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.