Only 10,000 collectors of photography

[QT Luong]

Defining a collector as someone who spends at least $1000/year buying prints, collector DLK estimates the number of collectors in the world at less than 10,000:
http://dlkcollection.blogspot.com/20...ctors-are.html

Does that make the "collector" market tiny (prestige notwithstanding) compared to the total market for prints ?

[Bill_1856]

Interesting notion. Thanks for posting it.

[Daniel Grenier]

Well, once you know this fact, the hard part is to convince one of those 10,000 collectors to buy *your* photography!

Some years, I do fit in that 10,000, some years not but I am not surprised at all by this small number. It kind of backs up what I once said in that I wished I'd realzied much sooner in my LF "life" that 99.999% of the population really doesn't give a cr*p about FA Photography (let alone spend money on it).

Thanks for posting, QT

[Doug Dolde]

I don't see how that number has any credibility.

[paulr]

I think the challenge is figuring out which of those 10,000 is the right one.

There might be a hundred out there, who would drool over one of your prints if they knew about you. But sometimes they seem to be hiding ...

[Wallace_Billingham]

of course the other number is that there are millions of photographers trying to sell to these 10,000 people

[MIke Sherck]

Actually, I'm a little surprised that the number is that large. I would have throught it to be smaller.

Ah, well: there aren't that many now, I bet!

[paulr]

We have a lot of people buying art, and the least of your worries are selling to collectors when you should get down to earth and worry about being able to sell to the average Joe.

I think it depends. I'd love to be able to sell to the average Joe (whoever that is ...) but have had more success with collectors.

It's a mistake to think that you have to be the next Ansel to be of interest to a collector. There are many different kinds, with many different tastes and budgets. Some are just investors; some are only interested in long-dead big shots; some are pasionate about curious niches and very specific subject matter; some have low budgets and buy work only from up and coming artists ...

It's a big, diverse, individualistic, and sometimes weird group of people.

[Bruce Watson]

...I wished I'd realized much sooner in my LF "life" that 99.999% of the population really doesn't give a cr*p about FA Photography (let alone spend money on it).

+1. I hear ya bro. I hear ya.

[D. Bryant]

Well, Peter Lik prints sell well above $1000. He also has sales of $35 million (check his website....although some of it is bragging, he does have around 16-18 high end locations).
I do not place any value in there being about 10,000 collectors worldwide, because collectors are only a small portion of the market,

As far as I'm concerned Lik is a comercial photographer not a fine art photographer. His work is very polished but I don't find the subject matter to be such as to fall into the realm of fine art.

Generally speaking his work is no more outstanding than the same kind of work produced by thousands of advanced amatuers around the world - he just does more of it than the am. photog. He has managed to market his work very sucessfully and I have no problem with what he does or how he does it. But as I said simply see his efforts as purely commercial - sort of an Australian George Lepp for example.

And as far as I can tell from his website he doesn't shoot LF so I don't see the relevance in a LF photography context.

Don Bryant