Inkjet pricing

[clay harmon]

I'm sort of reluctant to post this.. well, notion, because of the obvious potential for it to erupt into a digital vs traditional Mt Vesuvius. But here goes:

Has anyone given any thought to pricing nice inkjet prints in a separate tier from their traditional work? My thought is that you could actually price this in a similar price range as posters, without the huge upfront commitment actually needed to print a poster edition. The edition would be open-ended and the idea would be to target a market segment that is reluctant to pay full freight for a traditionally produced image that would be editioned. I do editioned gum-platinum prints, and because of the work involved in producing one, there is no way I am going to price them low. But if I could scan these prints and produce a high quality (and differently sized) copy of the hand made prints and price them down market, it might be an effective strategy. Order fulfillment would be easy also, since a command-p once the file is cleaned up would be all that is needed.

Anybody doing this? Any thoughts on the idea?

[Jeremy Moore]

I like the idea if for no other reason than that I would finally be able to afford one of your images

[j.e.simmons]

Doesn't the Ansel Adams gallery do this or something similar? I think you can buy inkjet prints of some of his famous images for very little. Sounds like a good idea to me.
juan

[Michael Mutmansky]

Clay,

As we have discussed, I think it is an appropriate method to have more then one pricing level, and open up the market to more people.

I do believe it is important that there be a distinction between the handmade print and the inkjet print that goes beyond the simple printing process, to keep the limited edition prints distinct. I would suggest that the inkjets be printed at a different size, and possibly be done so that they are clearly posters (put your name at the bottom, for example).

I have found that I have much better success scanning the negative and then making adjustments to the image in PS to duplicate the tones of a platinum or gum print. The paper texture gets in the way when I scan the actual print. I've done both, and for a magazine reproduction I find that a scan from the print will work acceptably well, but for a fine quality inkjet poster, I think the paper texture could be somewhat of a distraction.


---Michael

[Ted Harris]

An opposite opinion. I spend as much time doing a high quality digital print as I do producing a high quality print in a darkroom. Two differences: 1) I work in the light sitting down as opposed to in the dark standing up and 2) Once I have 'nailed' the final print I can replicte it exactly time and again but I can almost do the same thing in the darkroom, granted there are minute differences in each hand produced silver (or other wet process) print and those do not necessarily exist in multiple digital prints .... assuming you don't fiddle a tiny bit with each new print and yes, I do that if I am coming back to a print after some weeks or months, just as I would in the darkroom. All that being said what I see in the gallery market indicates that we as photographers carea lot more about how the prints are produced than the buyers care.

I wouldn't mind offering some digital prints at lowe prices, even very low prices and in fact do so at art fairs, but not all digital prints. They are different than wet darkroom produced prints but not of necessarily lower value. Remember too that there is a lot of fairly expensive hardware that needs to be considered when pricing the print. I am assuming that for any print that will be sold we are talking a top quality scan so that is an investment of $40 to $100 for the scan (or the cost of a quality scanner ranging from a bit less than $1000 to over $20,000) , then some paper and ink costs and the cost of the printer ranging from $2000 up and finally the software for editing, printing, etc. not to mention the computer hardware that is solely dedicated to your print production (e.g. the 3-4 gigs of memory that you wouldn't need if you weren't manipulating large graphics files). Love to see what others feel about this topic.

[Michael Mutmansky]

Ted,

While you may be right that an inkjet print sometimes takes as long to make as a silver gelatin or traditional color print, there is at least a magnitude of difference in the time involved for a combination platinum and gum bichromate print. In fact, a straight platinum print is actually quite fast in comparison, and that is more labor intensive than any silver or color print that I have made.

Plus, the handmade nature of the coatings on the paper results in more failures than will happen with manufactured papers, regardless of the time involved.

I don't want to speak for Clay here, but I doubt he is talking about a $10 poster. Probably more like a $75 poster, as opposed to a $650 print. So we're not talking about devaluing inkjet prints from what is essentially the going rate for them in art fairs and online, in fact, his pricing will probably be higher than most inkjet prints (that sell for $25 or so).


---Michael

[tim atherton]

While you may be right that an inkjet print sometimes takes as long to make as a silver gelatin or traditional color print, there is at least a magnitude of difference in the time involved for a combination platinum and gum bichromate print. In fact, a straight platinum print is actually quite fast in comparison, and that is more labor intensive than any silver or color print that I have made.

However (depending on the market) photography isn't usually priced according to the labour intensiveness of its production.

Possibly, if you are selling crafts. But if you are aiming to sell some sort of art (at whatever level you deem it), how long it took to produce - either in terms of the printing, or even in terms of "I had to climb for 8 hours and bivouac on a six inch ledge overnight to get this shot" type of claim - such as we often see - is generally irrelevant. It may be a factor, but not the main one.

A similar fairly straightforward silver gelatin print that didn't take long in the darkroom, or a Colour C print produced for the photographer by a lab may also equally sell for the same $650 as that platinum print.

[Brian Ellis]

"Has anyone given any thought to pricing nice inkjet prints in a separate tier from their traditional work?"

You mean charge more for inkjet color prints because they last so much longer than traditional color prints? Or are you maybe thinking of a higher price on b&w inkjet prints because it takes so much longer to make one for the first time than it does a darkroom print? Interesting ideas, I might be inclined to do that if I still did any "traditional" printing.

[Slade Zumhofe]

I agree with Ted on this one. Although I spend as much time producing a digital print as I did in the darkroom I also sell them for less money. As much as I hated pricing my images based on the amount of time involved in making them it is tough to get around. The more an image would sell the higher the price would go--for no other reason than I would almost vomit at the thought of going back into the darkroom and print that same print again, and again, and again.

Now, once the work is done--it is done and priced accordingly. I now offer no questions asked full replacements--just mail back a corner of the original and I ship them a new one. I never would have considered this with my traditional prints--little different pulling up an image on my monitor and pressing "print" vs. setting up the lab and painstakenly attempting to duplicate the original which could take all day for some images.

There is nothing wrong with reaching a larger market and inkjets gives us the opportunity to do just this. As much as I favor pricing my work as "art" there is but a handful of people that can actually make any money by doing this. The rest of us only get the satisfaction of seeing a high price at the bottom of an image but nobody buys them. And isn't the goal (of us non-professionals) to either help pay for equipment and maybe get our work in the hands of more people?

[Michael Mutmansky]

However (depending on the market) photography isn't usually priced according to the labour intensiveness of its production.

Tim,

The secondary market is based on demand. The primary market is based on demand if you are a collected name. The rest of the artists out there have to use other means to set pricing levels, and time involved in producing the work is just as legitimite as the next reason, and should certainly be considered when discussing unlimited low-budget image options.

Claims of the effort involved have no bearing on this discussion, because while that may or may not be part of Clay's marketing schtick (which it is not), the consideration of the time involved is a legitimite portion of the determination of the value of an inkjet print, as it would be for any other print.

Clay works in a particular medium, and inkjet posters is not that medium. He is looking at an inkjet poster as a secondary output option to increase his marketability, just like some photographer use greeting cards. Interestingly, the more commercial use of an inkjet printer that this implies seems to have ruffled a few feathers. While people who do use an inkjet printer as their primary medium may have a problem with the dual nature of the current inkjet printer technology and applications, that is theirs alone to wrestle with.

If Clay decides to make prints in this manner, I'm sure he will be happy to supply them to anyone who wishes at his normal gum-over pricing. For everyone else, I'll be the lower price of a reproduction poster will be a welcome opportunity to get some nice images at a price they can afford.


---Michael