Wednesday, June 13, 2007

The Insult

I don't take offense when someone doesn't like a given print of mine. People generally don't tell you that they think this or that print is kind of lame- especially if they are strangers. It wouldn't be polite. But people I know well will sometimes. Of course all art is subjective and I've found there to be a wide variance in which of my prints will appeal to a given person. So far I haven't had anyone come to me and say "Your work across the board completely sucks." Maybe once I've been at this long enough that will happen. But even then I don't think I'd get too upset about it if it did.

But at Mayfair a woman said something to me that made me want to- I don't know- give her a kind of dressing down. A couple had wondered into my booth and were examining my work. They were both Penn State alumni and very much like you'd think Penn State alumni would be. For those not familiar with PSU or the character of its student body let's just say football and beer are two of the most important things in their lives. They were very friendly- and no doubt lived in a suburban development somewhere with at least one SUV. So we chatted a bit and they offered some compliments about my work. Then as they were leaving my booth the woman said "Maybe if you make enough money at this you can travel someplace exotic and photograph it."

Yes. If only I could travel someplace exotic I'd be an awesome photographer. Because travel makes photography awesome. I've said this before and I'll say it again: travel does not impart artistic merit to photography (or any other art.) Traveling to every exotic place and photographing every exotic scene there isn't art. It's tourism. Capturing scenes everyone already knows is beautiful is a photographic cliche and in my humble opinion such work has very little- if any- artistic significance. It might serve as eye-candy for some suburban housewife (like the one mentioned above) to throw on her wall but otherwise means little.

I said earlier there were some good things about Mayfair and indeed there were. One of those good things was another couple coming through my booth on a later day after the PSU alumni. This couple was a bit older- maybe in their fifties. The man was an amateur photographer and was quite complimentary of my work. We talked shop for a bit. He had taken some digital photography courses and had used some of the same equipment I was using. He made a very interesting comment to me and then repeated it to his wife. He was looking at my foliage pictures and said something to the effect of "It's really hard to take pictures like these around here (meaning within PA woodlands.) I'm not able to take pictures like these." And I said "Yes!" inside. This was the antidote to the alumni poisoning. Someone who has tried to do what I'm doing and knows instantly that the kinds of pictures I have are something beyond what your typical or even more advanced person walking into the woods in this area can take. It is pretty damn hard to remain in one's local environment and take beautiful and interesting pictures of a nature that people haven't seen before. And this is why 99% (excepting still lifes/macros of flowers or whatever) of art festival photography is a product of travel. If you aren't truly talented you can always travel. So am I implying that 99% of all art festival photographers aren't truly talented? Of course I am. But it will take me a few posts to prove that point (though it's easier to do than you might think.)

I can on any day of the year and under any weather condition walk out into my local environment and take beautiful and interesting pictures. And I have the pictures to prove it (and no they aren't all on the website yet. So far I have around 700 pictures I've deemed worth making prints of so it's going to be a bit till I can fully express what I'm doing on the website.) I don't think too many people can do that.

I'll talk about some other exciting things that came out of Mayfair in subsequent posts.

Monday, June 11, 2007

Quick Update

Sorry for my lack of posts this week. It's been a very full one but I now have a day job. I haven't done any festivals so far in June and don't plan any until July. I take notes for the blog at festivals and from those have about 30 posts to do so this will let me get caught up. I may do some day excursions to some nearby festivals in the coming weeks (not as an exhibitor) to talk to the artists and see how things are going. By the end of June a lot of festivals will have occurred around the country and most all full time artists will know what sort of season it's shaping up to be. I'll try and get some intel from some of the old-timers I've encountered along the way to see what's happening with other festivals.

Monday, June 4, 2007

Currently Experiencing Technical Difficulties

Last Friday I woke up to find that my electricity had been turned off. I found the latest bill from the power company- I had received it just before leaving for Mayfair. It said I was past due with a balance of 50.00 and said my service was going to be turned off if I didn't pay that amount by June 1. Well, I would have been happy to have payed it if I had checked the bill in time. A week's notice seems kind of short to be turning someone's power off. The only other bill I could find from them was from December.

So I called them up to find out what the hell was going on. The woman said my service had been shut off because I hadn't paid my bill since December. I said I hadn't received any bills in 2007. She said I was being billed electronically. So I asked how that worked exactly (the bills come to my email address.) I said that wasn't happening either so she gave me a number to call for the company that handles their electronic billing. I called them and they had no record of me- I hadn't signed up for electronic billing according to them. The power company hadn't been sending me paper bills and the electronic billing people hadn't been sending me electronic bills. So who was supposed to be sending me bills and why weren't they? I love mysteries. The electronic billing people transfered me back to Allegheney Power.

So I got the same woman back on the line there and told her what the electronic billing people had said. She insisted that I had electronic billing and that I needed to straighten out any billing difficulties with the electronic billing people. And it was going to cost me a couple hundred dollars to get my service restored because they required a deposit plus connection fees (since it had been so long since I had made a payment) plus the original bill. At this point I was completely pissed. I asked why it was that my electric bill was only $50.00 if I hadn't paid anything since December (it should have been several hundred dollars.) She said that was because I had paid too much on my December bill so I had a credit that spilled over into 2007. So the reason I wasn't being billed was because I had over paid my December balance. But that was also the reason my electricity was turned off. Or something.

So because I'm stubborn ass ( I'm not paying them a bunch of extra money just because they are incompetent) I didn't have power all weekend and I've been out chasing jobs today. I'll pick up the battle in the morning. It's not really hurting much of anything except the stuff I had in the fridge. And that doesn't amount to much either with it being a typical bachelor's fridge.

The worst thing is not being able to operate my desktop computer and not having Internet access at home. I have some more posts on Mayfair to do which I'll try to get to tomorrow.

Wednesday, May 30, 2007

Mayfair Aftermath

At my first Sugarloaf event an elderly artist told me that there's an old joke- you can do festivals/craft fairs until the money runs out. That's very funny. Well I'm out of money. The old-timer photographer I was talking to at Mayfair said this is a very strange year. Some shows are going okay and others are complete disasters. Overall it's starting out as bad year for artists. It is easy to look back at a show and say that particular show went the way it did for this or that reason. But looking ahead I don't think anyone really knows how any given show is going to go this season. Some will be okay. Others will fall apart. From here on out I'm sticking with low cost events. I don't have any further resources for high booth fees or travel. Right now I'm focusing on getting a full time day job to stabilize my financial situation. And I'm following my own nose for shows- no more recommendations from other artists and no more guidebooks.

The strange thing is that I'm more confident than ever that I'll eventually be successful at this. From the sales I've had and the feedback I've been receiving I feel very good about my long term prospects. I'm especially encouraged by the kinds of people who are taking to my work. But in the short term I need to be able to pay the bills before my landlord kicks my ass out.

So what's happening? That's what all the artists out there are struggling to understand. Everybody seems to have their theory. And the answer is probably a complicated one with no single pat reason. But I'll give one anyway. My brother was at Mayfair on Sunday. And seeing the small crowd he speculated that there is some underlying anxiety that is keeping people home and from spending money. It might be said that they have a kind of bunker mentality. I think artists are the canary in a coal mine for an ill society/economy. People buy art when they are happy and feeling confident about the future. But our nation is suffering a deep malaise at the moment. Some of it's this damn war. Some of it's the overall direction of the nation under the Bush administration. Festival sales across the nation peaked in the late 90s and then declined throughout the Bush years. Bush tries maintain his political support by keeping people afraid. But that isn't working out for him anymore even while it's hurting everything else. It may be that this situation won't get turned around until there's a different administration in power.

Sunday, May 27, 2007

My First Storm

Around 6:00 we got hit with a thunderstorm. Lots of wind and hard rain. There were about two inches of water running through our booths. I also found out my tent leaks in heavy rain- that's awesome. Stupid EZ-Up company! It gets a bit scary at times when you see your tent starting to rise straight up into the air under the force of the wind. Fortunately the storm didn't last that long. But till we got our tents opened back up and the water drained away the show was pretty much over and most artists closed up and left.

Today was my best sales day so far at Mayfair. It started off like it was going to be the worst and then late afternoon some people started coming through and buying things till the storm shut it down. I've been comparing sales notes with an old-timer photographer there. I like his work- he's a very sharp person. He's been doing this show for the past ten years or so. Yesterday he did better than me and today he didn't sell anything but all of our sales don't add up to much. I had a similar thing happen at Sugarloaf Gaithersburg where I outperformed a well-established photographer. Such information is helpful for me to know because it tells me that my low sales performance for this event isn't a reflection on the salability of my work. But otherwise I don't consider it a good thing. If he'd be doing well I'd no doubt be doing better than I am- and vice versa.

So what is happening with the art festival market? There are still shows that are doing okay. A woman told me Lambertville was an alright show for her but she was still down about 33% from last year (for salaried people think about taking a 33% pay cut.) Another artist told me she had done a couple of shows in the Carolinas and they went well. So it's not as though every show out there is completely tanking. But something significant is clearly going on- something that reaches beyond specific shows or regions. As I've talked to these older artists about it I've kept hearing them say this particular show (whichever one it may be) isn't typical and not to base my overall prospects on it. But I wonder if they say that for their own reassurance as much as mine. I think they are worried about this and are trying to make sense of what is happening as much as I am. I think my brother made a comment this afternoon that starts to get at it. But that's its own post.

Not all the news from Mayfair so far is bad. I've had some very interesting observations (and one horrific insult) made about my work which I'll get to later. But now I have to get my beauty sleep for tomorrow.

Saturday, May 26, 2007

Mayfair is a Train Wreck

I really, really want to report good news on this blog- I really do. But I can't yet. Mayfair is horrible. It's the sort of place bad artists (maybe I should say evil artists- there can't be any one place big enough for all the bad as in lousy artists) end up. It's artist hell. And I am in it for two more days. There's something kind of funny about all this. I just can't put my finger on it right now.

Mayfair was supposed to be a decent festival with lots of people. Not the best in the world but good. With lots of people. The people part has been missing. The woman next to me sells jewelry. She's from Florida and has been doing Mayfair for the past 15 years or so. This was the slowest Saturday attendance-wise in all that time. It's really bad. Everyone's sales are down. It's not like a modest decline down- it's more falling off a cliff down. And yes the woman beside me came up from Florida. I'm staying with a sister so aside from the booth fee it's not a huge expense. But other artists have major travel expenses in addition to the booth fee. I feel bad for them. To add insult to injury the food is terrible and expensive (the worst funnel cake I've had at any event so far.)

Maybe something miraculous will happen in the next two days. Maybe the artists will start rioting. I'll keep you posted.

Friday, May 25, 2007

Bird Crap Really is Good Luck!

Who knew? Apparently everyone except me. And Bush and I having the exact same mishap in the same week? That's just scary.

I'm staying at my sister's place so I have Internet access while away for an event. I'll be doing a couple of posts over the weekend.

Mayfair is going- well, it's going. Talking to the other artists I'm hearing the same things I've heard at other events- it's much slower than last year. Tomorrow and the rest of the weekend will be the key days. I did have a couple of cute girls come through the booth over the course of the day/evening and buy some 5x7s so the day wasn't a total loss. And there were some other people talking about purchasing some of my large prints.

We'll see what happens tomorrow...

Thursday, May 24, 2007

Mayfair Festival of the Arts, Allentown PA

Mayfair starts these evening. I don't know much about it yet other than it has lots of people. The official numbers are 200,000. Friends who've attended it said that number sounds reasonable. The largest event I've done so far was maybe around 20,000. So this will be a festival on a whole new scale. It will also be my first five day festival.

The thing I'm most excited about is the hours. It runs from 12:00 p.m. to 9:00 p.m. though I guess we can be open later than that if we want to. I haven't been to an event yet that runs later than 6:00 p.m. I don't tend to sell anything before 2:00 p.m. in the afternoon. Especially at the indoor fairs that started at 10:00 a.m. I would sit around for the first several hours despairing of selling anything time after time. Then late afternoon I'd start selling. I guess the kind of people who like my work don't come out till later in the day. It was getting to the point where I was thinking about not showing up until noon but you can't really do that. So it'll be cool to see what happens with evening hours.

A bird dropped crap on my shoulder as I left to drive out here yesterday. A friend said bird crap is good luck. I'm not sure where she got that. I'd think getting crapped on is a negative indicator but maybe bird crap is special. It was a lucky shot anyway.

Monday, May 21, 2007

The Earnest Young Photographer

At the Milford CT show a young photographer came by to chat. I think he was a little younger than me and this was his first festival ever. He reminded me much of myself back when I was young and just starting out a few months ago. We talked about how we each were doing- things were really slow for him. I said I thought it was due to the overall sales climate right now and us being new there. He didn't seem to be interested in hearing that and believed it was the show itself. He said he knew of another photographer who had done really well at a show in Pennsylvania but he couldn't remember the name of it. We wished each other luck and he left.

He is still going to be chasing the magic show. This is a show in which just because you've gotten in the people who come will automatically buy your work. Maybe that's the way things were at one time. Maybe there still is a show somewhere where that sort of thing still happens. Taking that approach doesn't really make sense to me at this point. I'm done consulting the show rating lists and chasing this or that show just because someone said it was good. The one consistent thing I've heard at all the events I've been to so far from the old-timers is that what's making the shows for them is their existing clientele. I've heard artist/craft people selling the oddest stuff tell me they had an okay show even when a lot of other people were having a bad show. I'm always hearing something like "my previous customers came out and that saved the day."

My objective from here on out is to cultivate a clientele. This will mean returning to the same areas via the same show or different shows in the same area. I will not be so concerned with what the rating of a given show is on someone's list. I've encountered cultivated, intelligent people in the humblest of venues. Their numbers may be small at a given event but that ultimately doesn't matter. I've gotten the sense that I could sell just about anywhere once some people have come to know me there. It switches the objective of doing a given show from making money to gaining exposure. And this approach feels very good to me. I want to people to understand my work and what I'm doing. Obviously I'll need to starting making money at some point or I'll have to give it up. But I think this approach will build a much sounder foundation for the future rather than chasing the ghost of a magic festival.

At my first Sugarloaf show I asked one of the bear/eagle photographers how business was going. He started giving me the lowdown on the festival-photography hack market. He said he had done a show up in New England somewhere with a variety of different pictures. That season he sold out of all his lighthouse pictures. So the next time he went up there with nothing but lighthouse pictures. He only sold one. You never can tell what the crowd wants. I guess not. This seems really obnoxious to me- he might as well be selling funnel cakes. He doesn't make his own prints either- it seems to be all of a package. I'm not sure what motivates him to do this apart from making money. For me it would have no meaning at that point. But if he can make a go of it the more power to him.

Sunday, May 20, 2007

The Wrong Side of the Tracks

Quakertown was the worst of my shows and the best of my shows so far. Everything that can go wrong went wrong with it. Sales were low for me and the other artists I talked to. There was a main town square area where most of the artists were along with most of the crowd. That was on one side of the railroad tracks. I was down the street with a handful of other artists away from the main action on the other side of the tracks. After a few hours of good weather the sky darkened up and the wind started. I had to hold my booth down multiple times to keep it from blowing away (and yes I use weights with it but they were only ten pound weights. That apparently doesn't even faze a strong wind gust.) Then mid-afternoon they told us to pack up and go home because the weather was supposed to get really bad. It actually didn't but the show was over at that point.

But.... I had the highest percentage of passing people come into my booth of any place I've been so far. And I received a lot of very positive feedback from a lot of people. I also went through as many business cards in that period of time as I have for other whole shows. I went from seeing most people walk by my booth to seemingly as many come in as walk by. And my work was solicited for a local gallery. This show really had a different vibe to it- somehow my work seemed to resonate with a lot of the people coming through. I'm not sure why that was.

There were a number of times I was talking shop with some amateur photographers who were several decades older than myself. People coming through the booth would keep complimenting the older men I was talking to on the work. Age prejudice I guess.

I will keep coming back to this area also. This event reinforced my new show strategy- a very exciting development. More in the next post.

Wednesday, May 16, 2007

No Lighthouse Prints

I realized that this blog might have some new readers after last weekend who might not have the full context yet. I won't be selling lighthouse prints- I was only joking. And I wasn't trying to cast aspersions on Quakertown Alive this weekend. Just because it's a small show doesn't mean it's going to be lousy. There are decent small shows. I don't think it's going to be great but that doesn't really matter. It's part of my new strategy for tackling festivals that I'll post further about.

Tuesday, May 15, 2007

Milford CT Followup

I finally made more than the booth fee there but still lost money overall when travel expenses were taken into account. Losing money is such hard work. On the other hand I sold my largest piece to date- a $200.00 sale. I also won first prize for photography out of maybe a dozen or so photographers so that was very cool. This show had the largest attendance of any I've done so far- maybe in the tens of thousands. I wrote before going to Great Neck that it was going to be my biggest show so far at 50,000 but it was definitely under 10,000- maybe more like 5000. These show produces lie so bad when it comes to attendance numbers and I keep falling for it. Milford was in line with stated attendance though. I also went through the most business cards at any event so far.

Otherwise it was pretty much same kinds of people most excited about my work- more professors (I'm thinking Yale faculty make more than Bucknell people but I could be wrong), other kinds of art people (I've had two sales to other artists now) and other professionals of various kinds. There were more Europeans also- French folks this time. They seemed startled by my work. They were very inquisitive about it- asking what the various things in my pictures were and how I came to be photographing such things. They were very much victims of the lighthouse/bird-in-tree/ bear photographers and seemed to have very low expectations when it came to art photography. I wonder if they have art fests in Europe. It would cost a small fortune to go over there though with a boot setup.

I seem to be developing a following among landscape/nursery people and I have more prints on the way that I think they'll appreciate. I also had my youngest patron to do date. A boy around five or six was quite taken with my work for some reason. He was so cute in how he went about asking about the prices of my framed pictures- even trying to finagle one for free. But he only had a budget of $5 so he finally settled on my spider card. He asked if it only could be used as a card to be sent to someone. I told him that he could find a small frame for it and use it as a picture. So his dad is going to help him make a little frame for it.

I didn't have as much opportunity to get around to other photographers and artists to ask how the event was going for them because I was getting much more booth traffic than past shows. But one photographer who was able to get around dropped by. And I did talk to a couple of other 2-D people- all painters. From what I gathered there were only two photographers who were doing well there and they both sold more traditional/conventional work than mine. The painters I talked to said it was a show that you have to attend for a couple of events before it becomes financially worthwhile. The people there need to get to know you and they want to see that you're serious about what you're doing before they'll start buying much from you. The painters and most of the crafts people seemed to be doing well- primarily with established customers. And that's a positive sign for the overall art market this summer in contrast to the Sugarloaf events and Lewsiburg.

I'll definitely return to Milford. From the interest expressed I'm confident I can establish a viable clientele there with a few more shows.

I'll be doing Quakertown PA this coming weekend (small one) and then it'll be Mayfair in Allentown PA for memorial day weekend. Mayfair is a major deal at five days and large crowds.

But I gotta get back to making some lighthouse prints for this weekend.

Friday, May 11, 2007

Milford CT

Sorry about my lack of posts this week- it's been a crazy week. I will post about Great Neck last weekend early next week. I got a really big break and will be in Milford Connecticut this Saturday and Sunday for Meet the Artists and Artisans (http://www.meettheartistsandartisans.com/shows.htm) I really enjoyed the people who came through my booth in Hartford so I'm looking forward to this weekend.

Saturday, May 5, 2007

Great Neck, New York

On Sunday I will be at a show in Great Neck on Long Island. This event had 50,000 attendees last year so it will be my largest event yet. The weather is supposed to be perfect. And it will be. I have no idea what to expect- it's not an event that's hard to get into so I'm sure there's going to be a lot of junk. But the crowd will be more affluent than Lewisburg and quite a bit larger.

There's a reason there aren't a lot of applicants for shows on Long Island- the drive out there is a nightmare. It also costs about $20.00 in toll fees one way. After the first time I did an event out there I vowed never to return because of the drive. But I think it's an area with great potential and so I've decided to keep working it.

Tuesday, May 1, 2007

My First Bird in a Tree Picture

A woman barged into my booth at Lewisburg and asked if I had any wildlife pictures. Nope. She turned around and left. I've finally caved in to market pressures and decided to try my hand at the wildlife thing. I know I'm going to get criticism for "selling out" and pandering and all the rest of it but I have bills to pay. Here's my first bird picture.



Something seems slightly off about it but I'm not sure what. Probably if I had a more experienced eye for wildlife pictures I'd see it right away. I guess I'm just not there yet.

If you are new to this blog you might want to read this post for context.

Lewisburg follow-up

The weather was lousy and the turnout was too. The woman next to me said last year was a gorgeous day and you couldn't see across the street for the crowd. That wasn't the case this year but some people did come out. It wasn't a great sales situation for me but I had good traffic through the booth and lots of positive feedback- even more so than the Sugarloaf events. But people weren't dropping much money. Lewisburg is home to Bucknell- it's a university town so that may explain some of that (educated people without a lot of disposable income.)

The jurying was definitely a notch below Sugarloaf. The woman behind me sold various kinds of kitchenware with sterling silver wire wrapped around the utensils- for example wine glasses with the wire wrapped around the stems. She had done this for spoons and knives- candle holders- all kinds of crap. It was really lame. And there was a photographer who specialized in lighthouses. There were some fine art painters there with some cool stuff but they didn't seem to be getting much traffic. I'll probably do it again next year just because it's local and inexpensive to do. And I met some interesting people and made some worthwhile contacts. But no relief from the starving artist lifestyle just yet.

Friday, April 27, 2007

Lewisburg, Pennsylvania

This is a festival put on by the Lewisburg Arts Council. It is a small event- 4000 to 7000 people expected with 120 artists. I have heard positive things about it from other artists. I don't expect anything amazing to happen but it may well be my first profitable show because the cost to do it is so low. And it's outdoors! I'm very excited about that fact. If I don't sustain any injuries while setting up my tent it should be a fun day.

Wednesday, April 25, 2007

The Changing Art Market

While I was hauling in my booth gear for Gaithersburg a I saw a group of older women artists wearing these shirts that seemed to be made of shredded rags very ornately colored and sewn together. I was tempted to ask them what they wearing- maybe as a less rude way of asking them why they were wearing them. I later realized that one of the artists on my floor made these shirts. An artist in the booth next to me also made women's clothing. His work seemed like dated futuristic costumery- maybe something out of Star Trek: The Next Generation. I didn't understand it or see why anyone would like it. But I realized over the course of the festival that he had a loyal clientele. I also observed other women about his age range (baby boomers and older) exclaiming about his work as they passed. I asked him how business was going. He said it was in a long term decline- having peaked in the late 90s. Other old-timers who sold other kinds of work said the same thing.

For someone just starting out on the festival circuit this was discouraging to hear. I had read in one of my art festival guides about certain areas becoming exhausted or worn out for art sales. Gaithersburg is said to be one of these markets. But this is more than simply a problem with specific markets. This phenomenon afflicts the art festival circuit across the nation. I asked a number of the seasoned artists about this and they all gave the same answer- the generations that bought their work are now "full" of art. Not only that but many of them are downsizing their homes as they retire and the last thing they need is more art. They also complained that the younger generations didn't seem to go for their work the way their parents did. Here theories diverged as to why this is. Some said the festival circuit needs fresh blood- a younger generation of artists to be connecting with the younger generations of patrons. Other artists suggested it was a deficiency with "the youth today" and that their parents weren't teaching them to value and patronize the arts. Maybe they're too into their Ipods and other electronic gizmos. Maybe there're too many channels on cable TV now-a-days and that keeps them culturally malnourished.

From what I've seen so far (and I fully concede that I'm still wet behind the ears with the festival circuit) the younger generations are in fact quite interested in art. But I don't think that the work that has been sold by the old-timers for the past of couple of decades always connects with the younger generations of patrons. I wonder if the artists that sell via the circuit are in an insular world. They've cultivated the clientele that likes their work but have otherwise been oblivious to the changing demographics and tastes of the larger society. Maybe these artists have to reinvent themselves every so often or they remain prisoners to the tastes of a particular generation.

I'm not worried about this trend for myself. From my experience so far I sense that I'm on a different trajectory than these artists- that I'm facing a growing clientele rather than a shrinking one. And while the appeal of my work is restricted to the more culturally sophisticated I'm fortunate in that it has no age constraints. It attracts the interest of members of every age group from toddlers to retirees. But this is a serious problem for some of the established artists. I'm not sure what they will do- or what they can do. Hopefully they will find a way to adapt.

Friday, April 20, 2007

Not Going to Long Island

Another artist said it was a lousy venue so I'll sit tight till next weekend. Then I'll be having my first outdoor show in Lewisburg PA on Saturday. It's a small festival (only about 7000 people) but very inexpensive to do.

Thursday, April 19, 2007

Show This Weekend

I'll be at the Rockville Centre Railroad Station on Long Island this Saturday. I don't have any background data on this show but it'll be inexpensive for me to do. This will be my first outdoor event and if nothing else I'll provide a comic diversion for the other exhibitors as they watch me struggle to put my tent up. All the other shows from here on out will be outdoor ones.

Tuesday, April 17, 2007

Sugarloaf Gaithersburg

The good news is that I continued my trend of doubling my sales show over show. I didn't quite make expenses but was close. I had one couple drop $300 on my work- my largest single sale yet. But overall the festival was a train wreck for the artists. The storm moving up the east coast was projected to hit that area hard. But Saturday turned out to be a relatively nice day though there was steady rain all day Sunday. The early warnings about the severity of the storm had people making other plans and attendance was half what it was prior years.

I talked with the most established, successful photographer there late Sunday afternoon. He's been doing Gaithersburg for twenty some years and said this was his worst one ever. I think I may have out-sold him but I'm not sure. I'm not saying that to gloat- these guys have families and kids in college and these slow events really hurt them. I don't even want to see the dumbasses putting birds in their pictures having a bad show- a man has to earn a living somehow. And as long as it doesn't involve exploiting others or somehow hurting anyone it's alright by me. I 'm thankful I don't have anyone else to be providing for at the moment. But these sales trends point to a tremendous upheaval going on in the art world and this may be a difficult year for a lot of artists. I'll post much more on that later.

Otherwise it went much the same as the other events- most people blew by my booth without even noticing its existence while those who stopped were quite enthusiastic about it. I also gained a new group to add to my fan list- Europeans. That area being close to D.C. had more of an international component than any other of the shows I've done. They probably won't be a significant makeup of any shows I'll hit but it's interesting to know.

Every show I do impresses upon me what an ignorant dork I am. I have booth lights now and therefore have electricity run to my booth. The power supply is very carefully managed according to how much wattage each artist has purchased. At one point my laptop battery was running low so I thought I'd recharge it by plugging into my booth's power strip. A minute after I did the entire booth row I was in went dark. I discreetly unplugged the laptop and put it away. They got the electric back on about twenty minutes later. I didn't think a laptop would draw that much current. Oops. And I got yet more advice about my booth. If you talk to the old timers they'll give you all the advice you want. I always do talk to them and I finally found out what's with all those director chairs they're always sitting in. I've been using this crap lawn chair I bought at Target for twenty bucks. But I learned that it's disconcerting for a customer to have to look down to talk you and those high rise director's chairs keep you eye level with the customer. Yet another booth improvement I can't swing at the moment. Next it'll be hardwood floors and a hot tub.

Wednesday, April 11, 2007

Sugarloaf Gaithersburg

I head down to Gaithersburg tomorrow. This will be my best show so far both in terms of attendance and the quality of the crowd. It's also my first event that ranks in Greg Lawler's Art Fair Source Book http://www.artfairsourcebook.com/. There will be around twenty other photographers plus a number of other wall-art people so they'll be plenty of competition. In any case I'm quite excited about it. My posting has been light this past week as I've prepared for it and I may not post again until early next week when I'm back and recovered (these events are really tiring.)

Tuesday, April 10, 2007

Make Your Own Prints Part 2

So why are some digital photographers outsourcing their print making? At the professional level it isn't to save money. A high-end service bureau will be more expensive than the artist using their own equipment and purchasing their fine art papers in large rolls. Just how hard can it be to make a high quality digital print anyway? You just hit the print button in Photoshop or whatever photo management software you're using, right? Wrong. For those inexperienced with trying to make professional-grade digital prints I suggest the following experiments. Take any two dissimilar computers you have- this will probably be easiest with two laptops or a desktop and laptop. Open the exact same picture on each computer with their screens side by side. Compare the two pictures. How different are their colors? How about contrast? How about color saturation? Lightness/darkness? Are you surprised at the differences? If you have a desktop photo printer take any print you've made with it and hold it right beside the picture as it appears on your screen. Try this with a number of pictures of different subjects under different lighting conditions. What's happening?

Computers, monitors, printers, inks, and papers all have their own unique color handling behavior and none of them are as sophisticated as the human eye. Computers from different manufacturers have different color displaying abilities and the same is true for different monitors, printers etc. There is even variance within the same model of monitors from the same manufacturer. Digital cameras lie. Computers lie. Monitors lie. Printers and inks and papers lie. And by "lie" I mean they introduce distortions and deviations from the ideal print that portrays the original subject matter the way you want it to. Achieving mastery of digital printing means conducting a long, painful battle with technology. You have to learn the hardware and the software. You have to learn about papers and research the ones that perform best for your work. Then you have to get it all to work together to achieve the results you're seeking. Eventually you can get the better of the technology and make it do what you want it to do. Until then it's getting the better of you. It's hard to master it. It's frustrating. It takes time and experience and wasting a lot of paper and ink. And just about all naive users of digital printing don't understand this. But those starting at the professional level come into this awareness very quickly. And they are then faced with a choice- spending the time, effort, and money to master digital printing or pay someone else to do it for them. Digital print making at the professional level is hard- no question. But if a photographer takes their art seriously and really cares about their work they will learn what is required to do it right.

The photographers who come through my booth ask me how I make my prints. Non-photographers always want to know about Photoshop. Potential patrons of digital art should ask the artist how they make their prints- and what papers they use. After all the print is what the patron pays money for. This is ultimately a more meaningful question than asking the photographer whether they manipulate things in Photoshop and you will be the more sophisticated patron for asking it. This will give you a good feel for how seriously the artist takes their print-making without needing a lot of technical knowledge yourself. Cruise around an arts festival with that question and see how many photographers you spook.

I don't know what the future holds for the photographers who aren't making their own prints. I'm not sure if their work will ever be considered collectable or not. My guess is that time will sort out the wheat from the chaff.

Monday, April 9, 2007

Make Your Own Prints Part 1

The negative is comparable to the composer's score and the print to its performance. ~Ansel Adams

At one of the first fairs I attended an amatuer photographer asked me how I printed my work. I began telling her about the Epson printer and various papers I use. She interrupted with "I just go to Sam's- it's cheaper." This startled me- I think I mumbled something like "yeah it would be" in reply. There is a trend among digital photographers- especially among those who started directly with digital equipment verses those who started with film cameras- to outsource their printmaking. Presumably those photographers who are wishing to sell their work are using a more sophisticated outfit then Sam's. To be sure there are some very good companies that produce (technically) high quality prints on fine papers. But no photographer who's presenting their work as art should be doing this.

What do collectors of photography seek? A print made by the artist. Anyone can go into the library of the University of New Mexico and check out Ansel Adam's negatives. They can make all the prints they want from them. Are these prints then worth anything? Of course not- they weren't made by Ansel Adams. For all practical purposes negatives are worthless. Files on a computer are even more worthless.

The print is everything when it comes to photography being presented as art. The exercise of the photographer's eye is just as critical in making the print as it is in taking the original picture. And the quality of the print is just as important as the subject of the picture itself. The print is the actual work of art being created by the photographer. It is the end goal of all else the art photographer is doing. But in the digital era many photographers- especially those starting out in the digital world- have lost sight of this.

All the better art festivals require that photographers make their own prints. But I know there are photographers getting in to top-end art festivals who aren't doing this. I'm not saying this to knock festival organizers- it would be very difficult to effectively police this.

More on this in the next post.

Tuesday, April 3, 2007

The Temptation of Ben

During the Hartford show there was an exhibitor who came by and offered some suggestions about what I could do to make my pictures more saleable. This person was definitely on the craft side of things rather than the art side with what he was selling. He told me about one photographer he knew who would take portraits of people and distort them in amusing ways in Photoshop. He also mentioned some other shticks that photographers were using to sell their work. He meant well and I appreciated his concern for my sales situation. But I don't think he needs to be worried about me. He doesn't see what I see and hear what I hear. In every show I've been to there has been a certain select group of people who are drawn to my booth. Most people drift by barely registering its existence. But those who do stop are quite enthusiastic about what they see- the compliments are very effusive. And some of them even purchase prints. There are more compliments than purchases but that will always be the case. The people who like my work really, really like it. So who are these people?

I've been curious about this and have asked them a bit about themselves to get a feel for who they are. Some are simply well-educated, intelligent people. Many are experienced art festival patrons. Some of them are other artists. Some are amateur and professional photographers, scientists, art educators, gallery owners/managers, nature lovers, and young aspiring photographers. In other words all the right people. These kinds of people have been a minority of the crowd coming through the venues I've been to so far. But that will change. There are summer festivals where the more cultured demographic will be the dominant one as opposed to the blue collar demographic (though I don't mean to be putting the blue collar folks down- it takes all types to make the world go around.) From everything I've seen so far I expect to do well in these events.

My work is attracting the attention of the right people. And my work is getting me into the quality festivals. So I don't think I'll need to resort to Photoshop chicanery to manipulate people into buying my prints. I'll be patient until the more sophisticated venues of summer. Or maybe I'll become disillusioned and cynical and start putting a cardinal or two in every picture and showing up at my booth drunk on festival mornings. We'll see.

Sunday, April 1, 2007

Social Skills

I was hesitant to tackle the festival circuit because I didn't think I had the right personality for it. I'm not the car salesman type who can start schmoozing with people as soon as they walk in the booth. But I'm learning you don't need that. People will start a conversation with you if they like your work and I'm really enjoying talking with these people. They seem to be an interesting set of people- by and large educated and cultured. Even in the humblest venue I've been in there were some pretty cool people who dropped by. So I'm enjoying the social aspects of this more than I expected to. More on who my patrons are shapping up to be in the next post.

Saturday, March 31, 2007

The Blog Name

It seems some people I know are going to be giving me grief about the blog name. For the record I don't actually run around the woods naked (the local ecosystem is already under enough stress.) There are also a lot of thorns, thistles and briars in this area that would make doing that really unpleasant. It seems like something the weird artist type might do to better commune with nature or something but I guess I'm not quite that weird. Though I wonder if it would increase my print sales if I let people think I do...

Friday, March 30, 2007

Traveling

Every time I see my dental hygienist she asks me where I'll be traveling this year for my photography. I had my car in for service the other week and the garage owner asked me where I was going to be traveling. When I tell people what I do they will without exception ask me where I travel to do it. I accept it as an absolute at this point that this question always follows the job description "photographer" and especially "nature photographer." With my dental hygienist I don't feel like explaining it all because of the difficulty talking with her fingers and tools in my mouth. With others I'll often essay an explanation: "I don't travel for my photography. I do it all in this area because the Pennsylvania fields and woodlands are my subject matter." There is usually silence for a moment and I get the sense that they are thinking: "What lame pictures he must take. What is there to photograph around here?" When I first started out doing this a relative that lives near me remarked that "this isn't an an area that's good for photography." Sigh. The notion of photography being about traveling is such an absolute in people's minds. Why do people have such a rigid notion of this? If I said I was a painter would people immediately ask me where I was going to be traveling? How about sculptor? I tell them I don't do National Geographic style wildlife photography- I'm not paparazzi for the eagles and bears. But people never really get it until I show them my work.

My Current Lineup

My next event is Sugarloaf Gaithersburg, Maryland April 13th - 15th. It is their largest and longest running event. Other 2-D artists at Sugarloaf Hartford told me 2-D does very well in Gaithersburg. There'll be twice the number of photographers in Gaithersburg as there was in Hartford so I guess that says something. After that's it's Sugarloaf Timonium, Maryland at the end of April. I don't have any intel on that show yet- no idea what does well and what doesn't.

My first "real" summer arts festival will be the Mayfair Festival of the Arts in Allentown PA over Memorial Day weekend. It's my first fest with the word "arts" in the title as opposed to the word "crafts." Very exciting! People won't be looking at me like I'm an alien when they see my booth is full of 2 dimensional art nor will they be constantly asking "is this your work?" And then there'll be the Central Pennsylvania Festival of the Arts in State College in mid July which will be another real arts fest! Yay! Shows after that I've applied to are still jurying.

April 1 is another major deadline for a handful of important shows so I'm currently sorting through which ones I want to apply to. Some of these are for the summer but most take place in the early fall. The booth fees are nuts. How are people supposed to get started in this business with all the booth fees due before you've had a chance to earn significant income from the events themselves? Somehow it all seems backwards.

Wednesday, March 28, 2007

The Booth

I have only been to art fests in the summer time and that was my frame of reference for putting my booth together. Having done several indoor winter events now I realize that the indoor booth game is much different. In an ideal world it shouldn't be about the booth- just the work. But in reality the booth does matter. The other photographer's booths were all larger than mine, both in floor space and in height. The two artists on either side of me weren't 2D people but they both had higher booths- which made mine look kind of small and lost. I'll be able to correct the booth height situation for the next show- I'm not sure about the floor space. But the cool thing was that for all my booth mistakes I still had some number of people circulate through it and even purchase my work. They seemed to be the kind of people who are experienced attenders of art fests. In other words, the cultured intelligent types. I'll talk more about who my patrons are shaping up to be in another post.

Tuesday, March 27, 2007

The Cheaters

I was chatting with an artist near my booth about some of the other photographers there. He said one of the other nature photographers inserted animals into his pictures in Photoshop. I was quite startled by this and didn't quite believe him at first. The cardinal rule of digital photography is that you never, never, ever insert something into a picture that wasn't there to begin with. You can take out lens dust and maybe paint out an out of focus twig or something like that. But you never put anything in. So I took a stroll over to visit this photographer's booth to see what was going on. Sure enough, he had pictures of grizzlies fishing in a river and there was quite a large number of bears in the scene. And some of the bears looked like they didn't quite fit in the picture- he wasn't even that good at hiding it. He also had one of a group of seven or eight bald eagles all sitting on a log in front of lake. I've seen bald eagles in the wild and I've never seen more than one on the same branch, maybe two in the same tree at most. I've never seen any birds of prey ever congregate in one place. It was an awful lot of eagles on that one log. Maybe they were having a prayer meeting. Not to mention his skills as a digital print maker were terrible- the quality of his prints was quite low. And I imagine he used junk paper and all the rest of it. When I got back to my booth the artist that had originally tipped me off said this photographer had quite a following and was doing well with such pictures. I guess if people want to pay him money for that sort of thing it's their business.

This artist then told me about another photographer he knew- one that wasn't in that particular show. This photographer would photograph a tree or bush and then take other pictures he had of birds like cardinals and insert them into the picture. He would sell a certain arrangement of birds in the picture for one year and than the next year he'd change the number and positions of the birds in the picture and then sell it again. And people bought it like crazy. Well, I'll never go there. But if I ever meet this photographer in a show I'll shake his hand and congratulate him on his success. I'm sure he's laughing all the way to the bank.

Hartford CT

I was an exhibitor in the Sugarloaf Hartford CT craft festival last weekend. It was my fourth craft fair and the most sophisticated venue I've been in so far (though all things considered it was still kind of a lousy one.) My sales have doubled for each event I've done over the prior one but I still wasn't able to cover expenses for this one since the booth fee was so much higher. I've kept adding to the amount of work available for sale between the events and improving my booth display which I think has been helping the rising sales. I still have more work to do on it though- I need to get rugs for the floor, some bigger lights, and better backdrop material. My next event will be Sugarloaf Gaithersburg in mid April- their flagship event. There'll be 450 exhibitors- 20 some photographers. I'm exciting about doing a show with so many photographers because I relish having the others to compete against.