hallways of office buildings. Talk to a gallery and show them what you got and see if they would put up a few and get any feedback with them.

 

My friend suggested a booth at the local art show. Not sure if its even worth my time though. Personally I dont think people would buy it but numerous people have told me otherwise.

 

IMO this is a deceptively broad topic. First and formost, get your legal knowledge and desired level of copyright protection squared away. After that, I think alot of the decisions depend on what your motivation is for selling prints. You probably wouldn't make the same sorts of choices if you're selling prints as a "utilitarian service" like Srika mentions versus if you're selling prints as art.

There are a dozen or more things that I can think of that would influence how you would handle selling prints. The important one that I'll mention now is don't sell yourself short! It's easy to fall into the trap of thinking "I'm just a hobbyist, my stuff should be cheap." A quality print of a quality image is worth more than a few $'s regardless of who took the image.

If it's a quality piece of work and you sell it cheaply because you feel guilty about charging more, then you're doing a disservice to the whole market.

 

those are good points. thanks for your input. How much would a quality image cost from an amature, In your opinion??

Personally, I think this is one of my best. I printed it at 12 x 18 and have it hanging in my house. And I just had it reprinted for a friend who wanted it.

 

Speaking of legal stuff, could we get a mod to move the photo legalities thread from last week into our new hangout? There was good stuff in there.

Thanks!

https://acurazine.com/forums/cameras-photography-44/how-where-take-photograph-legal-stuff-328496/

 

I guess when I mentioned taking the "utilitarian" amateur racing shots, I was talking about shots that would give you the highest probability of being sold through an online service. In hindsight I think I may have been answering a different question than was asked... my bad.

 

I'll be happy to throw out an opinion, but you'd have to give me more information. Even if it's a hypothetical situation. I've never tried to sell anything, but there are a slew of things I would consider when coming up with a price.

I'm leaving "work" shortly so I don't have time to write out the whole list. Consider this, however. The print itself has value not just the image of what it's showing. So with that in mind let's hypothetically say you did....

11 x 14 inkjet print on archival quality paper with archival quality inks

1-2 hours editing the image

0.5 - 1 hour (re)editing the image to get the print to look good

Selling at an "art fair" not a craft show

Personally, I would have no problem asking a bare minimum of $50 + maybe 15% profit on the cost of any framing & matting materials.

That estimate is striking a balance between being half way "serious" about selling your work and just doing it on the side. If you sell stuff primarily because you just get a kick out of other people actually wanting your work, or your goal is to just get your name out there, then reduce your prices accordingly.

 

I had my print done by www.iprints.com it cost me $8.00 for the print and $2.50 for shipping up to 50 photos. Thanks for the info.

 

here are some prints I just recieved in the mail.

 

It's impossible to discern anything about a print's image quality without having it on a table in front of you, but overall those look great Shiffy. Here's my thoughts on the presentation. Any "negatives" are firmly in the realm of nit picks.

The black border with the white highlight stripe works VERY well.

The size of the title/location text on the fjord images looks good. The font looks like a good choice as well. Mind sharing which one it is? For horizontal images, you may want to consider playing with the text kerning to put a bit more space between the characters.

When you do "poster style" prints with the border and highlight stripe, I think it's safe to assume the print will be displayed without any matting. Whant this is the case, I think people subconciously prepfer borders that are equal widths on all sides (text not withstanding).

 

Thanks for the comments.

The font is "Engravers MT"

 

Hey Shiffy, this site PBase may or may not be of interest to you - a lot of budding photographers showing their stuff. You may want to compare your photos to these. BTW, it's also a photo hosting and sharing site. Just a thought.......

 

Thanks, I'll check it out.

 

Check out The Incredible Amy Leigh gallery.

 

For selling prints, you might want to look into deviantART.com.

 

yeah, I saw this today. thanks...but dont you have to pay to sell?

 

Yes, you are correct. I believe there is a sellers fee.

 

Ok, so I just got home from this local frame store. And I spoke to the manager about leaving my prints there on consignment. I brought with me 4 prints and a piece of paper that I had printed out right before I left my house with 7 other photos on them. I knew that she is from Italy and has a decent amount of Italy so I had printed some Italy Photos She kept one of the prints and asked for me to print 4 Italy Pictures.

 

Sweet... good job on going through and actually marketing some of your stuff!

 

Thanks. She also told me what I can do is...make a binder full of my photos. Basically just print each image from my computer and put it in a binder. Then print to order.

 

Good to hear you're getting rewarded for your efforts. If you are going to start selling your stuff, I'd recommend making sure you have a correctly formatted copyright notice included in each print. Basically, you just have to have the copyright symbol, your name, and the year.

You may also want to consider registering your images with the copyright office. It may not be worth the cost though as I would think the odds of somebody ripping off your work are pretty slim if you're only selling prints.

 

Do you mean actually written on the photo or separately?

 

From what I've read, the copyright notice has to be visible on the print. What I don't know is if the notice has to be in the image area or if placing it in the border would be OK. I can even see where those two locations may actually have different meanings.

 

Alright thanks. I have seen tons of copyright notices on borders. I don't think that should be a problem. But, the lady from the frame store doesnt want me to print them with borders. So I guess I will have to sign it on the image.

 

Haven't seen this topic visited in a while - I wanted to share how I sold my first work.

http://deviantart.com

This site has been around for quite a while and I'm sure almost all of you have heard of it at some point (maybe some members too).

If you post a picture that you really believe in, chances are, you'll almost immediately get some kind of feedback. It's pretty fun to see all of the feedback, so quickly. I posted my first pictures at this site in late September '07. I was amazed at how quickly I got feedback. It was very exciting. I have my pics posted at a few of the regular sites (another one is Redbubble) - but DeviantArt gave me the quickest and best exposure. It's a really laidback yet at-the-same-time vigorous community.

Furthermore, and back to the topic at hand - you can sell prints at this site, and all of this is without any membership fees (you can also choose to get a paying membership there that will give you more options). I only have one of my pictures listed as "for sale". The one I sold, was not it. I was contacted by the buyer who asked whether I was selling it. And so on and so forth. It's my impression that there are a good number of buyers that visit and use this site as an important resource for art. And that is a great great thing for aspiring artists such as ourselves.

Like any site of this nature, there is the potential for spam/scam. And they do exist at DA but they have a pretty good control on them. I received a spam e-mail once (that looked legit at first sight) and within a very short time of receipt, that account had been deleted. It is ultimately pretty easy to tell the real from the fake.

 

Thanks for the bump, srika - that's really interesting. I'll check it out, fo sho.

 

http://www.istockphoto.com/introduct...otographer.php

try that and sell stock photography files

 

I think that is usually the best and practical way to get your work out there! I've been to a lot of art shows and a lot of photo galleries in S.F. They tend to combine the two! So, depending on who's throwing a show you may be asked to post some of your work! I had a friend who had her work displayed at a very popular restaurant/bar/club! It allows people who dine or go out for drinks or to party to get a glimpse of the work on the walls and if anyone's interested then they can ask for info! I once asked a friend about a paiting I saw on a wall of a club! Too bad I didn't inquire enough and the painting was sold a week later! Ever since then, she's been traveling to different cities showcasing her work and has done a few album cover artwork! Pretty cool! There's plenty of outlets out there to get your work recognized! And remember, word of mouth is a good thing! I'm not even a real professional photographer and I've been asked to do shoots from friend of a friends or from family! Just go out there and network! hehe Good luck!

 

I love deviantart, a lot of my friends are on that and it's a good source for a lot of artists and photographers out there!